TAVARES — Game over.
That was the goal of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigation Bureau on June 13 as detectives swooped in on four gambling arcades, seizing $211,000 in cash and 170 machines.
It’s not a matter of impossible odds against gamblers, or rigged machines, said sheriff’s Capt. Shawn Vance. It’s just that they are all illegal.
“Illegal gambling establishments operate outside the legal, regulated market to exploit vulnerable Floridians,” said Lou Trombetta, executive director of Florida Gaming Control Commission, whose agency aided in the raids. “They are usually associated with organized crime, do not generate state tax revenue, and do not provide the same consumer protections or safeguards as legal operators.”
The game has and has not changed. Gone are the notorious machine-operated one-armed bandits. Today’s players sit before flashing lights and spinning wheels powered by computers. Or they sit at a table with other players at so-called fish games where they “shoot” fish electronically.
Players, for example, feed $20 into a machine and punch a “start” button. They punch another button to cash out. Cashing out creates a voucher.
Even Vance said he was surprised when he saw the stacks of vouchers that paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars, up to $5,000. “They pay out, which keeps players coming back but it’s a fair assessment they’re making money.”
A few years ago, cities like Tavares would raid arcades and seize money and machines, but the machines then were big-screen TVs and desktop computers. They were easily replaceable, however, and could reopen under a different name a few doors down without too much investment.
Will they reopen? It’s possible. “That’s usually the case with criminal enterprise,” Vance said.
The new machines will be a lot harder to replace, however.
The arcades have long been a problem for Sheriff Peyton Grinnell.
“Calls for service are burdensome,” Vance said. “We get tips about drug sales, human trafficking and prostitution,” he said. Sometimes angry callers complain that an elderly loved one is blowing their retirement money.
One of the sheriff’s concerns is that arcades, with their large cash income, are targets for robbers.
In 2022, detectives arrested and charged a man with shooting a security guard in Umatilla and robbing another arcade in Tavares. In 2018, Sumter County deputies searched for a suspect who was believed to have been shot by a security guard.
The four gambling houses raided on June 13 were: two Hot Spot arcades in Tavares, Cyber Monkey in Astor, and Hot Spot II in Umatilla. No one was arrested, but deputies issued six misdemeanor notice-to-appear citations to employees.
Leesburg, Clermont, Eustis, and Mount Dora police and the FGCC aided in the investigation.