| | |  | Last Updated: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 |  | | | Gambling Slot Machines Seized in California
- Sunday, 23 Apr 2006
California has a billion dollar gambling industry. The industry is meant to be regulated and legal, yet there continues to be the phenomenon of illegal gambling machines springing up everywhere. In a recent raid, police confiscated 80 illegal gambling slot machines which were all of Japanese origin.
The raid on the illegal gambling machines took place after 3 months of investigations, according to the Division of Gambling Control in the state Department of Justice. Slot machines are illegal in California and California law requires the machines to be registered with the state and limits them to doing business with Indian casinos or in states where gambling is legal. The largest recorded raid in the states history occurred only last December when 1,500 slot machines were confiscated in Las Angeles County.
While legal gambling, predominately run by the Indian tribes, brought in about $5 billion in 2004 in California, the extent of illegal gambling and the volume of this phenomenon has not yet been properly estimated. The reason for this difficulty is that those who sell and run illegal gambling machines, basement card rooms and private casinos, do all they can to operate in the dark. Since the Division of Gambling Control began operating in 2000, seizures have been a constant issue and they have managed to bring in about 100-300 machines annually. A spokesperson for the Division said that a lot of the times the machines are sold for personal use, but often are intended for illegal gambling purposes.
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