Forfeitures are great, but not the solution
District Attorney David Cooke is rightfully proud of how his office has handled more than $1 million seized in recent gambling-related lawsuits. “I am proud of the way we have used these resources for the benefit of our community,” Cooke said at a news conference. “We have had the opportunity to assist agency partners who help victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse.”
But that’s not how it should be. The gaming machines in convenience stores were simply set up to be a legal scam from the beginning and allowed store owners and the owners of the machines to reap huge profits. Now it’s all starting to come to light.
The way it’s supposed to work (wink, wink). Customers just enjoy playing these electronic games of chance so much that they will continually feed money into them in exchange for Coca-Colas and potato chips (wink, wink). Cash payments to winners are illegal (wink, wink). In addition, the accounting for profits were on the honor system (wink, wink, wink). And what’s being found as all the machines are now linked to a centralized computer system is that statewide, players pumped more than $2 billion into these gaming devices during the fiscal year ending June 30. Why is that surprising?
Before the centralized computer system, prize redemptions were millions of dollars lower and profits were about half and in some cases triple. “Looking at the disparity in the numbers,” Cooke said, “any reasonable person would conclude that fraud is involved.”
In Middle Georgia, $201.5 million was dropped into gaming machines in fiscal 2016 an increase of more than $70 million over what store and machine owners self-reported in calendar year 2014 according to a Telegraph report.
What should be done? Certainly District Attorney Cooke is within his duties to see that the law is followed and to be aggressive about it, but the real solution doesn’t sit in his office but under the Gold Dome in Atlanta. It is the lawmakers in the General Assembly who have allowed this scourge in the state after South Carolina lawmakers had the good sense to kick the video gaming machines out in 2000, where they had become an almost $3 billion industry. But as we speak, they are trying to wiggle back in with a different ploy. WISTV reports that new machines have appeared across the state with labels that read “Magic Minutes,” that sell phone minutes with the option to play “various poker games” and players receive cash payouts.
As lawmakers continue to roll toward legalizing casinos in various locations in Georgia, they should remember what former South Carolina Gov. David Beasley called the gaming machines before the industry poured $3 million into the successful effort to defeat him. Beasley called video gambling a “cancer.” Nothing has changed. In fact, it has only gotten more serious.
This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Forfeitures are great, but not the solution."