Richmond’s short-lived role as a mecca for allegedly illegal Internet gambling cafes may be a thing of the past.
Seven days after new laws controlling Internet gambling became effective July 1, only two of the operations appeared to be doing business Thursday.
One of the two, the 777 University Sweepstakes facility at the Circle Shopping Center off Belt Boulevard in the city, was closed all morning but re-opened Thursday afternoon sometime after 2 p.m.
While a neon “open” sign remained lit at the facility while it was closed, more than a dozen customers wandered off, miffed at the apparent closing despite the neon sign and another proclaiming the facility is open 24 hours a day.
“We weren’t shut down, we just weren’t open,” an operator there explained this afternoon after he’d opened the hall. He declined to be identified.
At Good Times Business Systems LLC, customers came and went throughout the morning and afternoon today. The facility at 2536 Sheila Lane off Forest Hill Avenue near a Lowe’s store had closed after adjoining jurisdictions began raiding the parlors in May. But it reopened and has been doing business for more than a month since the closure.
A person working the Good Times counter this morning said she was not authorized to speak about the business. Seven customers were playing Internet games on computers that offer cash prizes.
Richmond authorities promised to crack down on the cafe’s after the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported in May that as many as a half dozen of the clubs were flourishing in the city despite widely publicized raids of similar operations in Hanover and Henrico under standard gambling statutes.
A spokesman for the city Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said the businesses are being monitored and are expected to close soon. Richmond officials said they wanted to await the new laws before acting because of some confusion over the applicability of old statutes.
No arrests have been made locally in connection with the operations, some of which attracted hundreds of players a night.
Representatives of bingo operations have complained that the illegal games are siphoning business from charitable bingo games and that city officials have not done enough to clamp down on the Internet games, which have been closed across the state.
(This has been a breaking news update. Check back for more details as they become available. Read more in tomorrow's Richmond Times-Dispatch.)
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement