Slot Machines

In a drive to crush a Southland gambling operation, police raided 37 homes and businesses in Orange and Los Angeles counties Tuesday, arresting five people and confiscating 79 illegal video slot machines. Authorities said the ringleaders, based in southern Orange County, had grossed up to $400,000 last month alone from the illicit machines, and appeared to be funneling at least part of their profits to New York and Chicago.

A jury has begun deliberating the case of eight people accused of belonging to a ring that bilked Nevada and New Jersey casinos out of millions of dollars by rigging slot machine jackpots. After seven weeks of testimony, U.S. District Judge Edward Reed sent the jury out Friday to consider verdicts on 17 felony counts in the indictment. After 90 minutes, the deliberations were recessed until Monday. The defendants are accused of rigging, or attempting to rig, about $1.

It's been 10 months since a small Nevada firm best known for marketing slot machines surprised and angered Santa Clarita Valley officials by announcing plans to build a privately run prison on about 400 acres of fallow land near Castaic. Today, the land remains fallow. And if anything grows there at all, it won't be a private prison, say valley officials and the state Department of Corrections. It appears that the slot machine firm, Mills-Jennings Co.

A jury must decide whether a California schoolteacher should be compensated for a jackpot won on a slot machine she had been playing before leaving to eat breakfast. The machine Heather Devon had played for hours at the old Frontier hotel-casino eight years ago was supposed to have been locked down and reserved for her while she ate breakfast. Testimony at a civil trial indicated that the machine was opened by casino personnel for another player after $20 exchanged hands.

Christmas came early Tuesday for a Santa Ana man who won a $922,184.12 jackpot at the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino in Highland. "I was just thinking about making a little bit of money before the holidays," said Emilio Tapia, a construction foreman who played the Wheel of Fortune quarter slot machine. "I'm going to pay off my mortgage and send my children to college." Tapia is the second Santa Ana resident to win big at San Manuel this year. In August, Enrique Cordova won $1.

Los Angeles police on Monday arrested 11 men at 21 sites, including a location in Van Nuys, for allegedly running a string of illegal slot machines, officials said Wednesday. The sting, in which LAPD officers were assisted by Sheriff's Department deputies, was aimed at a number of Korean-owned pool halls and bookstores where the men were allegedly letting customers use the machines, LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride said.

The government's star witness in the trial of an alleged gang of slot machine cheaters told a federal court jury Thursday how he used keys, drills, wires and magnets to ring up phony jackpots. Ross Durham, 28, a Las Vegas native, testified that he went to a gambling school to learn about slot machines. He also obtained a machine and practiced on it for days at a time to devise ways to rig it, aided by the manufacturer's technical manuals that came with it.

A Republican state senator called on Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday to permit Indian tribes to expand their casinos in exchange for a new tax on gambling revenue. As it is, California's fast-expanding Indian gaming industry pays no state taxes on its annual revenue, which is estimated to be about $5 billion. The suggestion by state Sen. Jim Battin (R-La Quinta) represents the confluence of the two biggest issues of the year in Sacramento -- how to close a budget shortfall Davis estimates at $34.

After seven weeks of seeing the underside of the gaming world, a jury began deciding Friday whether eight people operated a ring that rigged jackpots in Nevada and New Jersey. The 12-member jury received the case from U.S. District Judge Edward Reed, after attorneys for both sides finished closing arguments. The defense criticized the testimony of criminals turned state's evidence and attacked the evidence against the defendants as flimsy.

About this time last year, I was crouched behind a bank of video slot machines in a darkened warehouse in Laguna Hills, half expecting a band of gangsters toting assault rifles to burst through the door. Eventually, several unarmed men showed up and were arrested by Orange County sheriff's deputies without a scuffle. More anticlimaxes were to follow.