Reporter
Little Las Vegas
Just two years ago the town of Kingsville boasted more than a dozen eight-liner game rooms and had staked its claim as Texas’s unofficial gambling capital—until the authorities showed up. Now locals are angling for another spin.
(Page 2 of 2)
Yet less than a year later, with the arrival of the new Texas Internet Cafe, Kingsville’s residents were gambling again. At its core, the new game room is just like its predecessors, only slightly less brazen. Its use of Internet-ready PCs, phone cards, and debit cards—instead of single-purpose video slots and cash prizes—signals that the eight-liner virus may have emerged from dormancy in a new and more resilient strain. In September investors from Georgia filed a federal lawsuit seeking to protect the new, more elaborate concept. They’ve abandoned the fuzzy animal loophole; instead, the plaintiffs are arguing that businesses like the Texas Internet Cafe provide folks with a place to play legal sweepstakes over the Internet, just like the ones that are often promoted by fast-food restaurants and soda companies. The case is a weak one, one that brazenly ignores the fact that Internet sweepstakes are not the games that their customers are actually playing. But if they win the case, or even manage to stall the authorities in court, similar franchises could expand a hundredfold. Little Las Vegas could rise again.
WHEN I VISITED KINGSVILLE IN NOVEMBER, the Texas Internet Cafe was the only game room operating, but the faded signs of Little Las Vegas still hung over empty storefronts all over town. On the window of one low-slung building, large block letters partially spelled out “Game Room”; on another you could make out the faded name of a former eight-liner hot spot: Jokers Wild. Most of the shuttered businesses looked like they had sunk into a prolonged state of hibernation, closed down and waiting. Indeed, you can still find plenty of eight-liner advocates in Kingsville, though they tend to be wary of the limelight. One merchant told me that she would love to see eight-liners make a comeback. In the next breath, she asked me not to mention her by name. “Any business is good business,” she said. “It’s a shame that Texas doesn’t make it legal. All that money is going to Louisiana.”
But the business climate for game rooms has changed considerably since 2003. Many of the city officials who once supported the eight-liners have been voted out, and the chief of police was fired. New chief Ricardo Torres has made it clear that he isn’t going to be so lenient. When one of the former game rooms—the Wild Horse Desert Saloon and Cafe—started to stir last September, Torres made sure to pay the proprietors a visit. He found two men unloading computers from the back of a semitrailer and politely reminded them that gambling was still illegal in Kingsville.
Torres thought his warning had been effective. But a few weeks later he received notice that he was being sued in a federal court in Brownsville. A company called ICC Investment Group was seeking a restraining order against the chief and “other unknown John Doe police officers” in Kingsville. According to court documents, the plaintiffs had been converting the Wild Horse into a business called the Internet Cafe, with a concept that sounded almost identical to the one Torres was already looking into at the Texas Internet Cafe across town—same computers, same access to online sweepstakes, same use of a BanXcard to distribute winnings. The owners’ lawsuit notes that the state legislature has yet to ban Internet sweepstakes. As evidence, they submitted a list of legal sweepstakes available online, including some sponsored by MTV, Huggies, and Texas Parks and Wildlife. The plaintiffs are simply asking the judge to keep Chief Torres at bay and seeking a declaratory judgment acknowledging the legality of their business model.
When I met with Torres, the Texas Internet Cafe was still doing brisk business, and the chief was trying to piece everything together. The exact relationship between ICC, the Internet Cafe, and the Texas Internet Cafe remained unclear. He and his investigators suspected that ICC was part of an elaborately organized business conglomerate—it’s headquartered in Cumming, Georgia, and incorporated in Delaware—that is setting up more Internet cafes elsewhere in the state. According to the court documents, the plaintiffs chose to file their case in Brownsville because they hope to someday open an Internet cafe there. So why had they begun by stirring up trouble in Kingsville?
One possible explanation is that ICC arrived there during the Little Las Vegas boom and got stuck holding real estate after the crash. Kingsville city property records show that a group called Texas Game Systems, out of Haltom City, bought the former Wild Horse Desert Saloon and Cafe for $219,000 on October 1, 2003, just a few weeks before the raids. I reached Matt Smith, the CEO of ICC, by phone at his office in Georgia, hoping to find out if Texas Game Systems was a subsidiary of ICC. Smith quickly cut me off. “Thank you for calling,” he said. “No comment.” Then he hung up.
A few days later I met with Tim, the Texas Internet Cafe employee, to find out if he knew who was behind the franchise. Tim had been working at the cafe since the beginning of the summer, making $7 an hour. Like a neighborhood bartender, he’d come to know the place intimately. But he told me that there were many things about the cafe that remained a mystery to him, especially his bosses. Every so often, someone who identified himself as the owner would call the cafe and ask questions, but not answer any. The man even refused to tell the employees his name. “We started calling him Charlie,” says Tim. “Like from Charlie’s Angels.”
All the secrecy isn’t surprising for someone trying to profit off an underground casino in Texas. Still, whoever Charlie is, chances are he won’t do any prison time. During the big Kingsville bust in October 2003, officers arrested 32 game-room employees, but not a single game-room owner was convicted of anything. Prosecutors in Kingsville might have taken the case further, but they knew the county attorney would oppose. Eventually, all of the owners signed forfeiture agreements in exchange for prosecutors’ dropping the charges against them. The authorities got to keep the cash and the confiscated equipment (which was later sold at auction). The owners got to keep their clean records and their secrets.
A WEEK AFTER MY NIGHT PLAYING TEXAS Treasures, I joined a group of reporters in the parking lot outside the Texas Internet Cafe, which was now surrounded by yellow police tape. Chief Torres was there, and he briefed us about the recent bust. The night before, the Kingsville police closed down the cafe as part of Operation No Second Chance, issuing gambling citations to the 45 patrons, seizing 68 “sophisticated gambling devices,” and removing the bulky contraband. Torres explained that an undercover investigation had revealed what everyone in town already knew, that a form of illegal gambling was taking place inside the former theater. Despite the lawsuit, the chief had decided not to wait for a courtroom resolution concerning the legality of sweepstakes. “They’re using technology to try and circumvent the law,” Torres said. “Unfortunately for them, it hasn’t been successful.”
Torres took us on a tour of the busted casino. Inside, odds and ends lay scattered about like discarded props. A poster for McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes sat near a cardboard advertisement for Virgin Mobile. Another sign noted that the cafe offered “word processing, cd/dvd copies, and other computer services.” Torres claimed that the cafe was grossing between $6,000 and $8,000 a day and that some of the cash was kept in a small electronic safe. When the police arrived with search warrants, Tim had given them the combination. But the raid also turned up a second, larger safe, which Tim said he hadn’t known about.
Soon, two firefighters arrived carrying a pickax and a sledgehammer. As we gathered around to watch, they started taking swings at the safe. The slam of metal on metal reverberated through the empty theater, and for several long minutes, the safe held out. At last, it cracked open. The chief rushed forward and dipped his arms into the void. He felt around for a few seconds, grasping for the well-guarded secrets of the sweepstakes cafe. Then he stood up straight. The safe was empty. “It’s like chasing ghosts,” said Torres.
In the following weeks, based on evidence from the raid, Torres would freeze a $123,000 bank account owned by Prepaid Sweeps, a partner of ICC. This in turn would touch off another lawsuit, another request for a restraining order, yet another bit of legal wrangling. During the previous round of legal wrangling, game-room operators were able to drag out the fuzzy animal defense for several years. The sweepstakes cafe gambit is just getting started.
Felix Gillette writes for slate.com. 
Pages: 1 2
My Library
