Illegal slot machine ‘arcades’ abound in Tampa Bay
TAMPA — It happens all day, in any corner of Tampa Bay.
A gambler approaches a storefront with blacked-out windows in a worn strip plaza, or a building along a highway cutting through sprawl. The sign outside reads “arcade.”
In the blank eye of a security camera, the gambler presses a button and hears the approving click of an unlocking door.
The gambler steps into a dark parlor of glowing screens with cascading lines of fireballs and cherries. Bells and explosions bleep and bloop over the tap-tap-tap of plastic buttons, each tap costing maybe a quarter, or a dollar or $10.
When the gambler wins, they shout, “Cash out!” from their free-rolling office chair. An attendant verifies the screen, wary of rampant fraud, then counts out cash.
When the gambler loses, there’s an ATM a few feet away.
With few exceptions, like at the Seminole Hard Rock casino on a 9-acre reservation outside Tampa, slot machines are illegal in Tampa Bay — and the rest of the state.
Yet if you are in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco or Manatee County, illegal slots are never far away.
The Tampa Bay Times visited nearly 30 gambling arcades to watch this scene play out.
The “game rooms,” as they’re known in the industry, don’t advertise and often don’t appear on Google Maps. Some bear only opaque windows and a buzzer, found by word of mouth. Legal names of the businesses differ from signage, and names on paperwork often turn up people who say they aren’t the real owner.
At least 70 game rooms were operating in Tampa Bay as of early May, a review of tax and other records shows. Some estimate there are 1,000 locations in Florida, with no official tally.
For years, neighborhood casinos have gone largely ignored by local law enforcement, despite frequent police visits, mostly related to the conduct of customers. Much like illicit massage parlors, plainly rule-breaking yet ubiquitous, game rooms have proven difficult to stamp out.
In this way, they have spread casino gambling far beyond the borders of what Florida’s politicians or voters have approved, attracting often vulnerable customers who find no recourse when mistreated.
Will that change now that Florida’s new Gaming Control Commission is rolling? Created during last year’s updated contract with the Seminole Tribe, the commission has been amassing a team of statewide law enforcement agents tasked with cracking down.
Since the Times began asking questions, law enforcement has sent warning letters and dispatched officers to arcades. Feeling the pressure, a few game rooms have opted to close.
Those who’ve watched storefront gambling in Florida for decades have seen these efforts before. Even after previous shutdowns, national-newsmaking
arrests, the resignation of a lieutenant governor and multiple revisions in the law, the game rooms have survived.
The money game-room owners make might be worth the heat. An industry operator said a well-run arcade makes $20,000 to $60,000 in profit a month and shared receipts to prove it.
They’re cheap to open, and pop up between minimarts and laundromats, clustered in lower-income neighborhoods. This avoids the attention a casino in a sparkling downtown district would surely attract, said Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University who specializes in gambling law.
According to a Times analysis of Census tract data, neighborhoods near at least two casinos are significantly poorer than average. Half of households there make less than $45,000 a year, compared to about a third of them in the rest of Tampa Bay.
“They do it partly for cheap rent,” Jarvis said, but also because the neighbors are less likely to complain and the cops may be less attentive. “Advertising is word of mouth, your customers find you, and the profits are unbelievable.”
At one game room in Clearwater, an attendant was blunt about whom the arcades aim to attract. The people struggling the most, she said, are drawn to a shot at turning $20 into a few hundred. “And once you win, you’re hooked.”
Inside an arcade
On an April weekday afternoon, a Times reporter pulled into Lucky 777s Arcade, attached to a pawnshop off U.S. 19 in Largo. Inside, Deb Camuti counted out a stack of cash to a gambler before addressing the question of whether the business was legal.
“I have no idea,” said Camuti, who called her husband a part owner. “We all know they can be shut down at any time.”
A regular named Frank chimed in. “It’s as class as it gets. … I pretty much live here.” He led a tour, pointing out free candy and a smokefilled backroom with more slot machines. Another regular said he often rode his three-wheeled bike to several local arcades.
Then a man burst from a back office and yelled at a group of gamblers. “You three get the [expletive] out now, or we’re going to have a problem!”
Three young men slowly rose and headed for the door.
The men were using an electronic device the size of a lighter, Camuti explained, to force it to pay out.
Thirty minutes later, at another arcade a few miles away, an attendant had already been warned about the scammers. Typical for game rooms, she said.
She also noted the clientele tended to deal with issues of addiction.
“Gambling, but also drugs,” said Heather, who was tapping an iPad to play a slot machine online while she worked. She did not give a last name. “I have to kick people out for stuff all the time.”
A thief had recently damaged the ceiling to reach the safe. Another day, a gambler, having overdosed, was given Narcan.
Players often hopscotch around seeking incentives, like a $20 bonus for gambling $20, free sodas or meals, often a buffet of pizza. At night, soda might become free booze, a perk even Florida’s tribal casinos can’t legally offer.
Many gamblers, said Chris Woehle, a former fastfood manager in Bradenton, are just average, bored retirees, like him.
Woehle said he typically plays at six to 10 game rooms a day, four days a week, stopping after he loses $60 or $80. He also works part-time at a game room.
“We all know each other,” Woehle said. “A lot of these folks have nothing else to do.”
Woehle thinks the arcades are mostly harmless, he said, before admitting some gamblers lose more than they should. Playing the slots, though, helped distract his dad from cancer pain, and later did the same for his mom. He’s glad for that.
But so much cash on hand can be a lure for danger.
“That’s why I have him,” said Eule Flores, gesturing toward what sounded like a large dog aggressively barking from a backroom inside a Clearwater arcade. She managed the place alone under the gaze of at least nine security cameras.
Flores, a chef by trade, has worked game rooms for a decade. She moved to Pinellas when Jacksonville banned game rooms following a spate of shootings.
Flores wasn’t a gambler, she said, until she worked at an arcade and got hooked on “fish tables,” in which players battle to shoot mythical sea creatures — and, if they’re lucky, win cash. But the threats of shutdowns and scammers and violence had worn on her, she said. She wanted out, maybe for something less stressful — like restaurant work.
Part of the landscape and economy
At least seven arcades operate in St. Petersburg. Two opened in one week in April on 49th Street. Tampa has at least seven, with five clustered on Busch Boulevard between Interstate 275 and Temple Terrace, each open for years. At least three others have sprouted on the edges of Hillsborough County in the last year, in Oldsmar and Citrus Park, and east in Valrico, where a new one appeared in April attached to a car wash.
Retirees in Sun City Center need not drive to the Hard Rock — they can play Fire Link slots next to a barbershop in Wimauma, where on a recent afternoon players rocked along in their seats to blasting ranchero music.
Slot machines are even popping up in gas stations, where stools encourage players to sit and stay.
Cruising U.S. 19 north through Pinellas and up to New Port Richey in Pasco takes a driver past a dozen of them, but Manatee County holds the most arcades in the smallest area. Ten line a 3-mile stretch of the Tamiami Trail, with 10 more on nearby streets. One plaza has three, side by side, all with showers of gold coins splashed across their windows.
There’s no question about gambling arcades’ illegality. Florida expressly forbids gambling devices outside of a few venues — Seminole Tribe casinos and a handful of racetracks in South Florida. The Seminole Tribe declined to comment for this story.
On paper, the arcades register their gambling machines with state and local governments as ordinary coin-operated amusement games, just as a family arcade like Dave & Buster’s would do with its Pac-Man or pinball. But they’re not ordinary games.
That bluff allows gambling arcades to show local business tax receipts and claim legitimacy when a reporter or police officer appears. Some operators even say the money they generate for city and county governments is why they aren’t shut down. In reality, they don’t pay much in local taxes, if they pay at all.
Local taxes vary. But one of the largest game rooms in Tampa, with 77 machines, paid a mere $2,200 in fees to the city last year.
The state, meanwhile, asks for $33 per “amusement” machine annually, plus a 4% sales tax. State tax records aren’t public, so it’s unclear what Florida actually collects. Florida taxes legal slot machines at 35%.
The American Gaming Association estimates that local and state governments lose $8.7 billion in taxes annually to unregulated gambling machines.