Posted on: November 27, 2024, 06:29h.
Last updated on: November 27, 2024, 06:42h.
Alabama’s crusading anti-electronic bingo state attorney general has frozen the assets of an entire city after he claimed its officials allowed an illegal bingo parlor to operate there.
AG Steve Marshall says he won’t unfreeze the assets of the city of Lipscomb, population 2,086, until city officials hand all financial records over to the state. Marshal suspects the city, which is part of the Birmingham metropolitan area, of profiting from the activities of Jay’s Charity Bingo, according to court filings.
The freeze means no money can come in or go out of city hall, which also means employees are not being paid and services for residents have ceased.
“I had to take my own money to pay someone because I could not write a check to pay the man,” Mayor Tonja Baldwin told AL.com. “It makes no sense whatsoever.”
Disappearing Bingo Machines
In September, Marshall’s office arrested five individuals connected to Jay’s Charity Bingo and charged them with third-degree burglary after stolen bingo terminals were found on the premises.
Marshall’s agents immediately knew the machines were hot because they still had Alabama Attorney General’s Office evidence stickers on them. The machines had been seized in a raid by the DA’s office in August at a different illegal bingo parlor 80 miles away in the city of Selma.
The machines remained at the Selma venue while authorities waited on a seizure order, but they disappeared before the order could be obtained.
The brazen nature of stealing something that has an evidence sticker on it just shows you how far some of these people will go,” Marshall confided to AL.com at the time.
Jay’s Charity Bingo was also shut down during the August raids but apparently reopened once it had gotten hold of the stolen machines, according to court documents. The establishment is also subject to the asset freeze.
Marshall’s lawsuit, filed last week, claims the city of Lipscomb is responsible for licensing Jay’s Charity Bingo and continues to receive “illegal funding” from the “illegal gambling.”
Moral Menace
The legality of electronic bingo machines was for years the subject of legal battles in Alabama. Operators said the machines conformed to the state’s bingo laws, but Marshall has long seen them as “a menace to public health, morals, safety, and welfare.”
The matter was settled in October 2022 when the state’s Supreme Court ruled that only traditional bingo games were legal in the state. Marshall began enforcing the law shortly after.
The court order freezing Lipscomb’s accounts is effective until a December 2 court hearing.
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