Baltimore County police served 40 search warrants all over the county, seizing more than 100 illegal video gaming machines in the past week.
The agency has deployed more than 100 officers at locations throughout the county including halls of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, said Baltimore County police spokesman Cpl. Mike Hill.
“There was obviously money in these machines,” Hill said, adding that he could not give specific locations of raids because charges are pending.
He did say the raids occurred in both eastern and western parts of the county.
In 2007, Baltimore County police pursued 43 cases of illegal video gambling and charged 38 individuals, according to Baltimore County police spokeswoman Ellen Kobler. The police confiscated dozens of machines and, depending on the outcome of the case, the machines were destroyed, she said.
In January 2006, the Abell Foundation released a study researchers said documented “an illegal, multimillion-dollar slot machine industry in Baltimore City and County,” costing Maryland more than $15 million annually in uncollected taxes from nearly 3,500 video gambling devices.
