Sheriff deals a familiar hand: Ban video poker

Pendergraph renews pitch to House speaker as illicit games smashed

KYTJA WEIR

Staff Writer


The steel mouth of a garbage truck opened wide Thursday morning as Mecklenburg County inmates pushed in illegal video poker machines.

With a whining crushing sound, 105 machines were chewed into bits.

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph stood watch nearby and made a plea directed to one man: "I am asking publicly, as sincerely as I can, for help with this," he said.

"I can't show you the faces or the phone calls of the people who say my husband or wife lost all the money for groceries," he said. "It's an easy remedy to fix this. It's to ban these machines."

His target was N.C. House Speaker Jim Black, who has opposed a ban.

While South Carolina no longer allows the machines, they remain legal in North Carolina. Operators must register all machines with authorities, though, and cannot pay out merchandise worth more than $10. Cash payouts aren't allowed.

Pendergraph held out four fat bundles of orange registration stickers, all showing registration number 112791. The counterfeit stickers go for about $5,000 each, Pendergraph said.

Meanwhile, probes into illegal video poker during the past two years have brought criminal charges against various high-profile politicos and businessmen, including former N.C. Transportation Secretary Garland Garrett.

"If there's ever been organized crime, this is it," he said.

The state Senate has passed legislation that would ban video poker, but the state House has not approved the measure. Instead it passed a bill that would step up regulations on the industry.

"I applaud Sheriff Pendergraph for doing his job and getting the illegal machines off the street," Black wrote via e-mail Thursday. "Like I've said many times before, you can't put thousands and thousands of people out of work by banning the industry just to go after a few people who are breaking the law."