Thank God, our very own state attorney weighs in on the Maquinitas!

Just in the nick of time no less!  With illegal gambling machines (aka maquinitas) popping up all over the place despite the fact that the governor signed legislation into law banning them and clearing making them illegal, what could be better than an opinion from our very own state attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, regarding these machines and their legality?

First we'll start with an email from John Tupps to one of our readers from Governor Scott's press office regarding these machines...

Governor Scott was pleased to sign legislation that banned illegal internet cafes across Florida, including Allied Veterans – a multi-state criminal conspiracy. Law enforcement officers must make the determination whether any machine violates the law. Accordingly, you should speak with local law enforcement and the state attorney’s office.

Ok, great!  Logically, the next step would be to reach out to our state attorneys office since at least one municipality, Hialeah, is under the impression that these machines are legal.  With that said, take a look at the response from the state attorneys office...

Since the machines themselves are not illegal, unless and until there is some sort of “payout” for playing them, there would need to be some police undercover work in order to make an arrest for possession of the “maquinitas”.  Hillah Mendez, Legal Counsel for the Hialeah Police Department, contacted our office and we explained this investigative requirement to her.  It is up to the Hialeah Police Department, or any individual police department, to undertake such an investigative effort. Thank you. Tere ChavezMedia RelationsMiami-Dade State Attorney's Office305-547-0885

Oh, OK!  So the machines are not illegal despite all this grandstanding and other bullshit...

Alrighty then, I guess the problems been solved!  Despite our very own governor outlawing these machines statewide and shutting down the businesses that housed them, now our very own state attorneys office has given them her blessing and made them practically immune to prosecution.  Perhaps the machine owners just need to affix one of these stickers to the machines and their problems with law enforcement will be a distant memory...

Doesn't this man look amused?

Check out our friend Elaine de Valle's story on the ever present maquinitas, tomorrow we'll get back to our discussion of former state attorney Richard E. Gerstein.

Spanish language TV picks up the Maquinita story...

Or at least I think they did?!  I don't speak or understand Spanish, nor am I able to get the video where channel 41 allegedly discusses the maquinitas that are being found all around town to play on line.  Here's the video embeddedm the discussion starts at around the 17:00 mark...



Video streaming by Ustream

And here's the link to the story just in case the embedded video doesn't show up.  

Ironically the commercials before the video worked just fine for me but the actual video where they discuss the maquinitas refused to work for me for the first few tries, by the third time it worked.  The best part though comes at the 18:43 mark where a cop shows up where the TV crew is filming and looks dumbfounded when the reporter asks him about the illegal gaming machines inside the restaurant...

If I'm not mistaken, I think the cop actually tells the reporter that the machines are legal in Hialeah!

That's enough for now, it's Friday, we'll pick up where we left off next week.

They're ba-ack! Fucking maquinitas are popping up all over the place again!

Can you believe this shit?  After fighting these goddamn machines for years on end and finally thinking we had won, they're back with a fucking vengeance!  Back in March the Florida senate passed a bill outlawing these machines, that doddering old fool of a mayor Tomas Regalado even came out publicly and stated that the maquinitas are illegal...

Despite all of that, despite all of the press conferences, despite all the grandstanding by local pandering politicians, it was all bullshit as they're showing up in all the usual places.  Take a look at some of these photos that one of our readers sent us, mind you, these photos were all taken within the last 48 hours at various locations throughout the City of Hialeah...

In the backs of restaurants, hidden in the back corners of small mom and pop grocery stores, whether out in the open...

Or hidden behind shelves just out of view.  Would you be there?  Could you be there...

For those establishment owners with a modicum of common sense, they try to hide them behind boxes off in a far corner...

Or secret them in a back store room just out of view...

On the other hand, you have those business owner that are so brazen that they not only have them machines out in the open in plain view for anyone to see in storefronts...

With the photos of the machines plastered on their storefronts!

Can you believe this shit?  Despite all the hoopla about the machines officially being made illegal, despite all the media coverage, despite all of the photo ops with bulldozers crushing illegal gaming machines all over the local press, the machines are back, back with a vengeance no less!

What makes matters worse though is that one of loyal readers, who happens to be a public servant, sent the photos you see here over to the feds in an effort to stop what ostensibly looks like, smells like and certainly feels like illegal activity.  What the feds did with that information though is borderline scandalous, what's that old saying?

"the cover up is worse than the crime?"  

We'll discuss in depth tomorrow, in the mean time, if any of you guys spot more of these maquinitas, take photos and send them to me!

Could this be the end of the maquinitas?

We've extensively covered the battle over the illegal gaming machines that are all over Miami Dade county throughout the years, the most famous of which was the war between current City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado and Police Chief Miguel Exposito which ultimately ended in his unceremonious firing from the police department.  While Exposito's demise seemed like a fatal blow to those who hoped to rid our city of these illegal gaming machines, the recent scandal involving the Jacksonville-based Allied Veterans of the World that ultimately brought about the resignation of our very own lieutenant governor Jenifer "I'm not a lesbian" Carroll, lit a fire under the anti maquinita camp again which has now culminated with Florida Senate bill HB 155, from the Miami Herald Article regarding the bill...

House Panel Passes Bill To Outlaw Illegal Gambling MachinesMary Ellen Klas
The online slot machines operated by strip mall Internet cafes, adult arcades and Miami-based maquinitas will be officially outlawed under a bill passed by a House panel on Friday.
In a 15-1 vote, the House Select Committee passed the bill (HB 155) just days after state and federal authorities arrested 57 individuals with ties to Jacksonville-based Allied Veterans of the World, a purported veterans charity organization that ran an illegal gambling operation.
The House measure, sponsored by Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, makes web-based gambling devices illegal because they are deemed games of chance and not games of skill, as promoters claim. Under the bill, promotional giveaways, like those offered by fast food restaurants or car dealers, will be allowed, but electronic casino-like games disguised as a sweepstakes or arcade game will be banned.
The bill was supported by an unusual coalition that included the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the pari-mutuel industry, the greyhound racing association and the Florida Baptist Convention. No one spoke in support of preserving or regulating the Internet cafes.
The bill clarifies existing law by prohibiting electronic gambling devices for charitable promotions, updates the definition of slot machines to include network-based machines like those used in Internet cafes and bans machines intended to simulate casino games and slot machines.

FINALLY!

Trujillo said the legislation was needed because these cases are "extremely difficult to prosecute and extremely costly...The operators and promoters are very creative and they basically skirted around state law and it comes down to a battle of experts. And the experts have to decide, are these games of skill or games of chance?"

You don't say? Even when experts decide that the machines are illegal, somehow the crooks in the City of Miami still make it impossible to get rid of them! Remember the scandal around the expert witness report that we obtained last year?

The Senate on Monday is set to take up a bill that is “similar or identical to the House’s bill,’’ said Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, chairman of the Senate Gaming Committee. Legislative leaders expect to have the bill reach the governor’s desk by the end of the month.

It's rather obvious that the casino and para-mutual lobby are the ones that are behind this legislation and why the hell not?  Theoretically these guys have legal gambling establishments that are highly regulated by the state, so why shouldn't they protect their businesses?  Remember how the expert witness characterized the maquinitas when compared to legal gaming machines?

In a legal gambling jurisdiction, such as Nevada, New Jersey, or Mississippi, the discovery of a reflexive percentaging scheme in an acknowledged slot machine, would cause Gaming Inspectors to turn that machine off immediately, and would result in fines and disciplinary action for the casino responsible.

Once again, from the Herald article...

Internet cafes are not regulated by the state, but have been allowed to operate under regulation in several municipalities, including Hialeah and Jacksonville. Police have succeeded in closing down operators in some areas while in others courts have ruled the law is too vague to prevent them from operating.

Finally, it looks like by the end of the month the maquinitas will be history and with them goes the underground economy they support along with the worthless shitbag politicians they back.  The lack of funding from the illegal gaming industry in Miami should make for an interesting upcoming election season.

Illegal gaming machines are illegal...

No shit?  Sounds like a pretty stupid title for today's post right?  Of course illegal gaming machines are illegal!  

In case you forgot, the expert witness who examined over a hundred of these illegal gaming machines (AKA maquinitas) concluded that not only were the machines indeed nothing more than slot machines whose outcome had nothing to do with the players skills and because of the way they were configured, they were designed to cheat the poor folks that were playing them.  From the report...

This morphing permits the machine's computer to defeat any attempt at skill, and to deliver an outcome that was chosen in advance by the computer. Not only is this machine designed and manufactured specifically for the purpose of gambling; it is also designed to cheat the customer.

OK, I'm sure by now you all get it and are sick of hearing about how the machines are illegal, etc, etc, etc...

Let's forget about the machines being illegal for a moment, forget about the fact that they're designed to screw the players and the fact that they circumvent any revenue generating taxing scheme for the city or state.  Back during the summer of 2010, City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado championed an ordinance to regulate coin operated amusement machines which in essence was a ploy to legalize the maquinitas that we've become so fond of talking about.  If you bought into Regalado's theory, since the maquinitas are nothing more than coin operated "amusement machines" rather than have them scattered about the city, his plan was to create a law that required each and everyone of these machines to be licensed and by doing so creating an additional revenue stream for the city.  Check out how he pitched it to the city commission back in June 24, 2010...

Mayor Tomás Regalado:  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission.  FR.2 is an ordinance on first reading.  I would tell you that this ordinance, the final product, is the result of several month [sic] working with the Law Department, with the Finance Department, and the Administration to have this ordinance in place.  The reason that we did a new approved moratorium on the sale of stickers or license for coin-operated machines -- and this moratorium will be in place until September -- is precisely because we went -- we were working on this ordinance and it needed a lot of research.  We met with the chief of Police.  We met with the Finance Department; of course, the Law Department was there.  We also met with the representative of Magic City Casino that will be opposing this ordinance.  However, I think that we need to hear from the Finance Department because what this ordinance does is rectify a process that has been wrong for the last years.  We -- if we pass this ordinance, we will know exactly where each machine is; now, we don't.  In the past, there were some machines that were seized, but at the end, the courts ruled one way or another.  And there's still hundreds of machines in the City of Miami.  

OK, so now the Mayor wants to lump together these maquinitas with all other types of coin operated machines and license them, therefore in his eyes, the maquinitas are no different than say a pinball machine or a coin operated PacMan machine.  He goes on...

Mayor Regalado: But if I may, Commissioner, 90 percent of the ordinance is to regulate the machines because now we don't know where the machines are.  Actually, I think the Manager went and look at a number of the machine and called the Finance Department, and he can -- they couldn't say where that machine was because it was one of the hundreds of the stickers that are running around.  If we do this ordinance, then we will know where each machine, each stickers belongs to, what address, and who pulled that permit.  If an inspector or a police officer goes and see that the machine has been altered, because it has to be altered to use that machine for gambling purposes, then there will be a civil fine of $500 to the person that operate the business.  And there's also a caveat that could be included that if a business is operating a gambling machine, then the City has the right to pull the occupational license, which is an extreme measure, but it's part of the regulation.  So the other thing is that now we do not have the manpower to monitor those machines.  They're everywhere.  But if we do this ordinance, then Finance will have the possibility of having their inspector checking each of the places and also checking occupational license, which many in the City don't have.  We have -- I mean, we have a list officially of 13 -- 14,311 occupational license for business [sic] in the City of Miami.  I imagine that there are more that don't have occupational license.  I've seen one, at least.  I've seen one business operator with no license at all.  And we do not have the manpower to go door-by-door.  But I just think that we have several options.  We have the options of keeping the moratorium, not selling any license; keeping the process as it is, selling $480 and you get all the stickers; or changing the Code so we can regulate more, and we could use the revenue to check on the machines.  Actually, we're not condoning or inciting this kind of practice because it's already there.  I mean, in the past, there were a group of police officers that every night went to cafeterias and they took down some of the machines.  Some of the people went to court.  City, I believe, won two cases.  City lost, as you know, several cases.  Many cases were dismissed.  So many, many cases were dismissed because of the arrests that were made that were not good arrests and all that.  So this is the intent to regulate.  

Whatever the fuck ever.  According to this new plan, the machines are all going to get licensed and not only will the city enjoy the revenues from these licenses but according the mayor, the city will also know where each and everyone of the machines are for whatever that's worth.   He concludes with this...

 And I do understand what you are going to hear from Magic City Casino.  You know, they have a casino, but it's different.  You get money and you get -- and the machines are not supposed to give you back.  It's illegal.  It's in the ordinance.  It's in the affidavit.  And anybody who does that will be fined and the machine will be confiscated.  So I just wanted to state that.  

Huh?  Does that make any sense to you?  Try it again...

And I do understand what you are going to hear from Magic City Casino.  You know, they have a casino, but it's different.  You get money and you get -- and the machines are not supposed to give you back.  It's illegal.

I'm not even going to try to make sense of that.  So let's disregard the fact that the machines the mayor is talking about in this ordinance are illegal and for the sake of argument lets say that they're nothing more than coin operated machines that are for amusement purposes only.  By licensing these machines and making their owners pay some sort of tax, in the eyes of our mayor and the City of Miami, these machines are now magically legal.  That's all well and good if you can overlook the fact that the mayor has essentially given a free pass to all the maquinita owners.  So what's this ordinance from nearly two years ago have to do with our story?  Old news you say?  Correct, it is old news, in fact the owners of these "maquinitas" have had two years to get licenses for their machines and therefore theoretically, the City of Miami by now has been collecting at least two years worth of license revenues from the machines that are littered all over the city.  


All good right?  All would be good if that was really the case, let's go back for a moment and take a look at those machines located in the first floor of the building that houses the Spanish radio station, 670 AM "La Poderosa" that we talked about a few days ago, if you remember, we found three "maquinitas" in the cafeteria that's located on the buildings first floor.  Take a closer look at the machines again and see if you can spot any of those coin operated amusement license decals that the mayor was championing back in the summer of 2010...

Would you look at that?  Not a single decal, sticker or any sort of license for these machines from the City of Miami!  In fact, the only sticker of any sort on these machines is this one...

Of course the machines are for amusement purposes only!

So there you have it, unless the City of Miami licenses are affixed beneath these machines, they appear to be operating illegally.  Even under the mayor's goofy licensing scheme where the machines would be legal, without the licenses whether they're games of skill or games of chance, they're 100% illegal because they're not properly permitted!  LOL!  So much for the mayor's ordinance and all the additional revenue it was supposed to bring the city...

In search of the elusive Maquinita....

Here we are talking about those pesky maquinitas again.  Their natural habitat always seemed to be in the nastiest neighborhoods of our lovely city, they were usually found in the back of cafeterias and bodegas in the lowest income areas, sometimes out back, hidden behind racks or sometimes even in hidden back rooms.


That's all changed now though, under Mayor Tomas Regalado's administration, the machines have now worked their way out of the shadows and are featured prominently in the businesses where they're located.  What with the lax (non existent) enforcement of these machines by local police, why hide them?  Why not put them front and center so as to attract as many customers as possible?


Case in point, the lovely building located at 330 SW 27th Avenue, home to Spanish radio station 670 AM "La Poderosa".  Now this isn't some dank building out in the middle of the hood, "La Poderosa" is located in a nice class "B" office building in a decent neighborhood right on a major thoroughfare, take a look for yourselves...

Now, consider what this radio station means to the community, on any given day you'll find a bevy of local politicians going in and out of this station, some for their regular radio shows while others, both local and national, make the obligatory stop in order to garner votes from the Hispanic community.  So whether it's local Mayor Regalado or his daughter Raquel or perhaps someone like Congresswoman Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, let's say they've been on the radio for an hour or so and they're ready to leave the station and on the way down they decide to stop by the cafeteria that's on the first floor and grab something to drink or perhaps something to eat. What they'll find is a nice quaint cafeteria with halfway decent food...

 So you grab something to eat, have a seat and 

SHAZAM!

So there you have it!  Illegal gaming machines right out in the open, under the City of Miami's current administration they've made their way out of the shadows and are now out front and center, in this case in plain view in a building where some of the most powerful people in our city and perhaps our nation regularly walk by them!


What I want to know now is just how long will it take before these gaming machines find their way into City Hall?

What the City of Miami didn't want you to know about those gaming machines...

The whole mess regarding the gaming machines, aka maquinitas, that brought the City of Miami to its knees finally culminating in the firing of the city's police chief all comes down to whether or not the machines in question were games who's outcome was determined by the players skill or simply games who's outcomes were determined by the computers that operated the machines.  Seems like a stupid question right?  As far as I can tell, whether the outcome is controlled by the player or by the computer, as long as money goes into to the machines and some sort of payout comes out, who cares who controls it, in my book that's a damn slot machine!  As dumb as that whole premise may sound, City of Hialeah police chief Mark Overton even went on the record saying...

“If it’s a game of skill or has some element of skill in it then it isn’t illegal,” Overton explained. “And that basically is what the statute says.”

What in the FCUK does that mean?  From the very same interview, Jim Defede goes on to ask Chief Overton...

But where is the skill to hitting a button marked “credits” and then hitting a button marked “play”?  “I don’t know, that’s part of the issue,” Overton said.

HUH?!  If Chief Overton doesn't know, then why comment about something you have no clue about?  What are we left to think, that there's some sort of black magic that controls these damn machines?

So how the hell are you to figure out just what's behind these machines?  Say for example you're an embattled police chief who crusaded against these machines who then found himself embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the owners of the 500 or so of these machines that you had confiscated, what would you do to prove that these machines were indeed nothing but illegal slot machines?  A smart chief would go ahead and hire an expert witness to go ahead and analyze these machines scientifically and prove that indeed they're nothing but slot machines designed to bilk people out of their money.  Said chief would then go ahead and submit this report to the court at which point any defense the machine owner would have would promptly get blown out of the water.  Makes sense right?

Here's the problem, when the maquinita owners filed their lawsuits to get their machines back, it was police chief Miguel Exposito that was spearheading the campaign against the machines and their owners.  Chief Exposito and his crew went ahead and hired the expert, not just any expert but the foremost figure in the field of electronic gaming and gambling machines, D. Robert Sertell.  The City of Miami retained Mr. Sertell to do a forensic analysis of the maquinitas that were in the city's custody, from what I understand, he spent a week going over the machines.  But just a few months later, City of Miami Mayor, Tomas Regalado successfully ousted police chief Exposito, and just like that the campaign against the illegal gambling machines was over, but where does that leave those lawsuits the maquinita owners filed to get there machines back?   You'd think that the maquinita owners were shit out of luck, what with the results of the forensic analysis of their machines and all, right?

WRONG!  A funny thing happened after Chief Exposito and his crew were fired, it seems like the City of Miami didn't want to pay the expert witness for his work.  While the city did retain and pay Mr. Sertell for the week he examined the machines, somehow the city didn't see fit to pay him for his report!  Think about it for a moment, no report from the expert witness results in an instant win for the maquinita owners!  And what better way to make sure that the report doesn't make it to court?  Easy, DON'T PAY THE MAN WHO WROTE THE REPORT!  Brilliant!

So there you have it, another day in the City of Miami.  The powers that be decided to protect their friends and campaign contributors that owned the maquinitas by directing the city not to pay the expert witness whose report would have destroyed any chance they had of getting their gaming machines back.  Fucking brilliant.  

It would have been a perfect plan if it wasn't for a private citizen who couldn't sit by and watch this bullshit, a private citizen who pulled several thousands of dollars out of his own pocket and paid for the report himself and was then kind enough to forward us a copy of the report...

LOL!  We'll discuss further on Monday...

Two city of Miami Chiefs on trial today!

A busy Monday morning, thePlantation cops federal mortgage fraud trial goes to the jury for deliberation, the fate of suspended City of Miami police chief Miguel Exposito is to be decided by the city of Miami commission this morning and it looks like the federal mortgage fraud trial against City of Miami assistant fire chief Veldora Arthur is set to being today as well.  

As we wait for the outcome of these three cases, we have to revisit the case of criminal defense attorney Alberto "Al" Milian coming to the rescue of City of Miami city manager Johnny Martinez during Fridays commission meeting.  As our friend Al Crespo eloquently explained, Mr. Milian represents both the illegal gaming industry who the City of Miami police is waring with and now the City of Miami city manager.  I don't know much about law, but that certainly seems like some sort of conflict to me.  From Mr. Milian's statement to the commission regarding his possible conflict...

“Whether my representation of one client would be be adverse to the interests of another or vice versa, and I have taken all of the appropriate legal steps that I’m aware of to insure that I have no conflict, and I have gone beyond and sought wavier of any conflict from any client who thought that representing the manager in that capacity would represent a position adverse to their interests.”

Ok, I'm sure his clients have no problem with him representing the city manager, but the citizens of Miami should have a problem with it!  Let's think this through for a moment, Mr. Milian is allegedly representing several of the alleged illegal gaming machine owners against the City of Miami Police and Chief Exposito in order to get the gaming machines back for his clients.  Based on the goings on at City Hall and what we can deduce by the people surrounding embattled Mayor Tomas Regalado, the only thing between Mr. Milian's clients getting their machines back (which Al Crespo estimates to be worth over $2mm) is suspended Chief Miguel Exposito.  Now we have Mr Milian interjecting himself into the quasi judicial hearings against suspended Chief Exposito on behalf of the city manager Johnny Martinez in an effort to help uphold the managers suspension and subsequent firing of the Chief.  So if he's successful in helping the city manager dispose of the chief, his clients with the gaming machines win as well.  Considering Mr. Milian is working against the city in one case while working with the city on the other, doesn't that create some sort of conflict?  If not a legal one, certainly a moral one in my opinion.  To think, all of this fuss over those god damn machines!

After all, what's all the fuss about?  Anyone who's ever seen one should know that they're strictly for amusement purposes only!  It says it right on the machine!

LOL!  This particular guy with the yellow shirt was so amused that he spend the better part of two hours shuttling between this machine and an ATM machine draining his bank account.  When he walked out of this joint penniless, he certainly didn't seem "amused"!