That these cafes are cash machines — and take in as much as $100,000 a week — is no secret to robbers.
And so, at 1 a.m. on April 19, three armed men tried to rob the place at a time when more than three dozen people were playing slot machine-type games on the cafe’s computer terminals. A security guard shot and killed one of the men; the other two fled and were being sought. A woman hiding in the cafe bathroom told a 911 operator that the robbery was happening in “the casino, in Apopka.”
The shooting death in a place that some customers call a casino has brought fresh scrutiny to Florida’s quickly multiplying “Internet sweepstakes cafes,” which now total nearly 1,000 statewide and are estimated to gross more than $1 billion this year, according to industry analysts, state legislators and their aides, and lawyers in the gambling industry.
It has also renewed calls by several county sheriffs for a statewide ban on the cafes’ games. They say the businesses are magnets for crime because they usually have large sums of cash on hand. Since nine sweepstakes cafes have opened in Seminole County, crimes at those addresses have increased 14 percent, according to data compiled by the sheriff’s office.
A bill was brought before the State Legislature this session that would have prohibited the games. Its proponents cite a host of concerns — worries about crime, compulsive gambling and morality. But the bill was rejected after an aggressive lobbying campaign by the companies that franchise some of the cafes. It did not help, industry critics say, that two state legislators own Internet sweepstakes cafes themselves.
Labeled by critics as “convenience casinos,” the cafes offer computerized “sweepstakes” games to customers who buy Internet time or phone cards. “Points” can be redeemed for cash, and jackpots are as high as $15,000, employees said. Lawyers for the owners have likened the slotlike and video poker games, with names like Cobra Cash and Fruit Paradise, to the Monopoly prize cards offered by McDonald’s restaurants.
The cafes operate in a legal gray zone in Florida and a dozen other states. Several Florida sheriffs have raided the cafes, arguing that the computer games, operated via the Web, are nothing more than a vaguely disguised form of illegal gambling.
In January, the Seminole County Commission passed a law banning the Internet cafes, but a federal judge issued a temporary order that stopped the county from enforcing the law while its constitutionality was considered.
“I just want clarity,” said Sheriff Jim Coats of Pinellas County, whose department has written to cafes ordering them to shut down within 30 days or face prosecution. “The Legislature ought to make the law clear. If someone goes in there and utilizes these machines and pays by cash, where does that cash go? No one knows. We need regulation.”
Florida is already awash in state-sanctioned gambling. There is a popular state lottery. There are eight Indian casinos. And there are nearly two dozen thoroughbred, harness and greyhound tracks and jai alai frontons — some with slot machines and all offering high-stakes poker games.
And in the last five years, the emergence of convenience casinos has put places offering jackpots next to neighborhood coffee shops and dry cleaners. The explosion of the games has led to complaints that they are addictive and prey on some of the state’s poorest residents.
“Florida now has the most diverse gaming industry of any place in the country, including Vegas, where the lottery and Internet sweepstakes cafes don’t even exist,” said Marc W. Dunbar, a Tallahassee lawyer who represents gambling companies. “We have every kind of gaming here, everything. And we have this massive underground industry in the state — there are so many places for people to get their fix.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 6, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the location of the Fun City Sweepstakes cafe. It is in Palm Harbor, Fla., not North Port.
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