Some Bar Bingo Is Illegal, Attorney for State Says

St. Mary's Sheriff Plans to Seize Many Devices

Under an opinion issued this week by the Maryland Attorney General's Office, many of the hundreds of video bingo machines that have appeared recently in St. Mary's County are illegal, prompting the county sheriff to plan a massive seizure of the devices beginning as early as Friday.

Some of the devices violate a statewide ban against slot machines, according to the nine-page opinion by Assistant Attorney General Kathryn M. Rowe. Under the opinion, others might be legal but are used in ways that are not -- concentrated, for example, in greater numbers than are allowed in a bar or restaurant.

The opinion, issued after a request by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), comes as state lawmakers weigh emergency legislation to ban the machines. The proposal has broad support in both chambers, and Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) has said he will sign it.

Miller said yesterday that such a law is still needed.

Although the opinion outlines limited circumstances under which some of the machines might be used lawfully, Miller said it confirms what he has said in recent weeks: that "these machines are illegal."

St. Mary's Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron, who had considered the machines legal, said the new opinion clarifies some legal issues. Tomorrow, he said, deputies plan to visit the 22 locations known to have the machines and collect information about how they operate. Once that is done, authorities could begin to seize machines as soon as Friday, he said.

"The attorney general has really whittled down what all of these laws mean," Cameron said. "We can finally go in and tell people if they are or are not in compliance with the law."

The state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, held in 2001 that instant bingo devices could be legal if their mechanism of operation does not include the element of chance, separating them from slot machines, which many are designed to resemble.

Rowe wrote that instant bingo machines loaded with preprinted tickets displaying winning or losing combinations are legal under some circumstances. Theoretically, she wrote, the preprinted tickets could be removed from the machine and sold manually.

The same cannot be said, she wrote, of machines that contain a computer chip with preprogrammed outcomes to be printed at the time of play. Rowe concluded that those "cartridge machines" are illegal.

According to distributors, cartridge machines make up the majority of the devices that have appeared in bars and restaurants in St. Mary's. The machines are operated by nonprofit organizations, and the proceeds are shared by the machines' distributors and by the owners of the premises on which they are placed.

In the opinion, Rowe cited recent Washington Post reports in which the owners of bars and restaurants were quoted saying that they were paid a percentage of the proceeds from the instant bingo machines.