The Leflore County Sheriff's Department seized six more illegal gambling machines Thursday evening, and the Sidon store owner who was arrested for possessing them says the devices aren't illegal.
"They were just gaming machines like everyone else has," said Melvin Brodofsky, 61, of Coila. "They're no more illegal than games they have at Wal-Mart where they give away free prizes."
A Sheriff's deputy spotted the video machines in Brodofsky's store, Melvin's One Stop Center, around 6:30 p.m., according to Under Sheriff Jimmy Tindall.
"The door was open, and he saw the machines and saw individuals coming out of the room," Tindall said.
Deputies seized $573, and a wrecker service carried away the machines.
This was the fourth gambling machine bust, the second by the Sheriff's Department, in Greenwood-area convenience stores in two weeks.
The latest has left Brodofsky wondering why they decided to pick on him now, 15 years since he started operating gaming machines in his store. "I've been in business 15 years, and without them I couldn't have made it," he said.
Under the statute that outlaws them, certain children's games should be illegal too, he said.
"Anything that gives away a prize of any kind is illegal in the state of Mississippi," he said. "What I call this is selective prosecution."
Mississippi state law defines illegal gambling machines as any "slot machine … which will deliver anything of value in varying quantities."
Brodofsky said he might take his argument to court, where similar matters elsewhere in the state have ended up.
A lawsuit filed last year in U.S. District Court in Greenville questions the interpretation of the state gaming law. The suit argues that it should extend to games found at establishments like Chuck E. Cheese's pizza parlor that pay out tickets or tokens.
In 2001, the state Supreme Court ruled that amusement machines that dispense something of value upon the insertion of a coin are illegal slot machines. There are still a number of other lawsuits pending on the issue.
A state Gaming Commission regulation says children's games are legal as long as they don't cost more than 25 cents a play or pay out prizes worth more than $5.
Two bills addressing the issue were introduced in the Legislature this session, but both have died.
Regardless of what is decided in those arenas, the machines seized at Melvin's and the three Greenwood locations are still illegal to the Gaming Commission, said commission spokeswoman Leigh Ann Wilkins.
"What the Chuck E. Cheese regulation does is basically says that Chuck E. Cheese machines aren't illegal," she said. "That doesn't have anything to do with illegal video machines."
