Greene County store owner charged for illegal gaming machines

The first criminal charges have been filed in Greene County against a convenience store owner for housing unregulated video lottery terminal machines, or VLTs, in a local store.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced the charges at a news conference on Wednesday in Springfield. This is the latest in a statewide push to get rid of the machines since Hanaway took office in September. VLTs in the past have operated in an alleged gray area in state law.

Two felony counts of promoting gambling in the first degree have been filed against Himanshu Patel, the managing officer of Briarwood One Stop southwest of Springfield in Brookline. Hanaway said the convenience store included 12 gambling machines that were seized and included more than $30,000 in cash combined with the redemption machine. She said all of these were operated by Wildwood-based Torch Electronics, which operates the vast majority of VLTs in the state. Patel could face up to four years in prison if found guilty.

Hanaway has made a more explicit call for businesses to remove VLTs immediately than her predecessors. Criminal prosecution of businesses that house VLTs has ramped up ever since a federal judge ruled Torch machines are considered gambling devices and therefore operating illegally when outside of a casino setting.

“The message we want to communicate to the stores that have these machines in them is no matter what you’ve been told by the vendors trying to place these machines in your stores — they’re illegal,” she said.

Prior to this ruling, VLTs were largely operating through a loophole in state law that outlaws “chance” games. VLTs are called “no-chance games” as they allow players to view the outcome of the next play before playing — though critics, and now a federal judge, argue the games are still a form of gambling as players are motivated to see the outcome of subsequent, unknown plays.

Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson praised Hanaway’s statewide approach to enforcement and said a coordinated effort by all parties is necessary to crack down on the “illegal machines just hiding in plain sight.” He said this is currently the only criminal case pending regarding VLTs in Greene County.

Along with the criminal charges, the AG’s office has also filed a civil lawsuit against the store, Briarwood One Stop, in Greene County seeking a permanent injunction to prohibit the business from providing gambling services and to force the owner to pay a penalty of $1,000 per violation to the Merchandising Practices Act, according to the petition document.

Hanaway said it is particularly important to remove VLTs as they are often situated in more low-income areas and could eventually lead to more organized crime.

SPD has issued nearly 450 citations in two years

Springfield City Council passed an ordinance essentially banning VLTs within city limits in February 2024, focusing on the reward aspect of the game rather than the gameplay or rules of play. Since then, Springfield Police Department has issued nearly 450 citations for the machines operating at local convenience stores, bars and other places. These, too, have largely been Torch-operated machines.

Police Chief Paul Williams said at the Wednesday, March 18, news conference that the police department has continued to enforce the local ordinance. Despite the large volume of citations, he said operators have “continued to basically thumb their nose” at the local ordinance and law enforcement efforts. Citations for violating the local ordinance have been issued to clerks, managers or owners of the businesses housing VLTs.

“My hope is that this is a warning to them to call Torch and say, ‘Come get the machines out, so I don’t go to jail, so I don’t lose my liquor license,'” he said. “I’m hoping that will be the end result — the machines will just be gone.”

However, since the city enacted its ban, it has faced several legal challenges. A judge in Cole County sided with the city in a lawsuit brought by Torch after the city denied the issuance of a business license to the operator for violating the VLT ordinance. Torch has appealed this ruling, and the appeal hearing is still pending. This is partially the reason VLTs have continued to operate as Torch has told convenience stores it thinks the ordinance does not apply to its machines.

Hanaway said Torch has consistently fought cases against VLTs across the state with the “greatest lawyers in the world,” which has made it particularly hard for more rural counties with limited resources to go after them.

Will more criminal charges follow?

With nearly 450 citations, Briarwood One Stop is far from the only business to provide VLTs in Greene County. But Hanaway said charges were filed against Patel first because of the large number of machines and the recency of reports received and investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Hanaway did not rule out going after Torch itself eventually.

“You work it from both ends of the enterprise and it’s, you know, usually easier to start with the people who are on the retail side of it,” she said. “You usually have bigger things going on behind the scenes with bigger players, but it takes a while to collect the evidence.”

Ultimately, Hanaway said she is hopeful business owners, especially those running local small businesses, take their own action to get rid of the illegal machines and avoid the state coming in with criminal charges, which she said could happen at any moment. The attorney general noted that some larger corporate owners of convenience stores could also be prosecuted later, once smaller cases help the state understand how the enterprise works.

“None of us relishes the idea of having to go after small business after small business,” she said. “We hope they choose to do the right thing on their own.”

Missouri House passed a bill that would legalize VLTs in the state in February, though the bill still awaits a Senate vote. In past years, VLT legalization was wrapped up in legislation concerning sports betting, bringing the issue to a standstill and ultimately bringing the legalization of sports betting to the ballot.

Hanaway said estimates have indicated there are roughly 250,000 machines across Missouri that in total bring in “hundreds of millions of dollars every year.”