Police find 26 illegal poker machines in south Charlotte raid

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Police in Charlotte made their first sweepstakes raid Wednesday morning.

Detectives found 26 illegal machines at LPM Sweepstakes on Old Pineville Road in south Charlotte. The machines had poker, bingo and other video games, police said.

In January, a new state law required parlors to install new software.

Police showed Eyewitness News more than two dozen computer games they had seized in the raid Thursday. It was the first in Charlotte since the state Supreme Court upheld a state law banning them.

"We have been conducting investigations into multiple locations," said Capt. Coerte Voorhees with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's vice unit.

Voorhees said police believe about 50 of the businesses have closed voluntarily and others may have changed their games to be legal, but LPM was not one of them.

"They had several types of sweepstakes machines. In our opinion the sweepstakes type they were using, the software, was in violation of the law, as well as the Pot of Gold machines," Voorhees said.

The doors were locked on Wednesday and in her hair salon two doors down, Kim Bowman said the raid surprised everyone.

"They were stocking drinks and chips and so forth yesterday," Bowman said.

Eyewitness News found three other sweepstakes places within a mile of LPM that are still open, including one right around the corner.

The clerk said she couldn't talk on camera, but she said they had changed their software to make their games legal. Police said they are watching to make sure.

"Those that are continuing to operate, we will continue to monitor those and the cases that we think we can make, we will certainly go after those," Voorhees said.

Police also arrested one person, Yvonne Adams, for operating the slot machines during the raid.