Detective's win at lottery machine is Dunedin bar's loss

Accused of operating an illegal lottery machine, the co-owner of Piglet's Sports Bar and Grill is arrested.

By ROBERT FARLEY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 4, 2002

DUNEDIN -- Pinellas County sheriff's Detective Randy Ream walked into Piglet's Sports Bar and Grill on Wednesday afternoon and put a dollar into a lottery machine.

Out came a pull-tab ticket promising the possibility of an instant cash prize from $1 to $500. He pulled. And he won. One dollar.

The vice detective took his break-even ticket to the bartender and cashed out. One dollar.

Then Ream arrested the bar and restaurant's co-owner, David M. Walker, 41, of Oldsmar, and charged him with operating an illegal lottery.

The charge is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison, said sheriff's Sgt. Greg Tita.

Tita said the Sheriff's Office had been tipped off about the illegal machine, prompting the detective's visit Wednesday to the bar at Pinehurst Road and San Christopher Drive.

The pull-tab machine amounts to an illegal scratch-off lottery, Tita said.

Walker could not be reached for comment Thursday, but Tita said Walker argued to detectives that because the tickets were pull-tab and not scratch-off cards, they did not run afoul of state law. Sheriff's officials said they do.

Walker told detectives the vendor who put the machine in his bar assured him the machine was legal. Walker said his arrangement with the vendor was that the bar got 7 cents for every ticket purchased.

Two weeks ago, Tita said he got a call from a representative of a local Elks lodge who asked if pull-tab lottery games were legal and okay to put in their lodge.

Tita told the man he needed to do more research. He also suggested there are probably other, better ways to legally raise money.

"Why take a chance?" Tita told him.

The call suggests "some vendor must be out there trying to get people to put these machines in their establishments," Tita said.

Tita said there is an investigation to find out who that is.

He said that detectives confiscated the machine at Piglet's. It dispenses two types of pull-tab tickets: one called "Double Money," the other called "Dart World." They found 3,800 tickets inside the machine, he said, but he did not know how many tickets were sold there.

Walker was released Wednesday from Pinellas County Jail after posting $5,000 bail.

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