Two employees of a Belleview internet café were arrested Monday after undercover Marion County sheriff’s deputies located 86 illegal simulated gaming devices operating inside the business.
The undercover deputies visited the Blackjack Arcade, located at 12496 S. U.S. 301, on Monday to see if the business was violating a county ordinance that was passed Feb. 2 banning the use of simulated gambling devices. A copy of the ordinance was hand-delivered to employee Rimon Joudi at the Blackjack Arcade on Feb. 4, a sheriff’s office report states.
Upon entering the business, the deputies were approached by employee Jessica Bermudez, who helped them prepare to play the simulated gambling devices and pointed them to a fish games table that “was working the best” near a wall of slot machine-style gaming computers.
Both deputies were able to activate the fish games and slot machine devices using the $20 each set out to check the functionality of the gambling devices. Throughout the operation, the deputies determined that the gambling devices were all functional and Bermudez aided one of them with operating the slot machine-style game, the report says.
When the deputies finished operating the devices, a sheriff’s lieutenant and sergeant entered the business and detained Joudi, of Jacksonville, and Bermudez, of Ocala, for violating the county ordinance by operating 86 simulated gambling devices – 73 fish games stations and 13 slot machine-style computers. Both were placed under arrest and transported to the Marion County Jail, where they were charged with 86 counts of managing, supervising, maintaining, providing, producing, possessing or using a simulated gambling device for commercial, promotional or pecuniary gain or purpose. They each were being held on $43,000 bond and are due in court March 3 at 8 a.m. to answer to the charges, jail records show.