Rigged Game Costs Arcade Firm $3,400

The operator of a Canoga Park arcade was fined $1,000 and ordered to donate $2,400 to a children’s charity after pleading no contest Thursday to operating a rigged gambling machine.

The action in Los Angeles Municipal Court stemmed from a case brought by the city attorney’s office against Nickels & Dimes Inc., operator of the Golden Mine Arcade at 6600 Topanga Canyon Blvd. in the Topanga Plaza Shopping Center.

Deputy City Atty. Pamela A. Albers, who prosecuted the case, contended that the arcade rigged a game, known as the Big Choice, in such a way that it became a gambling machine no longer based on a player’s skill. Such machines are illegal in California.

Metal Noose Rigged

“The device appeared to offer the chance of valuable prizes to people with the skill to manipulate the controls of a metal noose to pick them up,” City Atty. James K. Hahn added. “But the Big Choice really did not offer any choice at all, since the device was rigged so that the noose would only pick up certain prizes of the management’s choosing.” Winners usually won “very small stuffed animals,” Albers said. Rarely did anyone win the “more expensive, big stuffed animals.”

Evidence obtained for the prosecution showed that the game, which could be played for 25 cents, grossed $16,000 during a 16-week period in which the management paid out only $4,200 worth of prizes, Hahn said.

“It appeared to players that they could manipulate the controls of the noose to pick up whatever prize they wanted,” Hahn said. “But, in reality the noose was an electromagnet which was controlled by the electrical current being fed into it. The arcade operators had adjusted the current so that the noose only picked up the prizes they wanted it to pick up.”

Game Removed From State

Detective John Lindsay of the Los Angeles Police Department’s administrative vice section, said the case against the arcade stemmed from an advisory by another law-enforcement agency that Nickel & Dimes, a Texas company, was manufacturing the rigged machines. Lindsay said he discovered that the same company owned an arcade in Canoga Park and decided to see if the game was in use there. When he found out it was, he asked the city attorney’s office to prosecute.

Albers said that, as part of a plea bargain, the operator agreed to remove the game from the state. The $2,400 donation will be made to Los Angeles County’s McLaren Children’s Center and will be used to buy Christmas gifts for abandoned and abused children, Albers said.