4 Cited in Oxnard Slot Machine Raid

Oxnard police and state investigators have cited four people on suspicion of illegally operating slot machines after raids on their La Colonia businesses.

The arrests followed a two-month investigation after neighbors complained that the push-button-style slot machines were targeting children and causing long lines outside the businesses, Officer Robin Whitney of the Oxnard Police Department said Thursday.

Owners of four businesses were cited for misdemeanors and released shortly after the Wednesday afternoon raids, Whitney said. A fifth business owner was being sought Thursday. If convicted, they face a potential $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.

“People were playing the machines for hours,” said Whitney, who works at the Police Department’s La Colonia storefront. “We had reports of kids playing the machines. It’s a vice, yet they are right out in the open for kids to see and these kids could develop a [gambling] habit.”

Six machines were removed from the businesses. Whitney said agents from the state Department of Justice’s Gambling Control Division now have the coin-operated machines.

The machines “were not like the ones you would see in Las Vegas,” Whitney said. Instead, they are designed to look like arcade video games and are generally difficult to recognize as gambling devices, he said.

State investigators will take the machines apart, but “we don’t know how they are rigged and I doubt very seriously they are rigged toward the player,” Whitney said.

Investigators are also following up on a tip that the machines may be connected to a similar operation recently uncovered in Riverside County, he said.

The Oxnard business owners cited are Juan Rodriguez Estrada, 45, owner of La Flor De Mayo grocery store; Jose Benito Alcaide Cruz, 37, owner of Gino’s Pizza; Carmen Estrada Chavez, 60, owner of Carmen’s Market; and Joe Tony Brar, 28, owner of La Tapatia grocery. The four businesses are near each other on Cooper Road, and are within blocks of the police storefront.

A slot machine from a fifth business, La Colonial Market on 3rd Street, was also seized Wednesday, but that store’s owner had not been reached to be cited, Whitney said.

The gaming machines had become a well-known fixture in the community for about the last six months, said Ben Gonzalez of Camarillo, who delivers fresh tortillas to restaurants and markets on Cooper Road and other sections of La Colonia.

Although he never played the games himself, Gonzalez said people inside the businesses said it was not unusual for a quarter to yield a jackpot of as much as $500.

“They were making some good money,” Gonzalez said. “You would see 10 or 15 people coming in and out of these places at a time.”