A local convenience store was temporarily closed on Wednesday after local authorities raided it and arrested the only employee in the store.
The BP Food Mart at 101 Mays Rd., Milledgeville, which is located on the Putnam County side of Lake Sinclair, is accused of illegally operating six coin-operated amusement machines (COAMs), according to Putnam County Sheriff Howard R. Sills.
“It’s a gas station food market, which is clearly a front for a gambling operation,” Sills said. “They sell gas there, and groceries are on the shelves inside, but most of it has expired. Some boxes of cereal expired two years ago and were still on the shelves.”
Class B COAMs, which are a game of chance that resembles slot machines, are legal in Georgia as long as the winnings are store credit/coupons or credit for other Lottery games. But the BP was paying out cash winnings. Sills said undercover officers had played there for several weeks before the raid and arrest.
“There were so many people playing that they had to wait in line to get on a machine,” Sills said.
All COAMs are regulated by the Georgia Lottery, with a percentage of the revenues being kept by the business and a percentage going to the Lottery for its education grants and programs.
Authorities raided the store on Wednesday, and when The Eatonton Messenger contacted them, they were still logging the evidence and had not yet identified the store employee. Sills said the man, whom he described as “a foreigner,” gave them his name, but it turned out to be false.
“And a case of ownership ignorance developed almost immediately after we entered the store,” he said. “So, the store is not legally shutdown, but it is closed because we took the only employee and we’re still trying to find the owner.”
See next week’s edition of The Eatonton Messenger for more details.