The State Assembly and Senate voted on 11 January to allow interstate gambling, which means players would only be playing bingo against other players in New Jersey.

The legislation now had to be approved by New Jersey governor Chris Christie; he has 45 days to pass it or veto it. The only concern for those hoping for online bingo in New Jersey is that Christie may come under extreme pressure at federal level to block the legislation. It is believed that the federal government is concerned that states will legislate online gambling in a piecemeal way, meaning that there is no consistency from state to state and the federal government would get no tax benefit from legislation.

A large number of online operators are likely to be interested in operating online bingo in New Jersey, with Playtech’s Virtue Fusion division likely to make the biggest push to be the main software provide for a New Jersey bingo site.

Search for New Jersey Bingo halls

Angry protestors  blocked the entrance to the Greenetrack bingo facility for 12 hours before being arrested. They were trying to prevent state troopers from carrying out the Alabama governor’s orders to seize 800 electronic bingo machines.

The closure of Greenetrack will see some 400 employees put out of work in a part of the state where unemployment is already hig.

Democratic state Senator Bobby Singleton of Greensboro was one of the 16 arrested and protestors included the Democratic nominee for governor. All 16 were released on a $1,000 bond.

The decision to close Greenetrack has become a huge political issue in Alabama and also has racial undertones, with black legislators identifying it is a major issue which affects a predominately black workforce.

Bob Riley, Alabama’s Republican Governor,  has stated that he believes the electronic bingo machines are in fact illegal slot machines and contravene state laws on gambling. He has been backed strongly by gambling task force commander John Tyson Jr who has helped close more than 20 bingo halls in the past two months. Only Victoryland in Macon County, which has more than 6,000 electronic bingo machines, remains open alongside the three state-endorsed Indian casinos in Alabama.

There are 34 charity bingo halls in Alabama, which are not offering electronic bingo and purely run bingo games for the purposes of raising money for local charities, which is permitted under Alabama state law.

Pop’s Bingo World was granted approval to open a bingo hall on Willow Pass Road, Concord, in April 2010 but a rival bingo hall, the Concord Blue Devils bingo hall, appealed against the approval through the city’s Planning Commission.

The Planning Commission approved the Pop’s application and the Blue Devils appealed again, meaning that the decision will now be made by the City Council on 13 July.

Their appeal claims that the city must not issue an approval without a full environmental study on how the new bingo hall would affect traffic, parking, crime and the provision of city services.

However the owners contend that because the building that the bingo hall uses was a gym for many years there is plenty of evidence of the environmental impact of using the site.

Pop’s Bingo World is the second bingo hall with that name; the other operates as a bingo hall in Richmond, Virginia. There are 197 bingo halls in California, all of which must operate to raise funds for charity, although bingo hall owners can be for-profit organisations and hire out their space and equipment to charities who want to operate bingo nights.

The bill proposed that online poker would be allowed in California with up to 20 per cent of the profits going to the state. Bill sponsor Roderick Wright cancelled the vote in the face of vehement opposition from Indian tribes with gaming interests in the state and California’s card clubs.

Wright, a California Democrat Senator for Inglewood,  said he would continue to look for ways to legalize poker in California in order to help boost the state’s empty coffers. It is widely thought that legalizing poker would be a gateway to allowing other online gambling across the USA with bingo being one of the most attractive games to allow, both because it is widely ingrained in American culture but also because of the low levels of problem gambling associated with the game.

Ironically it is the Indian casino and card clubs in California that first strongly supported the idea of online poker in the state. But when it became clear that Wright’s bill would allow Nevada companies and foreign poker operators to bid for the licence to run online poker, they switched to opposing the bill. One critic told Bingo News: “As soon as the Indian casinos and card clubs realized they may not be the beneficiaries of this bill, they immediately changed their minds. If online poker is legalized and they are not running it then there is likely to be a major negative impact on their land-based businesses.”

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians, Commerce Casino and Hollywood Park Casino were among those who were most vocal in their opposition to the bill. All agreed however that online poker in California was desirable and that they expected it to be legalized within the next three years.

Check out California’s bingo halls at California Bingo.

The bingo hall is on the site of the old Velocity gym and will run charitable bingo to raise money for local charities, including the Community Youth Center and East Bay Services to the Developmentally Disabled.

Bingo will be played every night and the hall will be allowed to stay open until 1.30am on Fridays and Saturdays.

Pop’s Bingo World, which also has a bingo hall in Richmond, Virginia, is run by Chuck Lessin.

There is one other Pop’s Bingo World, in Richmond, Virginia.

The only other bingo hall in Concord is the Blue Devil bingo hall on Nelson Avenue North.

Check out California bingo hall at California Bingo

The Marina Bay Bingo Club in Richmond was opened with a fanfare of publicity on 31 March with local politicians and charities hailing the 32,000 square foot 500 person facility as great news for charitable fundraising.

But less than two months later the American Legion-sponsored club has been hit badly following revelations of the criminal past of its Commander, who has convictions for money laundering and operating a bingo permit kickback scheme in Oakland.

Post 875 Commander Eddie Welbon, 70, has served a 12 month sentence for money laundering and mail fraud. He is a preacher who has been regularly named in court documents by organisations, some of whom claimed that he has misused their name.

The city has revoke the bingo hall’s license on the grounds that it offers prizes greater than city laws permit and that it is being operated by a different organization than stated on the permit.

Marina Westshore Partners, the landlord of the building, has issued an eviction notice and is pursuing unpaid rent of $45,000 through the courts.

Find local CA bingo halls at California Bingo

Richelle Olson sued Cohen in June 2009, claiming Bruno was an “extreme, outrageous, offensive caricature of a gay man dressed in sexually revealing clothing with an Austrian accent” and used “vulgar and offensive language”. When she tried taking the microphone from Bruno, a “physical struggle ensued” and she was “offensively touched, pushed and battered” before falling to the ground.

She withdrew assault claims but pursued emotional damages claims for $25,000. However the court ruled against her and ordered her to pay Cohen’s $17,000 legal fees.

The bingo game scene, which was filmed at a charity game Olson ran for pensioners in Palmdale, California, was never included in the final cut of the Bruno film.

The evening bingo session had just begun when the two mean entered the bingo room and threatened players with guns.

Elks Lodge trustee Al Derga told 12 News: “I saw the door open, and I looked over and saw a guy with a ski mask on and right away I knew this is not good

“He came in and he had one gun pointed at me and another gun pointed at the crowd.

“I just put my hands up immediately because I knew what was going on and I said don’t shoot, stay cool, we’ll give you the money. I said give him the money and Barb just handed him the money and he grabbed it and there was a small container with supply money, $60 or $70 he grabbed that as well and went out of the building.”

Witnesses who followed the robbers from the bingo hall to try and get a license plate number were fired at by the suspects, police said.

The Elks Lodge bingo said they would have armed guards at their next bingo game to help reassure patrons.

Brandon Falls, the district attorney for the Birmigham district, said that the halls were for-profit businesses rather than charity ventures and that if they did not close with 10 days they would face legal action,

“I’m giving them 10 days to cease operations, pack up and leave Jefferson County,” he told The Birmingham News.

The affected halls are in the eastern part of Jefferson County. Arther Green, district attorney of the Bessemer district, is understod to be looking at the legality of bingo halls in that region.

Falls say the bingo halls, which are largely full of slot machines, breach Amendment 386, which was approved for old-fashioned paper-based bingo hall operations for charity. He said the modern-day bingo halls are clearly businesses that are independent from charities, even though they do make contributions to charity.

In July the National Indian Gaming Commission ordered the Fort Sill Apache Tribe to stop playing bingo under threat of a daily $25,000 fine.

The tribe started offering bingo in April and played on Thursdays through Saturdays, attracting average crowds of around 60 bingo players.

Tribal Chairman Jeff Houser said bingo had been stopped pending an appeal against the violation notice and that no fines would be levied under the deal. The appeal is expected to be heard by the end of the year.

The Apache Homelands Casino has been the subject of serious disputes in recent months as federal regulators say it operates on land acquired later than 1988, which would mean the site is not covered by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. In July 2009 the tribe launched a publicity campaign calling on Barack Obama to intervene to save hundreds of jobs at the casino and entertainment complex.

The Apache Homelands Casino is at 20885 Frontage Road, Deming, New Mexico 88030, which is about 20 miles east of Deming. It is located at Exit 102 on Interstate 10 between Las Cruces and Deming, NM.

The fight took place on Saturday night at Mickey’s Beach Bingo, New Bern Road in Kinston, NC. Police have arrested Eugene Moore over the incident; he is charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.

The victim, who police named as Tyron J. Arrington, 22, of La Grange, NC. He is being treated at Pitt County Memorial Hospital and is listed in serious condition. was apparently stabbed in the back three times during the fight.

Moore, 23, was in court on Sunday to answer the charges against him. He is being held on a $10,000 bond.

The owners of Mr Bingo and Carolina Gold Bingo have hired lawyers and private investigators to investigate each other. At stake is whether each is allowing players to smoke in order to make greater profits.

The lawsuit filed by Mr Bingo says Carolina Gold Bingo allows customers to smoke “for the purpose of increasing their market share and harming [competitors].”

The company’s violations were “so frequent and pervasive” that Mr Bingo and other bingo operators would have to allow smoking in order to effectively compete with Carolina Gold.

Under local laws those breaking the smoking ban are liable to a fine of $25. But there are claims that the county does little to enforce the rules.

Carolina Gold Bingo is on Decker Boulevard and Mr Bingo is on St Andrews Road. They are two of the four bingo halls in Richland County.

Anne Patricia Hudanick was charged with theft from Creating Unlimited Possibilities, a state-funded social services organization that largely helps people with cerebal palsy.

Hudanick, 58, had been the book-keeper at Creating Unlimited Possibilities for more than a decade and police believe she may have stolen as much as $120,000. Police said she had confessed to the crime and said almost all of the money had been spent on bingo.

Hudanick said she played bingo at least five times a week and had taken between $300 and $1000 a time. She was released on $25,000 bail. A hearing is scheduled for 30 September.

Creating Unlimited Possibilities is based on Simpson Street, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Gross proceeds fell from $2,717,750 in the first quarter of 2009 to $631,505 in the second quarter, while state taxes paid fell from $81,533 to $78,945 in the same period.

Player numbers were 105,185 in the first quarter and 102,351 in the second quarter.

The number of pickle card units sold also declined at similar levels.

Charitable bingo in Nebraska is said to have rapidly fallen in popularity in the last decade with about half the number of people playing now as in 1999.

$3.2 million was allocated for the second quarter of 2009, up 0.9 per cent on the first quarter. The Charitable Bingo Operations Division also allocated an additional $3.5 million to the state’s General Revenue Fund.

Under Texas law five per cent of charity bingo prize funds are withheld for the General Revenue fund and up to 2.5 per cent can be collected by cities or counties, on an optional basis.

Bexar County received the single largest allocation of $227,472.36, followed by Dallas County with $170,570.31, Harris County with $144,518.22, Tarrant County with $143,720.97 and Bell County with $119,593.60.

The City of San Antonio received the highest allocation for a municipality, gaining $221,158.44, followed Corpus Christi with $80,106.49, Fort Worth with $77,408.22, Lubbock with $73,477.13 and Austin with $70,964.65.

There are 1,135 non-profit organisations in Texas running charitable bingo games.

The Bingo Advisory Committee also said that their next meeting will be at 10am on October 21, 2009 in the first floor auditorium of the Texas Lottery Commission at 611 E. 6th Street, Austin, Texas.

Anyone interested in serving on the Bingo Advisory Committee is asked to complete the nomination form and submit it to the Charitable Bingo Operations Division.  Worlanda Neal at The Texas Lottery Commission on 512.344.5120 or worlanda.neal@lottery.state.tx.us can provide further details.

Circuit Judge Robert Vance Jr. had ordered six bingo halls -  Carbon Hill Bingo, Walker County Bingo, Dreams Come True Charity Bingo, Blackwater Bingo, Ba Da Bingo and It’s Your Lucky Day Bingo – to close because they were not being operated by charities. Earlier this month he shuttered the Helping Hands Bingo hall after ruling it too broke the law.

Vance will rule on October 13 on whether the electronic machines that are used in the bingo halls are legal; if he rules they are not then Walker County is likely to be left with no bingo halls at all as the revenues from paper-based bingo would not be enough to sustain the halls.

The It’s Your Lucky Day Bingo hall should be in line for an award for the most ironically named bingo hall after a robbery incident there last month in which the would-be thief ended up dead.

The raid was requested by Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls who warned that he was considering targetting other bingo halls in the county.

The VFW bingo hall was raided at 6am on Monday 17 July; more than 30 Alabama Bureau of Investigation agents and state troopers were involved in the raid. Falls said he believed the electronic bingo machines breached state laws.

The electronic bingo machines were loaded onto trucks and taken away for inspection.

“This does not appear to be a charity bingo operation. This appears to be a casino operation,” Falls told The Birmingham News. “They are gambling machines; they are not bingo machines. The decision whether to make any arrests will be made later.”

He said he had received numerous calls about the bingo operation, varying from complaints that they offered illegal gambling to saying they created extra traffic in the area.

A spokesman for VFW said that they believed that they were fully compliant with the law and that all money raised by the hall went to charity. All electronic bingo machines were certified as Class II gaming machines, which were classified as legal by Alabama’s attorney general in a 2004 memo.

The VFW bingo hall is at 9150 Parkway East, Roebuck, Alabama.

Police said a man entered the American Legion bingo hall at 11pm on Tuesday 18 August and pointed a 9mm handgun at the club’s cashier. A second man guarded the door with a shotgun.

They fled the club and jumped into a blue Ford Explorer, which had two men inside, said Jefferson County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Randy Christian.

A police alert for the vehicle was put out and 45 minutes later the Explorer was stopped on Interstate 459. All four were arrested and charged with first degree robbery.

Authorities issued a lookout bulletin for the vehicle.

About 11:45 p.m., Trussville police stopped the SUV on Interstate 459, just past U.S. 11, Christian said.

All four were taken into custody and charged with first-degree robbery. A bond was set at £30,000 per suspect.

Police named them as Samuel Jolly III, 24, of Birmingham; Tristian Caffey, 25, of Birmingham; DeJuan Richey, 20, of Birmingham; and Eddie Jenkins Jr., 21, of Hoover.

The Elks Lodge bingo hall at 6791 North Canal Road in Niagra County was raided some time on the night of Monday 10 August.

A cleaner arrived at 4am to find a rock had been thrown through a window and phone lines cut, making the alarm system stop working.

The club’s safe had been dragged outside the hall and forced open. Thieves took $8,200 in bingo proceeds, the club’s management said.

The hall is to be built by the Catawba Indian Nation, according to tribe chief Donal Rodgers. He said he hoped to open it by the end of 2009 but would not identify a location.

The Catawba Indian Nation has tried to run a bingo hall previously; in 1993 they opened a bingo hall in Rock Hill but closed it for poor financial performance in 2006, saying at the time that the state lottery offered too much competition.

The new bingo hall, which could employ as many as 200 staff, will aim to employ as many people from the Catawba tribe as possible. Unemployment in the tribe is much higher than state averages and currently runs at over 25%. There are about 2600 Catawbas in the United States with the tribal reservation being based in York County, which is in northern South Carolina.

William Cantrell Jr, 43, entered the charity bingo hall in Jasper, Alabama on Saturday night at around 11pm and fired a shotgun into the ceiling. He then shouted: “This is a robbery. Everybody get out of here.”

As Cantrell approached the cashiers’ cages,  he fired more shots at the ceiling and then at a cashier’s cage and a safe.

Two security guards approached him and when he pointed his gun at them one of the security guards then shot the robber dead. Walker County Sheriff John Mark Tirey said the man had multiple bullet wounds.

One bingo player said: “It was very frightening and it is lucky no one was injured apart from the gunman. It really wasn’t his lucky day though, was it?”

The It’s Your Lucky Day Charity Bingo hall is at 20 Pineywoods Sipsey Road, Jasper, Alabama.

The Ticonderoga Fire Department holds a weekly fundraising bingo game and called in the police earlier this year after noticing funds were missing.

After an extensive investigation firefighter William Pullar, 28, has been charged with fourth degree grand larceny. Police said the theft appeared to have been going on for around a year.

The Essex County town, which is in the foot hills of the Adirondack Mountains, has apparently been shocked by the allegations.

The robbery took place four years ago but Curtis Commo has only been jailed now after protracted legal arguments about his mental state; in 2006 a judge ruled he was mentally handicapped and should not stand trial. A later ruling found he had a learning disability but was not mentally handicapped. Commo pleased no contest to the charges.

His accomplice, Saolepea Jean Liu of South San Francisco, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in August 2006.

In November 2005 the two men walked into the South San Francisco Boys & Girls Club on West Orange  Avenue, South San Francisco, CA at around 10 p.m. The pair were carrying guns and found three janitors in the building cleaning up. They searched for money from that evening’s bingo game but club staff had already removed it so they robbed the janitors, taking their wallets and a signed football and other items.

The robbers were caught when pulled over by police in a random traffic stop and a number of the stolen items were found in their car.

The Greene County construction will be next door to the well-known Cotton Patch restaurant.

The building, which is on a 36 acre site, is almost completed although the parking lot has yet to be paved; officials close to the project said that it is likely it will open before Christmas.

The building is being developed by Sidetrack LLC, who bought the site in January 2008 for $630,000.

Currently Greenetrack is the only legal bingo operator in Greene County but the Eatman School Alumni Association had a licence granted in September 2008 by Greene County Sheriff Ison Thomas. It is expected that Sidetrack will operate using this licence. Other charity groups aiming to raise money from bingo are expected to apply for similar licences to use this new bingo hall.