Internet gaming cafe bay area

Sandy Holliday said. Linda Nguyen, who owns a restaurant next door, said when the cafe opened two years ago it brought with it a questionable clientele. Internet cafes operating an illegal gambling operation are known as "sweepstakes cafes," authorities said.

The cafes have prompted legal fights in several states because they try to skirt gambling laws by claiming to charge customers for only internet time. But officials said the cafes instead are providing access to video slot machines and other games on a software server. California's Bureau of Gaming Control issued an advisory last year warning sweepstakes cafes are illegal under state law.

Skip to content. San Francisco 4 hours ago. Operators say the sweepstakes are different from slot machines because the computers don't randomly determine winners. The results are determined in advance much like a lottery scratcher card, and the computers spit them out in sequence from a prearranged stack of entries. The California Supreme Court rejected that argument in its unanimous decision in a case involving several Internet businesses in Kern County that prosecutors sought to stop from offering sweepstakes games.

Authorities across the state have been trying to crack down on such businesses, equating them to gambling dens that contribute to vices such as drugs and prostitution. John Weston, an attorney for two of the business owners in the case, said his clients stopped running sweepstakes games in after a trial court issued an injunction.

He said the key issue for his clients was whether they could be fined for their behavior before the injunction, but the court did not address that. The businesses' owners say the games are a way to promote their other products and a fun way for customers to reveal a sweepstakes result. Customers get points, or credits, for purchases they make at the store that they can use to play the sweepstakes.

The business owners claim sweepstakes operated by McDonald's, Coca-Cola and other retailers and the state's lottery vending machines for Scratchers tickets would be illegal under the court's analysis.

The state Supreme Court said lottery vending machines were different because they don't have the element of chance.