Federal officials said they were questioning people in different places in southeast Houston and Galveston County and taking away machines and other pieces of evidence.
In southeast Houston and Galveston County on Tuesday, more than a dozen gaming rooms were shut down by the FBI during a day of well-planned raids.
Sources told KHOU 11 that the raids are part of a larger investigation into how corrupt public leaders are. As of now, we haven’t been able to get official word on which public leaders are being looked into or how they might be connected to the gaming rooms.
The police searched a total of 17 game rooms. Matt Dougherty, a reporter for KHOU 11, was at one of the raids, which happened at a blue building on Market Street in Houston’s Fifth Ward.
Around 4 p.m., federal agents in plain clothes were seen coming and going from the building, making it very busy. In the end, the game machines were taken out of the building and put on 18-wheelers.
In different parts of town, the same thing was going on at the same time. Police officers were carrying boxes of evidence, and they also took at least three game machines from Star Video on Broadway Street, which is close to the Gulf Freeway.
A customer at the business, Beatriz Lopez, said she was in the middle of playing one of the machines when federal agents walked in out of the blue.
After telling her to put her hands on top of the machine, they began questioning her. Lopez said that she goes to the place to have fun and rest, as well as to increase her chances of winning money right away. She said that these tools have given her wins of up to $600.
An employee at a nearby restaurant said that police were seen in the same spot about three months ago.
In an email statement, the FBI’s Houston Field Office said that the raids were part of a larger operation that was approved by the court. They were unable to give any more information about the situation, though.
It’s still not clear who was arrested during the raids.