AUGUSTA - Vice officers seized about 4,000 video poker machines worth millions of dollars from a warehouse Friday. <br>
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The machines - valued at between $7,500 and $10,000 each - and miscellaneous parts will be confiscated until a court determines whether they are contraband, Richmond County Sheriff's Investigator Richard Elim said. <br>
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The General Assembly passed a statewide ban on video poker machines last year. A federal judge upheld the ban last month, and it went into effect Monday. <br>
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Several of the machines in the warehouse had labels stating they were inoperable and did not have circuit boards in compliance with Georgia law. But Elim said that wasn't good enough. <br>
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``It's a way for them to circumvent the law,'' he said. ``The law says you can't even have the machines, (including) any components or parts.'' <br>
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No one has been charged, and two men police did not identify were allowed to leave the warehouse. <br>
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The building, leased by Collins Entertainment Inc., also will be in temporary custody of the sheriff's office, Sgt. Greg Smith said. Police said the landlord was not aware of the machines in the building. <br>
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District Attorney Danny Craig described the seizure as ``an ocean of video poker machines.'' <br>
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``It would be the equivalent of machines butted up against each other in rows with enough room between for two people to walk abreast, covering the entire block of Broad Street from Seventh to Eighth,'' Craig said. <br>
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Earlier this week Hart County officials found dozens of video poker machines in a northeast Georgia warehouse - just hours after a new state law went into effect banning them. <br>
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The warehouse, located off Georgia Highway 77 in Nuberg, southern Hart County, had 59 machines, including 48 Pot-O-Gold machines and 11 other machines in stages of repair. <br>
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Hart County Sheriff Mike Cleveland estimated their value at more than $250,000. Investigators did not know who owned them.
