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GREENSBORO — The man sitting at a computer terminal inside the G&S Food Mart on Lawndale Drive declines to give his name as video tumblers spin on the computer screen in front of him.


Are the video slot machines legal? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.


No luck. The mix of sevens, cherries, bars and other symbols don't make a meaningful combination. His account balance goes down a few dimes.


According to companies that distribute the machines and software, he's playing a sweepstakes, a premium offered in exchange for buying a couple dollars' worth of long-distance service. Guilford County prosecutors agree and have dropped at least one case related to these video slot machines.


But prosecutors in Rockingham County and state Alcohol Law Enforcement officers disagree, saying the machines are illegal and their owners should be prosecuted.


"They appear to fall squarely under the prohibition of a slot machine in the North Carolina statutes," said Alan Fields, the ALE supervisor for the region including Guilford County.


Two weeks ago, ALE agents raided several businesses in Rockingham County, charging 10 people with owning illegal slot machines or allowing their operation.


Some of those Rockingham County machines were little more than desktop computers with specialized software and a reader that can scan a prepaid phone card.


Others were retrofitted video poker machines.


In Greensboro, you can find them in bars and convenience stores, as well as storefronts that have nothing but a row of computers loaded with the slot machine software.


"Each jurisdiction is looking at it," said Tom Carruthers, an assistant district attorney in Guilford County. And different prosecutors are interpreting the state's gaming law differently in relation to the machines.


"It is the perfect problem for the legislature to solve," he said.


The General Assembly banned video poker in 2006 after years of lobbying by law enforcement and the advent of North Carolina's lottery. The stand-alone terminals often found in convenience stores and bars had become notorious, and operators were frequently arrested for allowing payouts way beyond legal limits.


Those old-style machines were phased out by July 1, 2007.


"You ever hear of prohibition?" asked Bill Chandler, who heads the Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement. "Did that stop liquor?"


Instead of bootlegging whiskey to back-room speakeasies, a new breed of video gaming operators puts their machines front and center, once again locating them in convenience stores and bars.


North Carolina law defines a slot machine as "a device where the user may become entitled to receive any money, credit, allowance, or any thing of value."


To skirt that prohibition, the new video slot operators have developed a "sweepstakes" system.


A customer buys a prepaid phone card with a few dollars' worth of long distance on it. As a premium for buying the card, one can enter what the companies making the software call a sweepstakes.


Winners of the sweepstakes are determined by playing what amounts to a slot machine video game, with any number of styles and faces.


Playing those games differs little than playing similar devices one would find in a casino. And although the typical sums are small, some prizes can run into the hundreds of dollars.


"We've seen some places where people have won $400 or $500," Fields said.


Presumably, people are paying enough in phone card fees to make those kind of prizes worthwhile.


Alcohol Law Enforcement is an agency under the state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety. It has 117 sworn field officers and a budget of about $9 million.


ALE agents are charged with enforcing the state's laws governing the sale of alcohol, tobacco and lottery tickets. They also enforce rules related to legal gambling, such as bingo run by nonprofits.


Despite the video poker phaseout, video gaming complaints have made up 10 percent of the agency's workload since Jan. 1, 2007, Chandler said.


Lucky Sweepstakes LLC is one company that markets this type of machine. A man who answered the phone at its contact number declined to identify himself other than as "a spokesman for the company."


The phone card premiums, he said, were little different than prizes that might be attached to a fast-food meal. He said it is up to individual operators to determine whether the machines are legal in their state or county.


"We don't know anything about state law," he said.


Other states have been taking a look at these systems.


Florida's legislature is preparing to debate legislation that would outlaw these devices, although a 1998 advisory opinion by the state attorney general would seem to indicate they are illegal already. A 2004 South Carolina Supreme Court ruling also found that such prepaid phone card schemes were illegal.


And an Aug. 1, 2007, letter by the N.C. Attorney General's office written to the Davidson County Sheriff's Office concluded the devices were illegal, as well.


"Holding the sweepstakes out as free of charge (and appending a phone card to the scheme) is a transparent effort to dodge the strictures of the General Statutes ban on slot machines and video gaming machines," wrote David Adinolfi, an assistant attorney general.


In that opinion, Adinolfi said the phone card machines do not fit under an exemption carved out by an earlier state appeals court case.


The machines' owners point to that case to say their operations are legal.


So does Carruthers, the Guilford County prosecutor. He dismissed a case Fields and other ALE agents brought against a Greensboro minimart last August.


"We don't think these machines are desirable," he said. "But we don't rewrite the appellate law; we follow the appellate law. Until the Supreme Court overturns that decision or the North Carolina legislature further defines the law, we don't feel we can go forward" with cases prosecuting the video slot operators, he said.


District Attorney Doug Henderson, Carruthers' boss, said that law enforcement agencies had not brought many video gaming cases to his attention.


"My impression is there's precious little, if any, video poker going on in Guilford County," he said.


As for the August case in Greensboro and the Rockingham County arrests in February, Henderson said the machines involved could be different or have been operated in different ways.


"We've not seen anything different," Fields said. "The machines we've seen here in Guilford operate essentially the same way the machines in Stokes and Rockingham counties do."


He added that it was up to the individual district attorneys whether to prosecute.


As for those arrested in Rockingham County last month, they're due in District Court on March 5.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com