The Los Angeles based owners of 57 gaming machines seized in March by Garden Grove police and California Department of Justice is suing authorities in Orange County Superior Court for the return of the equipment.
Attorneys for Intelligame, LLC. claim in an April 28 complaint that the cops had no right to take the machines “because they are not gambling or lottery devices and the user of the seized machines does not receive any piece of money, credit or thing of value . . .”
Lawyer Stephen H. Mattern also said the company wants the return of money contained in the machines when they were seized from Cafe Di Vang 2, Cafe Di Vang 3, Cafe Dien Anh, Cafe Sao, Cafe Lovers, Eden Cafe, GZ Cafe, Miss Saigon cafe, Missi Cafe, Sky Cafe and Stars Cafe.
The 11 cafes–popular with Vietnamese Americans–are in Garden Grove.
Court files show the case has been assigned to Superior Court Judge Charles Margines.
Government officials have not yet responded to the lawsuit, but police have previously said that cafe employees converted gaming machines into illegal gambling devices.
If Margines determines that the machines were properly seized, police are entitled to destroy them.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
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