Last updated: December 02, 2024
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has frozen all city funds of Lipscomb, claiming officials allowed illegal activities at Jay’s Charity Bingo and benefited from its operations. The freeze has halted city services and payments to employees, leaving Mayor Tonja Baldwin struggling to pay workers. The Attorney General’s office demands financial records before lifting the freeze. This action follows the discovery of stolen bingo machines at the bingo hall, linked to a previous raid in Selma. The freeze remains in effect until a December 2 court hearing, as Marshall continues his crackdown on electronic bingo operations following a 2022 Supreme Court ruling legalizing only traditional bingo.
Alabama’s Attorney General, Steve Marshall, has frozen the city of Lipscomb’s funds, claiming officials allowed an illegal bingo operation to run in the city.
Attorney General Steve Marshall said he would not unfreeze the assets of the city of Lipscomb, which has a population of 2,086 until city officials provide all financial records to the state. Marshall believes that the city, located in the Birmingham metropolitan area, has been making money off the operations of Jay’s Charity Bingo, according to court filings.
The freeze signifies that no financial transactions can occur at city hall, which consequently implies that employees are not receiving their salaries and services for residents have been halted.
In September, Marshall’s office arrested five individuals affiliated with Jay’s Charity Bingo and charged them with third-degree burglary after discovering stolen bingo terminals on the premises.
The agents representing Marshall rapidly realized the machines were illegal. They displayed stickers from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office showing evidence that those machines were recently confiscated as a result of an August raid carried out by the office of the District Attorney at some other alternative bingo hall 80 miles down at the city called Selma.
There were also machines parked outside Selma during preparations, but they seemed to be gone before the place obtained a seizure order that awaited the authorities.
“The brazen nature of stealing an object which has an evidence sticker merely shows what some people are willing to do,” Marshall revealed to AL.com at that point.
Jay’s Charity Bingo was closed too, by the raids which occurred in August; however, it reopened after apparently being given control of the stolen machines according to court documents. And finally, the business remains under an asset freeze.
Marshall’s lawsuit, which was filed last week, claims that the city of Lipscomb bears responsibility for licensing Jay’s Charity Bingo and continues to receive “illegal funding” sourced from the “illegal gambling.”
For decades, the legality of electronic bingo machines has been at the center of Alabama’s court battles. Operators have claimed that these machines comply with Alabama’s bingo laws, but Marshall has always considered them “a menace to public health, morals, safety, and welfare.” The matter was solved in October 2022 when the Supreme Court of the state ruled that only traditional bingo games were allowed in its jurisdiction. After that, Marshall began enforcing the law within a short period. A court order freezes Lipscomb’s accounts as of this writing, pending a December 2 court hearing.
