Some convenience store shoppers got quite a surprise Friday night as the Port Arthur Police Department performed a sting of illegal 8-liner gambling machines.

Thousands of dollars were seized during the operation.

Led by Sgt. Scott Gaspard and Officer Heather Primm, five teams of PAPD officers, along with FBI agents, Narcotics teams, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) officers and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) officers, swarmed five locations across the city with gambling search warrants.

Primm said the Street Crime officers have been investigating the convenience stores for the past few months for making cash payments to 8-liner winners — better known as gambling. With search warrants in hand, the teams made their moves into the stores simultaneously around 6:40 p.m. Friday night.

“We made the decision to go at the same time so there could be no communication between the stores,” Primm said.

At the Stacy Market, 3248 Gulfway Drive, officers found about 25 people playing the 8-liner machines in the back of the convenience store. Detaining all inside the store, officers questioned the store clerk as well as each person playing the machines.

Officers questioned the players and video-taped the interviews into record as each player reported their experiences with the store and the 8-liners. While it is not illegal to play an 8-liner, it is illegal to pay out cash for winning.

“I’ve never won playing these machines,” said one woman to a Narcotics officer. “If I had won, I’d probably just put the money back into the machine.”

While some players said they only played for fun and had never won, others confessed that they had won and were paid in cash by store employees.

“The most I’ve won was $130,” a man quietly told officers. “They (store employees) paid me in cash.”

A husband and wife 8-liner playing team in the store told Narcotics officers that they have been going to the store twice a week for the past two months. The wife explained that the most she ever won was $50 and was paid in twenty, ten and five dollar bills.

Each player was allowed to leave the store after officers recorded their names, phone numbers and addresses. The store clerk was not so lucky however. Because the store owner, referred to as “Charlie”, never arrived at the store despite multiple phone calls to him, officers turned their attention to the clerk who said they only give 8-liner winners cases of soda and gift certificates.

After speaking with the clerk and allowing the owner nearly 40 minutes to arrive at the store with the key to the 8-liner machines, officers used a battering ram to open the machines. Inside they found thousands of dollars in cash. With some machines only holding $30, others held stacks of $20 bills.

Primm explained that after opening the machines, officers scoured the store looking for records of tickets paid out to winning customers. All evidence collected in the sting, she said, would be brought to the station for the investigation. However, collecting evidence would be difficult as many of the stores did not keep records of their illegal transactions.

No arrests were made in the sting. The evidence from the investigation will be submitted to the District Attorney for review.