Casino Icons Blasts Alabama Bingo Halls; Priases Supreme Court

Slot Machine Vendor warns “Alabama’s bingo halls are wrought with wanna-be gangsters,
illegal slot machines, and very shady commercial casino operations posing as charities.”
Las Vegas, Nevada (PRWEB) November 18, 2009 -- A leading slot machine vendor and management company
took aim at Alabama’s fledging charity bingo operators during the casino industry’s largest trade show and a
meeting of hundreds of casino professionals in Las Vegas this week.

Synergy Gaming’s Gary Green warned the gathering that “based on my decades of experience, I have observed
that Alabama’s bingo halls seem to be wrought with wanna-be gangsters, illegal slot machines, and very shady
commercial casino operations posing as charities.”

At the same time, Green praised the six guidelines issued last week by the Alabama Supreme Court saying, “if
every vendor complies with these guidelines, then the Court has just legalized and regulated the games.
Unfortunately they did not address the issue of business model.”

A recent court case in Alabama (Walker County Circuit CV-2007-0400), however concurred with Green that at
least some of the operational models are illegal. The same court closed down a number casinos purportedly
operated by charities but found, by the court, to be illegal commercial operations.

“Unless the courts step in and clean up the mess, these elements are going to cause untold suffering for the
beneficiaries of legitimate charities and cost Alabama millions of dollars in lost revenue by ultimately destroying
legitimate gaming in the State,” cautioned Gary Green, Synergy’s Executive Vice President, a
three-decade-casino veteran, former Vice President for Donald Trump, and author of the book “Gambling Man”

“The absolute lowest rung of our industry’s ladder has set up shop in Alabama and the State is reacting by trying
to throw the baby out with the bath water,” continued Green, who recently moved into a Birmingham apartment
on behalf of Synergy.

He continued, “companies and individuals that have been thrown out of almost every legitimate gaming State
now have set up shop in Alabama because local legislation and the courts have failed to regulate the industry. The
“usual suspects” from South Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma (companies that can’t get licensed in Nevada, New
Jersey, or even in most Indian jurisdictions) have trucked in thousands of illegal slot machines being passed off as
bingo machines.”

“Because the Alabama controlling jurisdictions and the courts serving them have failed to implement even basic
standards, like GLI 22, I see dozens of manufacturers of illegal games dominating the state,” observed Synergy’s
Vice President, explaining that the games in question have not been and cannot be certified as electronic bingo
devices.

“One judge actually rejected the regulatory standards set up for Indian Gaming and for regulated states, using the
old Orville Faubus argument that their State is special and doesn’t need Federal laws or lessons from other
States,” Green mused, citing 25 C.F.R. Section 500 as having resolved the regulatory standards issue.
Commenting on the Alabama Supreme Court, in their latest Whitehall ruling (Appeals from Lowndes Circuit
Court (CV-09- 900019) outlining six requirements that determine a legal bingo game, Green said, “These are

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GREAT requirements because they remove the “grey area” and blatantly illegal games from the market and force
the manufacturers and the charities to use ONLY legal bingo games in Alabama.”

Reviewing the high Court’s six criteria, Green commented on each:

“ 1. The Court said’ each player uses one or more cards with spaces arranged in five columns and five rows, with
an alphanumeric or similar designation assigned to each space. ‘ A true “class II” machine displays this card ON
THE GAME SCREEN (not on another screen, not invisible, not “hidden” or “virtual”). Perfect,” Green noted.”

‘2. Alphanumeric or similar designations are randomly drawn and announced one by one.’ Here the Court
insisted that the electronic balls must appear on the screen one at a time…not all at once. The balls must appear
one by one…as in the NIGC’s most recent Class II regulations. Certified Class II machines have this functionality
in their “true bingo” setting.

‘3. In order to play, each player must pay attention to the values announced; if one of the values matches a value
on one or more of the player's cards, the player must physically act by marking his or her card accordingly.’ This
is the “double daub” feature that has been so controversial in Indian Gaming. This requires the player to hit the
DAUB button to match the bingo card to the balls drawn. This function was a requirement of the 2005 third draft
of the federal Government’s current Electronic Bingo regulations and all LEGAL electronic bingo machines
should have this functionality.

‘4. A player can fail to pay proper attention or to properly mark his or her card, and thereby miss an opportunity
to be declared a winner.’ This is also a function of that “double daub” or “triple touch” feature. If the player fails
to daub the marked card (i.e. fails to hit the daub button when there is a matching pattern, then that player does
NOT win — even though the matching pattern is a “winner”. In order to win the player MUST daub (“properly
mark”) their card.

‘5. A player must recognize that his or her card has a ‘bingo,’ i.e., a predetermined pattern of matching values,
and in turn announce to the other players and the announcer that this is the case before any other player does so.’
All LEGAL and properly installed electronic bingo machines provide this functionality by ringing a bell and
flashing the “candle” light on top of the winning player’s machine —only IF the player has properly daubed the
winning pattern. This announces to other players that a bingo has been one on that ball draw.

‘6. The game of bingo contemplates a group activity in which multiple players compete against each other to be
the first to properly mark a card with the predetermined winning pattern and announce that fact.’ All LEGAL
electronic bingo machines REQUIRE two or more players in order for the game to be legitimate. Moreover, no
two machines side-by-side should be operating from the same ball draw (thus preventing one person from playing
two machines in order to operate the game),” Green concluded his praising review.

“The third largest casino in the world (in terms of number of machines) is in Alabama and the large publically
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traded machine companies like IGT, Bally, Multimedia and so on are in state too; but only in jurisdictions that
have insisted, like that one, on true electronic bingo (Class II machines). You just won’t find the legitimate
companies and the legitimate charities under the same roof with those rogue operators; the grey-market boys are
not welcomed and nowhere to be found.” the casino developer continued.

“To make matters worse, it appears that many of the charities (who, according to 16 different amendments to the
Alabama Constitution, are the only entities that legally can operate bingo casinos) have been duped by
commercial operators who have decades-long histories of running “grey market” quasi-legal casino operations in
dozens of states. Many of those operators, if they have not been arrested in other states, at least have been
repeatedly closed by law enforcement in every State they have set up shop. In Alabama it is even worse because
of all the local copy-cat “investors” who are trying to “behind-the-scenes” run large commercial casinos while
pretending to be part of a charity,” maintained Green, noting that Synergy has been in the forefront of trying to
assure that only the Charities operate the bingo halls.

Green cited South Carolina’s enactment of House Bill 3834 which banned many of those companies from
operating in that state and the subsequent seizure of games by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the
Oklahoma Docket Nos. NIGC 2000-6 AND 2000-1, as well as Ohio’s United States v. 137 Draw Poker-Type
Machines & Six Slot Machines, 606 F. Supp. 747, 754 (N.D. Ohio 1984), aff’d without op., 765 F.2d 147 (6th cir.
1985) (electronic video draw poker machines held to be gambling devices within the meaning of 15 U.S.C. §
1171(a)(2)); United States v. Sixteen Electronic Gambling Devices, 603 F. Supp. 32, 34 (D. Haw. 1984).

“The tragedy of it all is that the legitimate charitable operations and the very legitimate manufacturing companies
have been pulled into the same mire as these rogue companies and as a result Alabama could possibly lose
millions of dollars in tax revenue as well as millions of dollars for legitimate charitable work,” he said.

“The whole mess could easily be corrected by one good judge’s order to implement minimum regulatory
standards for the games and the operations,” Green pointed out.

Synergy has spent the last several months in Birmingham where they have been teaching charities how to operate
their own casinos and how to differentiate between legitimate electronic bingo machines and illegal slot machines
posing as “Class II” machines.

“The very term “SYNERGY”, coined by Buckminster Fuller, means that “whole is greater than the sum of its
parts.” This is exactly why Synergy has been in Alabama: helping these charities deliver services far beyond their
ability to do so without the combined….”synergy”,” Green concluded.

###

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Contact Information
Gary Green
Synergy Gaming
http://www.SynergyGaming.us
(954) 678-9578

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You can read the online version of this press release here.

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