State-regulated machines keep only 8 percent of the cash bet. The gray machines keep 30 percent to 35 percent of the cash bet. Any way you look at it, this is big cash and a major public issue. West Virginians are betting billions of dollars on gray machines, and expecting illegal payouts. The state is losing a lot of tax money.
Most public officials try to avoid the issue.
Bill Pepper, a Charleston lawyer whose firm handles more bankruptcies than any other firm in the state, says gambling losses account for a relatively small number of personal bankruptcies, between 1 percent and 2 percent of all of them. Calvert and Arnold Baldwin work in the West Virginia Lottery's central computer room on the banks of the Kanawha River in Charleston. But these machines create a disrespect for the law. They are wide open. This is the most obvious illegal activity that goes on without government intervention.