5 Bessemer men charged in ‘brazen’ theft of seized Selma bingo machines found in Lipscomb gambling hall

Five Bessemer men have been charged with stealing gambling machines that were seized in Selma by the state attorney general’s office in an illegal gambling investigation and recovered in the back room of a Lipscomb bingo hall.

Investigators knew they were the same machines because of the evidence stickers on them, the attorney general said.

”The brazen nature of stealing something that has an evidence sticker on it just shows you how far some of these people will go,’’ Attorney General Steve Marshall said in an interview with AL.com.

Court records made public Wednesday show those charged are Charles Allen Robinson, 52, Charles Vanderford Jr., 61, Eric Daniel Hurt, 39, Michael Ray, 56, and William Patrick Humphries.

They are charged with third-degree burglary. The theft took place on Monday.

Marshall said the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office alerted his office that the machines had been removed from Charity Bingo in Selma, which was one five establishments in the city the attorney general alleged to have conducted illegal gambling and shut down through a temporary restraining order.

The stolen machines were found Tuesday in a back room at Jay’s Charity Bingo in Lipscomb. 

Because the machines were under temporary restraining order versus a raid where they haul off the machines, they remained at the Selma facility and were locked up to prohibit them from being used.

”The vehicle in which we shut these businesses down was through a civil order enjoining the business from operating while we prove through litigation that those in fact are gambling machines,’’ Marshall said.

”In essence, it’s not the historic go in and raid and seize the machines and carry them off,’’ he said.

”You’re basically locking down these facilities until the litigation is complete so the reason why they’re able to do what they do is because we secured the facility, locked it up and then these people broke in and took them out,’’ Marshall said.

Marshall called it the “ultimate irony” that the suspects are charged with a felony while alleged gambling facility owners would only be charged with a misdemeanor.

”We need to make gambling a felony offense so that we can deter people from doing it,’’ he said.

”The narrative that I tried to offer during the last gambling debate is you don’t have to legalize gambling to enhance enforcement,’’ Marshall said.

“We can use the tools available to us and raise these from misdemeanor to felony offenses and I think that is the seriousness of the offense and where it ought to be to begin with.”

Marshall said he’s interested to find out the link between what was going on in Selma and what his office believes is going on in the Birmingham.

”We need to dispel the narrative that these are small mom-and-pop operations to help charities and they’re not,’’ he said.

“These are criminal enterprises that are connected, and we believe are doing more than simply gambling operations but have become a place in which you can launder money.“

Marshall said investigators don’t yet know that link.

”That’s clearly where we’re going,’’ he said.

The attorney for the owners of the Selma bingo hall, speaking to AL.com prior to news of the arrests, said his clients were baffled by the theft.

“We’re rather shocked over it,” said Michael Strickland, an attorney representing defendants in a civil lawsuit filed Aug. 16 in Dallas County Circuit Court by the state of Alabama against people alleged to be operating Selma Charity Bingo.

Strickland said operators of Selma Charity Bingo had no knowledge that confiscated machines were removed from the building and no idea how they ended up at Jay’s Charity Bingo in Lipscomb.

“Absolutely not,” Strickland said. “Everybody is rather shocked and surprised.”

Strickland said there was extensive media coverage of the shutdown of bingo halls in Selma, which may have inspired criminals to steal the machines that were still in the building, marked as evidence.

“I’m speculating that someone else could have helped themselves to an opportunity,” Strickland said. “Who’s going to have more knowledge on how to open machines than people who may have some themselves?”

The operators of the Selma bingo hall that was shut down contend that their operation was legal, he said.

“The attorney general must prove that the machines were operating illegally in the state of Alabama,” Strickland said.

“This is involving machines that the City of Selma and their inspectors, not just one, but at least two inspectors viewed, operated and said they are compliant with the laws of the state of Alabama and thus provided them their license at that time to operate.”

A former operator of the Lipscomb bingo hall was killed last year in what appeared at the time to be a random act of violence.

Jamal Ali Abdulahe, 44, was shot to death about 3:30 a.m. at a Marathon gas station at 4567 Pinson Valley Parkway on Nov. 2, 2023, according to Birmingham police.

Abdulahe was previously the operator of Jay’s Charity Bingo, according to attorney Jim Stevens, who represented Abdulahe after Jay’s was one of 14 bingo halls raided and shut down by the attorney general’s office with temporary restraining orders in April 2023.