As promised a couple months ago, City Attorney Dennis Herrera has succeeded in shutting down an illegal gambling parlor that accounted for "a hundred-fold increase in police calls" to the Excelsior neighborhood in a single year. The Net Stop Business Center purported to be an internet cafe but was actually a hub of illegal activity centered around computerized slot machine games.
Herrera's office says in a release that after bringing their civil suit against the business in November, they got Net Stop's owners to agree to close their doors within 60 days. They also named the North Carolina-based software company responsible for the slot machine games, Figure 8 Technologies, in the suit, and they'll be coughing up a $25,000 fine and deactivating their software anywhere that it's in use in California. (Also, they're web domain has gone dead, so they may be going out of business or changing things up.) The software allowed players to purchase electronic points for slots and then exchange those points for cash.
Neighbors and Yelpers complained that Net Stop's location attracted a lot of sketchy characters, alleged prostitutes, and bad behavior. Since Net Stop moved in in late 2012, Herrera cited an increase in police calls to that address that numbered around 202 in one year.
Previously: City Attorney To Close Illegal Gambling Cafes In Excelsior
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