CMPD raids east Charlotte gambling arcade, seizes nearly $40,000 and 62 devices
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police seized $37,983, and 62 gambling devices from an illegal arcade in east Charlotte on Tuesday, according to court filings.
A search warrant for 999 Arcade on East Independence Boulevard said police seized documents and security camera DVRs, slot machine gaming electronics boards, and “hard drives ‘sweepstakes.’” It’s not clear what “hard drives ‘sweepstakes’” are.
Police also took a 9mm pistol, a shotgun, and a gambling accounting system. The warrant listed six people involved with the arcade. Police searched their vehicles.
Police conducted undercover operations at the business over several months, records said. The department was made aware of the location in November 2025 after two men went to an officer in CMPD’s ABC Unit about opening a location on Brookshire Boulevard.
The two men — one who was the owner of 999 and the other an armed security guard — said they already owned and operated an arcade on East Independence Boulevard at an old bar called Fusion. The duo wanted to open an arcade at a building where a previous illegal gambling establishment was shut down, the warrant said.
An officer told the men that what they were doing at 999 Arcade was illegal, and that the armed security guard could not work as freelance security. He had to work for a registered security guard company and the business, the warrant said.
Police went undercover later that month at the East Independence Boulevard location.
“While inside 999 Arcade undercover law enforcement personnel observed 5 ten-person table-top ‘Fish’ gambling devices, approximately 20 slot machines, and 3 four-person stand-up ‘Fish’ gambling devices,” the warrant said.
The word “fish” comes from the games loaded on the gambling devices. Players shoot at fish swimming across the screen and hope to hit a fin, which results in winning money. But the games, and arcades, were ruled illegal by the state Supreme Court in 2022.
Fish arcades are increasingly rare in Charlotte since the Supreme Court’s ruling shut many down, but police have raided locations operating illegally in recent years. Police shut down two locations in February 2023, and another in west Charlotte in 2024.
Each time police went back to 999 Arcade, including March and May of this year, they observed gambling devices, people using money to play at machines, and employees paying out winnings. Police also paid money to play on the gambling devices, the warrant said.
Firearms were near the security guard each time officers visited the arcade, the warrant said.
None of the gambling devices had tax stamps on them, as required by North Carolina General Statutes, the warrant said.
Video appeared on an Instagram page called charlitttnc of what appeared to be a SWAT team raiding the arcade. The video appeared to show the SWAT team using a tactical vehicle known as a “Rook” to breach the location.
CMPD declined to verify the validity of the video.
“All that is publicly available for any incident would be located in the public narrative of the records request,” an anonymous member of the CMPD public affairs team wrote in an email to The Charlotte Observer on Thursday.
However, that isn’t true; CMPD regularly releases certain evidence and details about incidents. In the past, CMPD has released details and photos from a fish arcade raid, aside from any public records request, and the former police chief made comments about a raid while a criminal investigation was pending.
