SC men plead guilty to operating video gambling ring

Three South Carolina men pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to Conducting an Illegal Gambling Business, according to U.S. Attorney Beth Drake.

The illegal gambling run by Myrtle Beach residents Lawson Mangum, Anthony Todd and Herbert Todd involved video gaming machines, according to the indictment. More than 50 of these illegal gambling machines were seized by SLED and ICE-Homeland Security Investigations.

The indictment didn’t specifically refer to the gambling machines as video poker machines, according to Brad Parham with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Florence office.

“Video gambling includes all types of things,” Parham said. “These games of chance include a lot of different things, but each machine had a record of bets and wagers.”

The three men, along with at least two more unnamed individuals, operated an illegal gambling businesses in the Myrtle Beach area beginning as early as 2014.

Mangum supplied the gambling machines to the Todd brothers who then installed the machines at their various gambling locations. The Todd brothers collected the gambling proceeds from the machines and split the proceeds with Mangum.

Ledgers seized showed from January 2014 to August 2015, this gambling operation made a profit of more than $218,000. The overall money taken in was more than $500,000, according to Parham.

The maximum penalty the defendants can receive is a 5-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.