Raids lead to charges against businesses run by onetime video poker kingpin

A series of video gambling raids last year across Southwestern Pennsylvania has led to criminal charges against two companies linked to John “Duffy” Conley, Western Pennsylvania’s onetime video poker kingpin.

Investigators seized more than 400 illegal video gaming machines from locations in a dozen counties, including Allegheny and Westmoreland.

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office announced that Buffalo Skill Games Inc. in Bridgeville and J.J. Amusement Inc. on Pittsburgh’s South Side have been charged with operating as corrupt organizations.

The attorney general’s office said both companies are owned and operated by Conley, who has not been charged.

Conley has a history of arrests and prison time for gambling crimes.

Authorities conducted dozens of raids on March 12, 2024, at convenience stores, bars, restaurants, gas stations and stand-alone storefronts that were operating as mini casinos.

They seized not only the gaming machines but also more than $538,000 in cash.

Buffalo Skill Games and J.J. Amusement Inc. provided the gaming devices to locations in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Cambria, Crawford, Indiana, Somerset, Venango, Erie, Washington, Armstrong, and Westmoreland counties, according to a criminal complaint.

Skill vs. chance

Undercover Pennsylvania State Police investigators and agents from the attorney general’s office fanned out to 47 locations known to have video gaming devices to determine whether they were were illegal gambling machines or legal “skill” games.

The determining factor as to whether a video gaming device that makes a payout is illegal, the complaint said, is whether the outcome of the game is determined predominantly by the skill of the player — or by chance.

“Officers determined that the vast majority of the machines in question had no ‘skill’ game feature,” the complaint said, making them illegal under Pennsylvania law. “At some locations, only a single machine had such a ‘skill’ feature; at most of the locations, none did.”

In reviewing the machines in question, investigators said they verified the machines took cash or a voucher redeemable for cash.

During the raids, troopers and agents executed search warrants at locations including Carnegie, Frazer, North Versailles, McKees Rocks, Pittsburgh’s North Side, New Kensington, Monaca, Cranberry, Johnstown, Linesville, Titusville, Blairsville, Somerset, Franklin and Oil City.

It was a productive day, according to the complaint.

Investigators said they found three illegal video gaming devices at the Pittsburgh Mills mall in Frazer as well as $11,506 in cash.

Chrissy’s News Mini Casino in North Versailles had 18 illegal machines, the attorney general’s office said, while a handful of locations had 15, including Win it all @ the Mall in Butler, where $41,000 was seized, and at 777 mini casino in Aliquippa.

In most cases, those establishments had ticket redemption terminals where tickets showing the winnings from the machines could be redeemed for cash value.

Another search warrant, executed at the companies’ warehouse in Homestead, turned up $175,087 in cash as well as an elaborate video surveillance system keeping track of the gaming machines spread across Western Pennsylvania, according to the complaint.

Dozens of monitors displayed one or more camera views of the video gaming devices that “captured all of the gambling activity happening at dozens of locations,” the complaint said.

The monitors were labeled by location and provided live audio and video feeds.

Financial records obtained by investigators for several bank accounts showed the companies were reinvesting profits from the illegal devices into the maintenance, operation and growth of the business, the complaint said.

The attorney general’s office said the investigation is ongoing.

‘Pathological gambler’

Conley, 61, spent more than a dozen years in federal prison after being convicted in 1995 of conspiracy and running a $15 million-a-year video gambling organization. Prosecutors said Conley oversaw 4,000 video poker machines.

He was ordered to serve nine years in prison and was released in January 2004.

But by February 2006, he’d been arrested again for violating the terms of his supervised release by gambling.

That time, investigators said, he was accepting and laying off bets from other bookies involving millions of dollars.

At a 2006 sentencing hearing for violating his supervised release, Conley claimed to have a gambling addiction.

A pastoral counselor testified at that hearing that Conley was “a pathological gambler” whose activities started at age 9.

By 16, his gambling was compulsive.

“I used to think gambling was good, harmless fun,” Conley told the court. “Now I realize it’s destructive and evil.”

A judge ordered Conley to spend four more years in federal prison.

In 2009, Conley pleaded guilty to one count of conducting an illegal gambling business and was ordered to serve three more years of supervised release.

At the time, even the feds thought Conley shouldn’t serve any more time, noting that he’d likely spent more time behind bars for gambling-related offenses than any other person in the history of the Western District of Pennsylvania.

“There comes a time when enough is enough,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan Conway, “and the government believes that we have reached that point, and further believes that the defendant should now be given yet another chance to lead a productive and crime-free life.”

Court records show Conley had no additional arrests in Pennsylvania until 2023 in Delaware County, and then last year in Cumberland County.

In the Cumberland case, Conley faced 30 initial charges, but pleaded guilty on March 17 to just one misdemeanor count of gambling devices.

He was given no further penalty.