David Cooke, Macon Judicial Circuit district attorney (Photo: YouTube)

An agent with the Georgia Department of Revenue has been arrested on racketeering charges in a continuing investigation by the Macon Circuit's district attorney into allegedly illegal operations of legal video game machines. 

Ronald C. Huckaby, 53, a supervisory enforcement agent with the Georgia Department of Revenue, is charged with accepting bribes that included five sets of round-trip airline tickets valued at more than  $2,000 and a $13,000 Hublot watch, District Attorney David Cooke announced at a Friday news conference.

In return, Huckaby and the agents he supervised investigated alleged business competitors of Statesboro resident Nital “Nick” Raval, including Manoj Patel, Cooke said.

Huckaby was a special agent in charge in the Georgia Department of Revenue's Alcohol & Tobacco division in the district that includes Statesboro and Savannah. Raval and Patel were among five people, including a Bibb County sheriff's deputy, who were arrested last week by state revenue agents on racketeering charges.

Bibb County warrants accuse the two men of conspiring to launder money and force tax documents by creating several businesses and trusts associated with four Georgia businesses listed as holders of master licenses issued by the Georgia Lottery Commission for approximately 400 video game machines.  Patel is a registered agent of one of the master license holders, PNP Amusement Games, according to corporate records filed with the Georgia secretary of state.

Raval and Patel were also among 100 defendants named in a related civil forfeiture action that special assistant district attorneys Michael Lambros and Stacey Evans, both of Atlanta, filed on Cooke's behalf last week. Cooke said those actions were part of a sweeping gambling investigation focusing on allegations of illegal cash payouts, tax evasion, money laundering and illegal gaming.

No attorney has filed a notice of appearance on behalf of the defendants, according to the Bibb County Superior Court docket.

The DA said criminal racketeering charges against Bibb County Deputy Rahim Jamal McCarley include allegations that he engaged in bribery, tax evasion and money laundering that allowed him to pocket nearly $500,000 in profits from what Cooke alleged was illegal gambling in a convenience store he owned that housed several video gaming machines.

The charges against Huckaby also include allegations that he improperly accessed the revenue department's tax computer system in 2017 in order to provide private tax information about a competitor's tobacco license to Raval—a violation of the state's computer invasion of privacy statute, the prosecutor said.

Huckaby has resigned from the revenue department, Cooke said. A department spokesman referred questions to Gov. Brian Kemp's office, whose spokeswoman said that Huckaby, a 17-year employee, resigned Wednesday after investigators questioned him about “suspicious conduct.”

Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce said that the revenue department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation “are working closely” with the Macon DA and that Huckaby's arrest “stems in part from information recently uncovered by the GBI and revenue agents.  An internal department investigation of Huckaby is ongoing, she said.

Huckaby's arrest follows Cooke's civil racketeering and asset forfeiture suit against four companies—Statesboro firm S&W Amusements Inc., the Booray Group LLC of Savannah, Krishna Amusement Inc. and PNP amusement Games LLC. They are master license holders of more than 400 video gaming machines located in 70 businesses, many of them convenience stores and service stations, stretching from Macon to Savannah. 

Cooke accused the defendant companies of failing to pay taxes on more than $39 million in profits that were derived from what he said was the illegal operation of video gaming machines. Cooke said customers paid more than $121 million playing games on the machines and collected approximately $82 million in cash and prizes.

Cooke claimed that the companies holding licenses to lease the games set up “straw man” storefronts intended solely to make gaming machines available for allegedly illegal use. By doing so, Cooke said, the license holders could keep all the proceeds of the games instead of splitting them with store owners as state law requires. Cooke said that the storefront “share” was not reported as income by the license holders.

On Friday, Cooke again called on state legislators, who will not convene again until next January, to pass a law banning the video game machines, which are legal as long as some minimal skill is required by a player. Violations are misdemeanors under state law.  Racketeering is a felony. 

“We cannot prosecute our way out of this problem,” Cooke said in reiterating his call for a ban.  “It's clear that the limitless amount of money this industry generates is used to buy influence wherever it can, and the only way to stop it is for our legislature and our governor to act.”

Cooke's call for a ban on the game machines and the multiple racketeering arrests tied to video game machines came just weeks after the Georgia Court of Appeals overturned a felony gambling conviction Cooke secured against a Peach County restaurant owner over his operation of nine coin-operated game machines. The appeals court held that the seized machines which Cooke used as the basis for felony gambling charges against Ronnie Bartlett, 75, included only “appropriate types of games.”

The court also ruled there is no state law that a cash payout would convert an otherwise legal coin-operated game into an illegal gambling device.