Lucky Infinity Robbery Tracks a Statewide Cafe Pattern

Three men with handguns took cash from Lucky Infinity Sweepstakes on Hutton Street in Winston-Salem around 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2024. Staff said the men demanded money from the register and from workers, then left in a car headed north on Peters Creek Parkway. No one was hurt.

Four days later, two masked men with handguns hit another Winston-Salem sweepstakes shop before dawn. No charging paper naming the Hutton Street crew has been made public.

Three Men With Handguns Walked Into Lucky Infinity

Winston-Salem police were called to 1098 Hutton Street around 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 2, 2024, after workers reported an armed robbery. Staff said three men in dark clothes came through the door, displayed handguns, and demanded cash from the register as well as from employees, details that went out with the first Hutton Street robbery account.

The men left with some cash. Police gave no figure for the loss and no description of the car beyond the road it took. Officers said no one was injured.

Anyone with a lead was asked to call Winston-Salem police at 336-773-7700 or Crime Stoppers at 336-727-2800. A Spanish line sits at 336-728-3904. Those numbers are still the public path into an investigation that has not produced a named defendant.

Four Days Later, Another Cafe on Reynolds Park Road

At 5 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, officers were called to 777 Sweepstakes at 2969 Reynolds Park Road. Employees said two men in dark clothes and masks pulled handguns and demanded money from people inside, including from the skill games.

The men ran north on Reynolds Park Road with an undisclosed amount of cash. Police again reported no injuries. The two jobs sit 4 days apart, both overnight takeovers of sweepstakes shops, both built on handguns and dark clothing, both ending in a northbound escape and no names in the first police account.

Winston-Salem already knew this script. Around 11:18 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, two men in all-black clothes walked into Lucky 777 Skill Cafe at 2210 West Clemmonsville Road with handguns, took cash from customers, and took their phones before leaving on foot.

Winston-Salem Sweepstakes Shops Keep Getting Hit

The Hutton Street crew did not invent a new target. Between late October 2024 and March 2026, police in the city answered a string of armed calls at shops that sell play on video terminals and keep cash at the counter.

WINSTON-SALEM CAFE HOLDUPS

The road the Lucky Infinity suspects used as an exit came back. On March 30, 2026, three men in black took cash from Tapper Sweepstakes on Peters Creek Parkway around 7:20 a.m. and left in a new-model silver four-door sedan.

The city’s cafe counters have been easy marks for years, not one winter. In 2018, two men with handguns robbed AIA Sweepstakes at 3499 N. Patterson Avenue and also took property from patrons. On Aug. 19, 2022, officers found Myrick Malone Dodd, 24, outside Mystic Sweepstakes at 1101 South Broad Street around 3:44 a.m. after a man pulled a gun during an argument and demanded keys to the cash drawer. A customer called police during the fight. Dodd was charged with armed robbery, larceny of a firearm, assault on a government official, and weapons counts. A second man ran off.

Why These Counters Hold So Much Cash

Sweepstakes cafes in North Carolina sell time on video terminals that look and sound like slot machines. Many take cash only, and payouts go back across the same counter in cash. That drawer is still there after midnight, often in a shop with blacked-out glass and a thin night staff.

The shops occupy a hole in the law. In 2010 the General Assembly passed a statute that bans electronic sweepstakes machines used to run a prize game through an “entertaining display,” the legal phrase for video poker, video keno, matching-symbol games, and other chance play on a screen. A first offense is a Class 1 misdemeanor. A second is a Class H felony. A third is a Class G felony. Each machine can be charged as its own count.

Operators still unlock the doors. Some hang “skill based” signs and sell internet time or gift certificates as a cover product. Accounts from inside Triangle cafes describe cash-only counters, blacked-out windows, and armed guards searching patrons. Cash on a counter, in a business the state has tried to shut and has not erased, is a target a crew can plan around.

Safes, Crowbars, and a $23,148 Night in Pitt County

The Winston-Salem jobs were walk-in holdups. Across eastern North Carolina, other crews have gone in after hours with tools, and some have tied people up.

CASH SHOPS HIT ACROSS THE STATE

• Pitt County, Aug. 1, 2025: Deputies were called at 4:17 a.m. to Lucky 7 Sweepstakes at 3324 N.C. 903 North in Stokes and at 5:47 a.m. to 264 Sweepstakes at 6415 N.C. 264 East in Greenville. Warrants say the crew cracked a safe at Lucky 7 and took $23,148. Sgt. Lee Darnell of the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office said warrants went out on Aug. 22 for four men: Marquavious Jermel Atkinson, 29, and Demetric Jamarus Ward, 28, both of Wilson; Tyrone Monta Batts, 30, of Wilson; and Marcus Keonta Lashley, 32, of La Grange.
• Lenoir County, 2024-25: Deputies arrested Brian Dijon Morton, 33, of Dudley, as he ran from Carolina Sweepstakes at 5777 Highway 70 West. The Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office then tied him to a string of cafe break-ins and charged him with 32 counts, including 9 felony breaking-and-entering counts, 7 safecracking counts, 3 larceny-after-breaking counts, and 8 conspiracy counts, plus burglary tools and possession of a firearm by a felon on the arrest night.
• Creedmoor, Dec. 15, 2025: Butner Public Safety said two masked people robbed Skillz on N.C. Highway 56 at gunpoint and that employees were tied up. Warrants named Corey Albright, 45, of Graham, and Jequan Deandre Currie, 32, of Burlington, for conspiracy, and Demonte Raekwon Fuller, 29, and Charles Lewis Compton, 49, both of Burlington, for robbery with a dangerous weapon and two counts of first-degree kidnapping each, with Compton also charged as a felon in possession of a firearm.
• Garysburg, October 2026: Assistant Chief Melvin Garner said a man in a dark hooded sweatshirt walked into GIC Sweepstakes on Old Highway Road with a silver revolver, took three bags of cash, and also pulled money from the register. Garner described him as bald on top with graying hair on the sides.

Those jobs are not charged as part of the Hutton Street case. They show the same kind of drawer, sometimes in a safe, sometimes in a bag, sitting in shops that stay open on cash.

North Carolina Banned the Machines in 2010

Then-Gov. Bev Perdue signed the 2010 electronic sweepstakes ban after earlier video-poker statutes kept getting rewritten around in software. The statute says it means to close every workaround.

It is the intent of this section to prohibit any mechanism that seeks to avoid application of this section through the use of any subterfuge or pretense whatsoever.

N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-306.4(c)

The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the cafe ban in 2012. On Dec. 31, 2024, the Court of Appeals issued an appeals ruling on video sweepstakes that went against No Limit Games, a Robeson County operator. On Sept. 9, 2026, the Supreme Court heard that fight again. Craig Schauer, a Raleigh lawyer for the company, told the justices a video sweepstakes is illegal only if the game itself is a game of chance. Special Deputy Attorney General Michelle Liguori said the General Assembly meant to cut the whole category down.

Raids still land unevenly. Harnett County’s narcotics unit took about 130 computers, 20 stand-up machines, and $50,000 from one shop. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office seized 16 gambling machines in Fayetteville. Sheriff Johnathan Morgan said illegal gambling “poses significant threats to society and affects mental health, leading to increased violent crimes due to financial hardships.”

Legal sports betting launched in North Carolina on March 11, 2024. The cafes never received a license under that system. They kept the cash counters, and those counters kept getting emptied at gunpoint.

The Hutton Street Case Still Has No Names

WHAT WE KNOW

• The call: Officers were sent to Lucky Infinity Sweepstakes at 1098 Hutton Street around 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2024.
• The method: Staff said three men displayed handguns and demanded cash from the register and from employees, then left north on Peters Creek Parkway.
• The harm: Police reported no injuries.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The take: No public figure has been released for the cash carried out of Lucky Infinity.
• The car: Police described a vehicle and a direction, not a make, plate, or driver.
• The link: No public filing ties the Hutton Street crew to the Dec. 6 job at 777 Sweepstakes, the October Skill Cafe robbery, or the 2026 Tapper holdup.
• The names: No arrest in the Lucky Infinity case has been announced.

The tip lines from that Monday night are still the ones police publish: 336-773-7700 for Winston-Salem police, 336-727-2800 for Crime Stoppers, 336-728-3904 in Spanish. The three men who walked into Lucky Infinity have not been identified in any charging document released to the public, and the kind of drawer they emptied is still open in cafes from Hutton Street to Garysburg.