“B-I-N-G-O spells money — big money.”
In the late 1970s, the Seminole Native American Tribe opened a high-stakes bingo hall on its reservation in Broward County, Florida. The county’s sheriff, Robert Butterworth (no relation to the syrup icon), threatened to enforce Florida’s bingo statue on the reservation, which limited the cash prizes given out to players (a rule that applied to competing bingo ventures throughout the state, which provided the Seminole Tribe with a significant competitive advantage).
I covered the story for the CBS Evening News in August of 1981.
Sheriff Butterworth, by the way, would go on to lose multiple legal battles in his quest to regulate Seminole Bingo, including with the Supreme Court.
