SF Gate reports on illegal slot machine casinos that are easily found in Texas.

Casino gambling with cash payoffs is illegal in Texas. But on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon in February, you could not tell it by the scene inside a former tire shop near this Rio Grande Valley border town: a few dozen men and women gambling on 75 slot machines in windowless rooms.

Among the cattle ranches and wind-battered palm trees on U.S. Highway 83, the setting was lowbrow — free chips and soft drinks were the only amenities — but the payouts, in one of the poorest sections of Texas, were substantial, up to $4,000 per play.

After sliding their money into the machines, gamblers who scored jackpots raised their hand, yelled “Ticket!” and waited for a worker carrying a thick wad of bills to convert the points they had won to cash.

Despite laws saying otherwise, casinos thrive throughout the state, an underground billion-dollar industry that operates in a murky realm and engages in a perpetual cat-and-mouse game with the authorities.

Photo from valleycentral.com.