For years, police have warned that unregulated gambling or gaming machines — popularly known as ‘poker boxes’ — were becoming a magnet for criminal activity.

Today, as the authorities move to formalise and regulate Jamaica’s rapidly expanding gaming industry, a growing wave of thefts, break-ins and illicit trafficking involving the machines is threatening to undermine those efforts.

From the hills of St Andrew North to communities in Clarendon, Manchester and St Elizabeth, police investigations over the last several years have revealed a persistent criminal market centred on gaming machines, with thieves targeting businesses for the cash stored inside the devices and, in some cases, stealing the machines altogether.