In 2023, a man named Daniel Storie sued the Robeson County sheriff for threatening to shut down Storie’s business, No Limit Games, which operated video sweepstakes in the rural county along the South Carolina border. Gaming was a family affair; four years earlier, Storie and his father, Danny Storie, had been arrested for running illegal gambling operations in neighboring Bladen and Columbus counties. Robeson County Superior Court ruled in favor of No Limit Games, concluding its sweepstakes weren’t unlawful contests of chance because players could reveal outcomes on computer terminals without playing the animated slot-like games. North Carolina quickly appealed.
The next month, July 2023, Daniel Storie donated $6,500 to the campaign of Judge Jefferson Griffin, who was running for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Danny Storie, the father, contributed the same amount to the Griffin campaign the same day. When the Stories made these donations, Griffin was among 15 North Carolina appellate court judges who could have been selected to a three-judge panel that would hear the son’s appeal.
