Two women from New Jersey have been charged after reportedly cheating in an apparently competitive game of church bingo.
The 71-year-old Teresa Davis and 38-year-old Keasha Brockington claimed last Thursday night they had the winning game numbers during a match at St. Maria Goretti Church Hall in Runnemede, according to the Courier-Post.
But that wasn’t the truth.
That night, the prize was $200, and Davis and Brockington wanted it. But their jig was up — their toiling was foiled: a church volunteer clocked their mischievous actions almost immediately.
The two women deceptively taped the game’s winning numbers over the original numbers on their cards. A bingo volunteer who saw their trickery notified the pastor, who called the police to the church and the ladies were charged with improper behavior under a local ordinance. The women were later released on their own recognizance.
Pastor Joseph Ganiel told the New Jersey newspaper he has trained his volunteers to be on the lookout for potential swindlers. His lessons clearly paid off last week.
“I tell them to look for anything that has tape on it,” the minister said. “If it has tape, they should hold it up to the light to see if the same number is on the front and back.”
It’s not yet clear what kind of punishment Brockington and Davis could face for their wrongful actions. No prize money was paid out at the end of the game.
In more than 20 years of hosting bingo games, Ganiel said the church had never had an issue before last week’s kerfuffle.