LEWISTON — There’s a sign on the door of the Cavalier Club Bingo Hall that says “Bingo Cancelled, Management.”

The hall abruptly closed on June 1 when the hall’s manager locked the door, ending the weekly games.

According to 74-year-old Richard Laliberte, who runs the popular bingo games for Cavalier Towne and Country Club corporation, he’s not feeling well and needed to take a break.

According to Sgt. William Gomane of the Maine State Police, which issues bingo licenses and regulates gaming, “the organization’s ability to operate games of chance is pending an administrative hearing.”

Gomane said Laliberte is able to hold games pending possible action at that hearing, but Laliberte isn’t sure what he’s going to do after he returns to his home in Leeds on July 1 after an extended rest in northern Maine.

Gomane declined to comment on the pending hearing, but Laliberte said his understanding is the administrative hearing has been scheduled to sort out some discrepancies with the club’s nonprofit status. “The only thing I know is we don’t have a 501(c)(3),” he said, but he didn’t know under what law the club incorporated to claim charitable status.

“It’s in the lawyer’s hands,” Laliberte said.

According to the Secretary of State’s Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, Cavalier Towne and Country Club was organized in 1959 as a nonprofit corporation under Maine’s Nonprofit Corporation Act. Since its incorporation, the company has been suspended twice for failure to file annual reports, and was administratively dissolved in 2007 for failing to file an annual report, but was reinstated after submitting the required paperwork. The corporation is currently listed in good standing with the state.

Although Cavalier has been incorporated since 1959, Laliberte said he has offered bingo games only since 1994. He said the State Police are examining his charter because he and his longtime partner, Linda Verrill, have been paying federal and state taxes on corporate income.

“They feel,” Laliberte said of State Police, “that we should not be running bingo because the money we pay in taxes to the federal and state government should be going to donations. Because we’re organized as a nonprofit.”

“We’ve been paying taxes on our net profit,” he said of the club, “which is earned at the bingo games.”

Under Maine’s Charitable Gaming Laws, organizations issued licenses for games of chance — including bingo — are not permitted to pay proceeds from any games to “provide salaries, wages or other remuneration” to members, officers or employees of the corporation. Laliberte said he and Verrill earn their living from the games; Laliberte is the corporation’s registered agent, its treasurer and manager of the weekly games, and Verrill is the corporation’s secretary.

Walter Dubois, who has served as president of the board of directors for Cavalier for more years than he said he can remember, said Wednesday that he doesn’t know where the future of the Cavalier Club’s games stand.

He said Laliberte called a meeting of the board just before the last game, but “until I hear from Dick or someone else, I don’t know what’s going on with” the administrative hearing on the bingo license.

“I’d like to hear from Dick,” he said.

According to Laliberte, after July 1, he will call a meeting of the board “and see which direction we are going” and decide whether to re-open the games.

Cavalier bingo, which operates out of a hall in the Promenade Mall on Lisbon Street in Lewiston, had held games every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday evening, and again on Saturday afternoons for years before closing after the evening game on June 1.

Verrill estimated that, although the numbers vary, they welcomed between 80 to 168 people per game. On Super Bingo nights, the crowd grows to about 250 players, Verrill said.

The couple estimate they donate between $20,000 and $25,000 of their proceeds to charitable causes every year, including $3,500 in scholarships to local high school graduates who plan to play sports in college. The mission of the Cavalier corporation has been, Laliberte said, to support “young kids going to college.”

Over the years, the Cavalier Club has regularly donated to the Hope Haven Gospel Mission in Lewiston, the YMCA and YWCA, public libraries, the Salvation Army, local churches and sports teams. Last year, the club donated $300 to Ingersoll Arena in Auburn to support the youth hockey program, and the year before donated $500 to Sisters of Charity Food Pantry, $500 to Tri-County Mental Health Services and $500 St. Vincent de Paul program at St. Patrick’s Parish, among other charities.