APOPKA, Fla. — A drab strip mall in this city north of Orlando includes the usual fixtures: a pharmacy and a payday loans store, as well as an Internet cafe with a sign on the door that reads “Copy-Fax-Print, Surf the Web.”

That these cafes are cash machines — and take in as much as $100,000 a week — is no secret to robbers.

And so, at 1 a.m. on April 19, three armed men tried to rob the place at a time when more than three dozen people were playing slot machine-type games on the cafe’s computer terminals. A security guard shot and killed one of the men; the other two fled and were being sought. A woman hiding in the cafe bathroom told a 911 operator that the robbery was happening in “the casino, in Apopka.”

The shooting death in a place that some customers call a casino has brought fresh scrutiny to Florida’s quickly multiplying “Internet sweepstakes cafes,” which now total nearly 1,000 statewide and are estimated to gross more than $1 billion this year, according to industry analysts, state legislators and their aides, and lawyers in the gambling industry.