01 OCT

$1.4 million jackpot is voided because bingo machine “malfunctioned”

The cards are always stacked in favor of the casino. Casinos exist for one reason, and one reason alone: to take your money. They do it legally, even if it’s under cloudy circumstances.

Consider the case of an Alabama man who put $ 5 into an electronic bingo machine at the Wind Creek Casino in Montgomery, Alabama. The casino is on tribal land operated by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. To the gambler’s amazement, “several noises, lights, and sirens were activated” when the machine announced that Jerry Rape had hit The Big One. The bingo machine indicated a jackpot of $ 459,000, then $ 918,000, and finally settled on a “payout multiplier” of $ 1,377,000, according to the gambler’s lawsuit.

The casino took Rape’s payout ticket and made him wait for about 24 hours before saying “no dice.” He wasn’t getting the monster payout. The machine, he was told by the tribe’s casino, had “malfunctioned.” (PDF) This was in 2010.

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Ars Technica

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