In October 2016, a New York woman thought she’d won $43 million from a slot machine, but a casino attendant told her that the machine had malfunctioned. To compensate for the error, the casino offered hera free steak dinner.

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)

It gets worse

The gambler sued the casino in the tribal court of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. But the suit was dismissed. The court declared that sovereign immunity prevailed—that the tribe was an independent nation and immune from being sued.

'They said they were immune to any kind of fraud that I made in the complaint,' the gambler's attorney, Matt Abbott, told Ars in a telephone interview. 'They said rules don't apply to them, [and] 'have a nice day.'

Advertisement

Unable to lodge a claim in tribal court, Rape rolled the dice with Alabama's state courts and sued the tribe there. On Friday, seven years after Rape thought he had hit the jackpot, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that Rape could not sue the tribe in state court—the proper venue was tribal court. That's because the Poarch Band of Creek Indians is a nation of itself, and that's where disputes occurring on that land should be litigated, the court found.

The Alabama high court noted that it found itself in a 'Catch-22' of sorts. It said it couldn't decide the dispute even if the tribe wasn't entitled to sovereign immunity.

'The activity out of which Rape's claim arose, however, was gambling. If it occurred on land within the regulatory and adjudicative jurisdiction of the State of Alabama, that activity was illegal. Specifically, that land is located in Elmore County and, therefore, is not located in one of the counties in Alabama where even the game commonly and traditionally known as bingo is permitted,' the court ruled. (PDF)

It is well established that this Court will not aid a plaintiff seeking to recover under an illegal contract but, instead, will simply leave the parties where it finds them.

This is the third time we've seen a gambler hit an enormous jackpot only to be told that it won't be paid because the jackpot was a result of an electronic 'malfunction.'

Meanwhile, the Alabama gambler's attorney, Abbott, told Ars that his client's legal avenues have now been exhausted. 'It's over,' he said.

The tribe said the Alabama high court did the right thing. 'We are pleased that the Court affirmed the ruling in favor of the Tribe,' spokeswoman Sharon Delmar said.

Imagine, if you would, how absolutely giddy you'd be if you won a $43 million jackpot while playing a casino slot machine. You could burn a lot of bridges with that amount of cash.

Slot Machine Jackpot Malfunction Uncut

Then imagine the opposite feeling you'd get when the casino tells you there was a 'malfunction' and you're not getting that jackpot, even though the slot machine lit up and said it was 'printing cash ticket $42,949,672.76.'

That really happened in August 2016 to Katrina Bookman, who is now suing the Resorts World Casino in Queens County Supreme Court, demanding that she get her payout from the Sphinx slot machine.

Instead of a massive payout, the New York casino instead allegedly awarded her a steak dinner and the $2.25 balance she had on the machine when she thought she hit the big one on the one-armed bandit made by International Game Technology, which is also named in the suit. The unhappy gambler alleges negligence, breach of contract, and negligent misrepresentation, according to Courthouse News Service, which says the complaint included a selfie Bookman took with the machine that showed she had hit the big one.

This isn't the first time a slot machine has malfunctioned, resulting in a gambler being denied serious cash. An 87-year-old Illinois woman gambling in Iowa had hit a nearly $42 million payout from the Hello Kitty slot machine. But she was denied payment because of a computer glitch.

Advertisement

Iowa's top court ruled in 2015 the slot machine's user-agreement, available on the touchscreen, said the maximum payout was $10,000.

'Any message appearing on the screen indicating the patron would receive a $41 million bonus was a gratuitous promise and the casino's failure to pay it could not be challenged as a breach of contract,' the Iowa Supreme Court ruled.

Watch Slot Machine Jackpots

After news broke of Bookman's plight, the casino said in a statement that 'Machine malfunctions are rare, and we would like to extend our apologies to Ms. Bookman for any inconvenience this may have caused.' The New York State Gaming Commission has sided with the Resorts World Casino, ruling the there was 'clearly a display malfunction' and that the machine's maximum payout was programmed for $6,500. The slot machine was fixed and operating the following day.