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(AP via Yahoo): Is Winning a Faulty Slot Machine a Crime?


Fergasun

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I need to make up for the "John Doe" thread. Here is something delightfully non-political... let's keep it that way!

ELIZABETH, Ind. - Prosecutors are considering criminal charges against casino gamblers who won big on a slot machine that had been installed with faulty software. The machine at Caesars Indiana credited gamblers $10 for each dollar they inserted because the software wasn't designed for U.S. currency, state police said. More than two dozen people played the machine before one gambler alerted Caesars employees. Caesars lost $487,000 on the machine during that time, state police said.
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The casino said some of the gamblers returned the money after the casino contacted them.
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Kathryn Ford of Louisville, Ky., the gambler who alerted the casino, said going after the other patrons was unfair. When a slot machine jams and gamblers lose money, they don't get it back, she said. "It doesn't work in the reverse," Ford said. "They need to forget it and move on."
Lame, lame, lame... seriously lame. One time in 3rd grade we found a broken Coke Machine giving out free Cokes... guess I committed a crime and had criminal intent... I hope the statue of limitation is up on that one.
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My God, I remember in elementary school when we figured out that the NBA James game at the Pottery could be, um, "credited" by raising the top of the panel and pressing some button down there.

I think I still hold several records on that one...

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This slot machine sounds like a typical liberal... always wanting to give handouts and make the players (voters) happy, with no view towards how it might be bankrupting the Casino (taxpayers).

Oh, you said no politics.

Sorry. ;)

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It seems counterproductive to sue or press criminal charges against patrons who put their money into the machine in good faith, and at some point may have noticed that the software/machine was behaving in an unexpected way.

I can see the casino having a claim if each of the persons playing that machine did something other than put coins in and use the machine per the instructions or normal machine operation. However, given the story provided, there is no evidence of that. As a matter of fact, given the low dollar loss, I suspect many players did not over-indulge themselves at the expense of the poor casino.

While the story does not discuss it, you would certainly hope that the Casino substantially rewarded the guy who alerted them to the problem.

On a final note, while I know there are inspections, there is no direct evidence to know if there is a machine in the very same casino that also has a malfunction, one in which it never pays, thereby cheating customers who play it. That fact alone argues strongly in favor for the casino to right it off as a matter of fairness.

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