90 year-old grandmother Pauline McKee thought that it was her lucky day when the screen on the Miss Kitty game told her that she had won $41.8 million (£27.6 million).
She was playing the slot machine at an un-named casino when she won 185 credits, worth $1.85. However, a message then popped up saying that she has scooped a bonus worth – gulp – $41,797,550.16.
Things got complicated when the casino said that it wouldn’t pay out the bonus, saying that it only appeared on-screen because of a glitch in the system.
Ms McKee decided to press ahead and take the casino to court in order to try and get the payout. She says that she had her doubts about the giant win right from the start, as it was “a lot of money for a penny machine”.
The grandmother of 13 said that she was “hoping to help my children out financially”. She took the case all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court in order to try and do this. The casino argued that the game’s onscreen rules make it clear that “malfunction voids all pays and plays”.
The slot machine was investigated by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, who couldn’t work out how the game’s maximum bonus of $10,000 had been breached so spectacularly. The maker of the machine is Aristocrat Technologies, and they said that “component degradation over time” could be to blame for the “rare occurrence”. They went on to say that they had advised casinos in 2010 to disable the bonus facility.
After 3 years of legal tussles the case was recently finally settled in favour of the casino
