First some questions that have come up after I wrote about forgetting to cash out a ticket from a video poker machines we had been playing:
Q: Can the casino void a ticket if it isn’t cashed before the casino is notified of your loss?
A: The good news is that yes they can. The bad news is that this rarely happens – the person who takes the ticket is going to be extremely fast on the cashout and is usually long gone when the casino finally traces the ticket.
Q: Did I miss it, or did you intentionally omit the name of the casino?
A: No, you didn’t miss it. I intentionally did not identify the casino where this happened. I would have liked to publically thank this casino, since many…even most casinos are not willing to take this much time and effort to help customers in these circumstances. However, I didn’t want to get them into any trouble just in case legal considerations might have arisen in the future. This is a very gray area and you never can be sure when lawsuits can pop up.
Q: Do you think that the lady who cashed out the ticket will be allowed back in that casino, or if a gaming agent was there, do you think they’ll ban her from other casinos?
A: Since she returned the money, I’m sure she wasn’t banned from this casino or any other. She is a good customer at this casino, not someone on the property with criminal intent. Again, this is a very gray area, perhaps more of an ethical issue than a legal one.
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As I mentioned in previous discussions, how a casino treats incidents such as this depends on casino policies and state laws – and because of the varying details must be looked at on a case-by-case basis. One of the most interesting stories I’ve ever read about on this subject took place in Michigan several years ago. A 72-year-old lady found a 5-cent token in a slot machine tray and decided to keep it after looking around and finding no one who looked like they might have lost it. Well, the casino went into overdrive, surrounding her, detaining and interrogating her, and then ejecting her where she had to wait in the hot sun without any food. Needless to say, she went to court. The casino said she had engaged in a practice disallowed by the casino known as “slot-walking” (deliberately scouting the machines for money or TITO tickets inadvertently left behind). They contented abandoned money belonged to them and the lady had “stolen” the token. The court did not buy that argument. The lady won her lawsuit and was awarded $600,000 in punitive damages. If you want to know more of the extremely interesting details of this case, go to http://tinyurl.com/926e5mf or Google Romanski v. Detroit Entertainment.
Today’s episode of “Judge Judy” was about this very topic.
Man forgot $464 ticket in slot machine to return and find it gone. Security scanned video and identified person. This happened at Valley View casino in Valley Center, California which is 3 miles from Harrahs Rincon in northern San Diego county.
The man who left the ticket was suing the alledged person who security had identified as taking the ticket for the value of the money of the ticket.
All the man had to bring to court was the report from security. Judge Judy wouldn’t accept it as evidence saying it was heresay. She asked him if he had the logs of whose players card was in the machine after he had left it. Judge Judy would have been able to confront the alledged thief had the log shown the thief’s player’s card had been in the machine. The alledged thief denied having played that machine and denied taking any ticket that wasn’t theirs. I’m sure a casino wouldn’t make you a copy of their security video to bring to a court case such as this.
The man lost his case due to lack of evidence. The lady admitted in the after case interviews that she had been banned from Valley View due to this.
Jean, About two years ago I was playing at the Orleans and I had a balance of $800 on my machine. I knew there was a drawing coming up so when they announced “It’s time to swipe for the drawing!” I unfortunately left my $800 balance on the machine while swiping at the kiosk. The kiosk was about 15 steps away. I was away from my machine for possibly 3 minutes max. But when I returned, my balance had been cashed out.
I immediately told the nearest staff person (the bartender) what had happened and asked him to call security, which he did. Because a theft had occurred, I might have expected security to come running, but it took a security person 5 minutes to arrive, and he wasn’t hurrying either. After I described what had happened to the security guy, he said he would call the slot manager. It took her another 5 minutes to arrive. They both seemed to be moving as slowly as possible. The slot manager said she could look in the system to see whether my ticket had been cashed. Sure enough, after another 5 minutes, she said that it was cashed at xx:xx pm at abc exit. When I asked whether cameras could be used to identify the thief, they both said that a) their cameras are very fuzzy and can’t always be relied upon and b) even if they caught the thief, all they could do would be to 86 the thief because taking money in a machine is not considered theft. I never had any kind of followup from the Orleans. Throughout this incident, it appeared that all of the Orleans employees and supervisors were doing the minimum possible effort and dragging it out in time besides, possibly to avoid a confrontation with the thief, which might have required more work on their part.
Needless to say, I’ve been avoiding the Orleans since that time. I prefer to play at casinos that give at least minimal protection to their players.