Casino Errs, Asks for Payback

Players who visited Canada’s Saskatchewan province on an October day must have been surprised – pleasantly surprised – to find the machines on the casino floor cough up $20 bills where $5 bills were expected. Surprised, but quiet about it.

Even as some players have taken advantage of this fault, one of them for as much as $11,000, they did not report the error. This failure to report the casino’s mistake is now used against the players by casino management, as it claims the patrons pay back.

The Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation announced last week (itself having kept the incident quiet for three months) that the machine dished out $27,000 before the mistake was noticed and corrected. This was the result of a casino worker loaded the machine with the wrong notes.

It took the casino over a day to detect the mistake. During this time, patrons who went to redeem winnings or simply break large bills were walking away with greater sums than they had expected.

The casino worker has not been penalized and is till working at the place. SGC has also reported that $13,400 was recovered from players. The surveillance system has not been able to identify other benefactors.

The players, whether they took advantage of the casino’s mistake or walked away simple flabbergasted, are those being prosecuted. What has become of accountability?

These are SGC president and CEO Marty Klyne’s words: "You have to assume if you put in a $20 bill and you're expecting four fives back and you get four 20s, that your eyebrows might go up," he said.

Klyne added the contrary scenario: "I think that if they put in a 20 and got two fives back, we would have heard about it pretty quickly."

It sounds a little up-in-the-air indeed. The local police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich was more sensible, saying that they have yet to determine what offence is being prosecuted, if any.

Not reporting the incident to the provincial auditor until this month; involving the police only on December 4, over a month since the October 26 date of occurrence; and basing their argument on a roundabout logic, do not sound wholly kosher.

Hearing about this, one has to try and imagine of such a mistake and overall fiasco could have taken place at an internet gambling site. Our guess is not.