Arizona Man Found After Leaving Vegas without Claiming $230K Jackpot

Casinos often get a bad reputation before they have even committed any act of wrongfulness. Call it a redemption story, but the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino did well by a patron last month who had left the premises not realizing that they had won $229,368, the jackpot for a slot machine he was playing on.

Jackpot Winner Wanted – Missing

Robert Taylor was merrily playing at the casino on January 8 and winning the progressive jackpot. However, he was none the wiser as a communication error in the software had failed to display the message of the win, the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) announced on Friday.

As a result, Taylor decided to call it quits and leave back home for Arizona. However, the casino was quick to catch on to these developments and realized that someone had left without claiming their prize. Informing the regulator swiftly, Treasure Island Hotel & Casino admitted that it had not been able to identify the person.

That is where the NGCB stepped in and launched an investigation. After all, money hinged on discovering the patron and doing right by them. It took the board two weeks to check surveillance footage, talk to witnesses, look into electronic purchase records, and review ride-sharing data to pinpoint the person finally.

That is right. The NGCB spent two weeks investigating the matter to locate the person and hand them their due reward. The board did so to maintain public trust in the casino industry, which, the regulator argued, is committed to doing right by its patrons.

On January 28, Taylor got the happy news and was incredulous of the happenings. While the Board has not released any additional information about the man’s home details or home city, it is another story that ended well.

Prizes Unclaimed, Software Errors Infuriating

Many gamblers are often careless about the small signs. Some keep buying lottery tickets, for example, unaware that there are other prizes than the jackpot, and so most lotteries around the United States end up with millions of prize money that should have been otherwise allocated to smaller winners.

Well, in the case of Taylor, a software error had caused the misunderstanding, or rather – delayed displaying the results. Such software errors are not too common, but they do happen. Other instances of similar developments do not have quite the same outcome. Back in 2012, a man in the United Kingdom was refused a $54 million payout due to a software error.

Such errors have occurred over time as well, but the industry usually acknowledges when such misfires had genuinely invalidated a bet and when a prize must be paid out in full. Otherwise, why would the regulator spend two weeks tracking down a person without any proof that this can be done in the first place?