Pauline McKee, a 90-year-old grandmother form Illinois has been denied a £27.6 million ($41.7 million) jackpot after the court decided the prize was, in fact, a computer glitch. The woman was playing the game Miss Kitty by the software provider Aristocrat and hit 185 credits ($1.85) when a message on the screen informed her that she won a $41,797,550.16 bonus.
After the casino refused to pay out the jackpot because “malfunction voids all pays and plays,” McKee decided to take the case to court. In the meantime, the slot machine was sent to an independent laboratory for testing by the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission (IRGC).
The researchers found out that the machine was designed to give bonuses up to $10,000 and they couldn’t explain how and why the message found its way to the screen. In any case, they stated that the bonus was definitely not valid.
Aristocrat Technologies, the company that manufactured the machine, made a statement saying it had alerted all casinos that there was a glitch and recommended disabling the bonus feature as a precautionary measure. However, the casino where the granny played, the Isle Casino Hotel Waterloo in Iowa, obviously did not take this warning seriously.
In any case, the judge in charge of the case decided to reject the lawsuit filed by Ms McKee. This whole process started back in 2012 and it is finally over after three year saga.
When the final decision was made, the unlucky grandmother of 13 grandchildren said that she had her doubts from the start since that was “a lot of money for a penny machine.” She went further explaining that she was hoping to help her children out financially, but “it wasn’t meant to be.”