Software glitch makes casino goers rich

An Australian casino lost millions of dollars due to a glitch in its software, which allowed people to exploit the system and obtain extra cash payouts.

The Star Casino in Sydney, Australia, which has supposedly had a long-standing issue with compliance, was unknowingly giving away cash to its customers due to a software glitch.

The casino used ticket-in, cash-out (TICO) machines, which allowed gamblers to obtain barcode receipts for their slot machine earnings.

One of the witnesses, Nicholas Weeks, expressed in a testimony that customers could insert two receipts into these TICO machines – a feature of the machines that allowed customers to redeem two receipts simultaneously and be paid the whole sum.

This allowed gamblers to “cash out rather than having an attendant go to the slot machine,” Week said.

However, there was a “defect in the software” that would spit out one of the tickets and allow gamblers to use those tickets again and again as the barcode was not void.

Weeks explained that “small additional amounts were being provided to customers” due to the system glitch. Then, over a six-week period, “very large amounts of cash were provided to customers” due to the defect.

The witness estimates that roughly AU$ 3 million ($2 million) had been given inadvertently to the Star’s customers.

43 people used the machines to withdraw the combined AU$ 3 million over a 13-day period, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The casino did not detect the glitch for approximately six weeks after the defect occurred, due to human and technological error, the news outlet reported.