This story was published more than 11 years ago.
An 26 year old gambler is suing Casinos Austria after the casino negated a €43 million jackpot that he won in March.
Behar Merlaku was playing a slot machine at the Casinos Austria location in Bregenz, Austria when the machine signaled that he had won a €43 million jackpot. When casino officials came over to verify the progressive win they instead attributed the triggered jackpot to a software malfunction and the win became null.
Before the casino came over, Merlaku took a photo of the slot screen, which showed four symbols on the payline. A progressive jackpot is supposed to be triggered when five symbols are aligned. Casinos Austria offered the sullen player a free meal and €70 as consolation.
Nonetheless, Merlaku feels that he is entitled to the jackpot and has hired legal representation to help acquire it. His attorneys claim:
"The slot machine that produced the winning display was immediately accessed by Casinos Austria."
"There was no contemporaneous independent assessment of the claimed error, and no opportunity has since been afforded by the company for the machine software to be analysed, other than by Atronic, a supplier to it of jackpot controllers."
"The regulator, the Austrian Ministry of Finance, has shown no interest in pursuing an orderly investigation as would be the case in well regulated gaming jurisdictions such as the UK, Switzerland, Singapore, the USA, Australia and Macau."
A news report in the Daily Mail claims that Casinos Austria has pointed out that under Austrian law, casino jackpots can not climb higher than € 2 million and have passed the issue to the slot's manufacturer Atronic.
The case is set to go to court on January 10th.
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