A curious situation occurred at Star Casino in Sydney. Due to a software failure, the casino actually handed out $2 million in cash to players. When the problem was discovered, casino representatives turned to the police to find the “winners”.
According to Casino.org, the Star Casino system failure occurred back in July 2023 during a software update, but the information was leaked to the media only now. The casino claims to have noticed the loss of $2 million only six weeks after the breach. And according to WhatsNew2Day, the amount of losses is even higher – more than $3.2 million.
When players inserted winning tickets into local TICO machines to withdraw money, they were initially given the funds as a matter of course. However, if the player deposited another ticket immediately afterwards, the machine returned it, but also gave out cash. That is, the scheme actually allowed withdrawals many times in a row, which was used by at least 43 players. The problem was reportedly found in four vending machines, while the rest were working without fail.
Casino manager Nicholas Weeks admitted:
“It’s a very significant outage that has had a negative impact on a lot of people because we couldn’t detect it for six weeks after it happened.”
It is currently known that Star Casino representatives handed over the data of 43 cash recipients to the Australian police. Some of the “lucky ones” have already been found, but the exact number of arrested has not been reported. It was revealed that among them was Thanh Lan Ly, who was diagnosed with a gambling addiction. After the arrest, the woman confirmed that she had repeatedly used the malfunction of the TICO vending machine system:
“I realize that it was my fault. I cheated to take the winnings, but the machine just gave us the money.”
Li said that when she discovered the malfunction, she withdrew cash from the machine every day for 10 days. In total, she withdrew $57,265 in this way, but eventually lost almost all of it, leaving herself with only $5 thousand. Now she, along with the other “winners,” is accused of fraud, as well as participation in a criminal group with the aim of obtaining funds illegally. At the very least, the offenders will face administrative liability.
In general, Star Casino has not been doing well lately, and the loss of at least $2 million is not the only problem. According to Bloomberg, in 2022, the company was accused of forgery, misleading authorities, and money laundering. On April 15 this year, a new 15-week investigation was launched into Star Entertainment Group for its links to organized crime. On the same day, Star Casino shares fell 5.9% and continue to decline.
