Stop Predatory Gambling

Another example why Congress needs to act now against slot machines

by spgadmin

A story from Pennsylvania provides us another look behind slot machines and the nefarious regulatory process surrounding them. Three people — including a former borough police officer — are accused in a plot to rig a slot machine at the Meadows Racetrack and Casino. Washington County District Attorney Steven Toprani said the machine was altered to show false payouts for $420,000 from June to August. According to DA Toprani: 

“The actors were able to cause casino personnel to change a software feature, an option on the screen of the casino’s machine. Throughout the process, they had knowledge of a particular software glitch that they exploited. Once the machine was compromised, they were able to basically make it pay out at their will.”

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is how easy it is to manipulate the machines. Read on: 

The men posed as high rollers in the casino’s “High Limit” area. Authorities said they found the suspects had asked a slots technician, who was not part of the scheme, to check whether a certain feature called a “double up” could be enabled, telling him casinos in Las Vegas allowed it. Nestor (one of the men arrested) is accused of showing the technician how to do it. When supervisors told Nestor the feature wasn’t allowed in Pennsylvania, they closed the machine, but unbeknownst to them, the programming had been changed, authorities said. Authorities said investigators discovered the ruse when they noticed the men cashing jackpots for each other so it wouldn’t look as though the same person was winning all the time. One of the men would try to cash out when surveillance tape showed another man playing the machine.

How does a guy come in off the street and show “a technician” how to manipulate programming? Why were these men only discovered because of surveillance tape…aren’t the state regulators responsible for closely monitoring “the integrity” of the technology inside the machines? How can anyone be certain that casinos do not manipulate the machines to have the opposite effect by minimizing payouts?

The truth is these machines are “regulated” in name only. As MIT Professor Dr. Natasha Schull wrote in this recent Washington Post op-ed, slot machines are designed to “approach every player as a potential addict” by making them operate like “loaded dice”, all in the name of getting the user “to play to extinction” – until all their money is gone.

With more than 800,000 electronic gambling machines in America today, most of them legalized in the name of funding public services, Congress needs to take action. States are too dependent on the money coming from these machines to bring the kind of intense scrutiny they require.