Cheated by a Casino Operator?

On January 27th, I was playing a slot machine. I won quite a substantial jackpot of L$50,000, so I played down my original credits in the machine and then cashed out the L$50k. The machine malfunctioned and didn't pay me. So, I checked the owner of the machine and sent them a message. I received the auto-response that they were offline. So, I checked the Casino's group to see if there was anyone else I could talk to that might be online. There was a list of 4 casino owners so I messaged each one. One of them responded and was really nice about everything. They told me that they couldn't help me because they didn't handle the finances, but that they would send a RL email to the one that owned the machine. I checked back a few hours later and had received no response. Since then, I've checked roughly every 24hours and have still received no response. One of the owners was in-world at the casino when I checked 2 days ago. I approached him and simply said hello, only to have him walk away from me. So I IM'd him, only to be ignored. I've been reading the boards and the knowledge base and I'm not quite sure what I can do about this. L$50k is a lot of money to just shaft someone out of. I'm at the point where I want to stand outside the casino and shout messages to all the other patrons about their shady practices. Anyone have any constructive advice for me?

asset servers are a mess and yes I have on occassion lost 50 bucks or so in a slot machine due to it

depends on the owner I have not had much success in getting money back from those machines when chatting the owner. The closest I got was one guy saying he would but giving me all sorts of excuses as to why he could not right then when answering the chat so I consider my money gone and stopped playing slots and slingo due to it.

Its mostly stuff where they have not properly set up their machines and dont know how to or the money got lost in space somewhere due to asset server issues.

look for the machine owner only chat them. (the rest are probably just hosts etc) If they wont refund never go there again and tell all your friends not to as well. In fact casinos working properly with all the issues is like a gamble in itself. lotsa scripts = lotsa lag and with the way the servers have not been running lately its a problem ..

word of caution though dont spam it and ruin your reputation just tell your friends to watch it not much else you can do really . Oh and most of these posts get deleted on this board they dont want any controversy hehe..

Do you have chat logs that include messages like "GamblingMachine: Congratulations! You have won 50,000 Lindens!"

I don't see that it would matter either way. Something like that isn't binding in any way. It's becoming more and more apparent that many casino operators are simply creeps. Unfortunately there is no mechanism for remediation in cases where you are ripped off.

No Lifeguard On Duty. Swim At Your Own Risk.

In shark-infested waters!

coco

Come on and spend your money! Sure you're continuously losing money while you play but that's how it goes! You might just win that 50,000 linden jackpot! Only if you do we won't really pay you and avoid you like the plague! So come on and keep playing!

Given that casinos are utterly unregulated in SL, anyone who palys those machines has to have money to throw away.

Let the buyer beware.

How Ugly!

That really sucks. I feel bad for you. I doubt you have any real recourse, though. There simply isn't any governing body to help and it will be difficult for you to prove that you won.

Saying that, it's not a smart thing to put money in a real world, regulated slot machine. I would never, ever put Lindens in an unregulated, virtual slot machine in SL.

Can we skip the lecture on gambling please? I didn't lose any more of my money than I planned to. Gambling is for entertainment purposes. This was the house's money that they lost fair and square and now apparently they're not willing to part with.

And speaking of regulating bodies....why hasn't anyone started any consumer groups in SL? I think they could be very useful in situations just like this, since everyone seems to be so powerless. That's definitely a topic to consider in another thread.

A few of the larger Casinos pay out when the owner is online. May be days.

If he still didn't pay then he may not have transaction history of it considering all the stale transactions that occur in SL.

A chat log can easily be created, most casino owners won't accept it as proof. A screenshot of you with the winning spin is a good idea when you do hit big on slots. And send it to snapzilla, along with the Casinos name. If anything you can use it as a warning to others if he doesn't pay you.

If it looks like a new Casino, and the owner hasn't been in SL long, be weary. Many throw down a bunch of slots thinking all they will do is make money and not taking into consideration jackpots can be won, and they don't have the funds set aside for the win.

Go to a couple of the forums where you can name the owners name.

Casino owners get IM's and notecards constantly of winnings that don't get received. And with the stale transactions these days they have no way of checking in their transactions. And of course you have the residents who try to use this to their advantage as well.

Good luck to you in receiving your winnings.

I don't make gambling machines, but the vendors I use in my store all IM me information on sales (and will soon send data to my web-site instead), this I've found to be an excellent fall-back for any failed refunds or whatever that my vendors may suffer, as I can just verify that there is no transaction history and pay-up.

Damon, I'm starting a consumer mediation group. If you are interested in us trying to settle this IM me in world and i'll drop you a notecard.

SL needs Warlords. Each area would have some tough guy with an army who can protect the innocent from the evil.

Think frontier sheriff, like Marshall Dillon, or a mafia godfather.

Not only would I be interested in working with you on this issue, I would be even more interested in joining your team if there is any room. We'll talk in-world soon.

As far as a picture goes, it wouldn't do much good. It wasn't the jackpot that didn't pay out. I got all of the credits from the jackpot added to what other credits I had in the machine. I played the remainder of my credits down to the amount of the jackpot and then hit the cashout button. This is when the machine didn't pay out. There were probably a half dozen "spins" between the jackpot and the cashout. So, that idea is out.

There is no possible means of regulating casinos when there is no authority you can appeal to in order to enforce anything.

What's to stop anyone from building a slot machine that pays out only 10% of its takings? Who is going to inspect the script?

Really, if you ever get any money out of any gaming machine in SL you should count yourself lucky.

50k linden is alot of cash. I wonder how long before RL takes notice of transactions like this and disagrees with the whole 'linden is not real money' theory. As much as I hate to see the economy eventually being restricted, casino owners that screw people over are going to ruin a fun thing for everyone.

Eventually someone will get mad enough at being screwed around and end up forcing the issue in court. No matter what Linden labs says, Lindens are exchanged for RL cash every day on the LindeEX

Sadly, I am seeing more and more of these issues where someone is not being paid for winning at a casino. Perhaps the "money pot" a casino owner is supposed to maintain was depleted at the time. This doesn't make it appropriate for the owner to disregard IMs from a legitimate customer. Is there any way the transaction history page can help you? I know it was a few days behind last I checked. Maybe Linden Labs should force casinos to keep digital records of all payouts for the customer's sake. I know they can be fictitious or altered but maybe next time a screen shot of the payout window would help you. You would have at least have some form of records backing up your statements so the casino owner knows you are not trying to scam them. Personally, i'm not into online gambling of any kind. I think it wastes your hard earned Linden dollars unless you are playing purely for the thrill of the gambling experience. I have a friend who has spent probably hundreds of thousands of Lindens at various casinos with no substantial payouts. Of course he just likes the idea of gambling...poor fellow...these online games can easily be rigged.

Question: What do you propose to do should the Casino Owner treat your Arbitration with the same "Prompt attention" they provided for the person they Bilked?
The problem with Arbitration is it requires that BOTH parties be willing to sit at the table and Talk.
In this case all you do is provide additional people for the Casino Owners to Ignore.

Have any of you seen "Guys and Dolls"?
There's a scene in it where a Gangster Forces another guy to Shoot Craps with him using Blank Dice. The Gangster explained "I've used dem for So long Da Dots rubbed off, But it's Ok,, I remembers where dey were." The guy "Wins" the first few Passes, but on the last, he gets "Snake eyes".
No surprises there, and No surprises with SL Gambling either, where the Casino Owners have Gambling machines that announce Big Wins, but somehow always seem to break Down at Payout time.

First Rule of gambling, NEVER game with the other guys Dice, or Deck.

Angel.

The thing is, there is no way for the casino owner to know that you aren't just making all this up, trying to cheat him...

Angelique, There are no secrets in arbitration. The big secret so far in this thread is who the casino owner is. We will make every attempt to have the casino owner agree to arbitration. We don't take sides, we want to hear both sides of every case and give both parties involved every opportunity to settle things on their own. Will arbitration always work? Will everyone always agree to it? Will we take on every complaint in SL? NO.
Why wouldn't a casino owner want to protect his reputation in SL?
This incident happened on January 27th, so it's been a week, how many others may have been cheated by this casino. I offered to do something to help, posting these complaints here do nothing. It's like he said, she said but nobody knows who he is. We will continue to offer help to those who want it, no help was asked for in this case.
Any case we arbitrate will be posted with the outcome. If one party declines that will be noted.

What year did that come out, I may have missed it : }

In spending just a few seconds reflecting on this, I believe arbitration could in fact be effective.

Gambling is popular in SL, and many want to cash in on this by opening up casinos. As most of us have observed, the typical casino does not last long. Further, most of us have heard of more than one incident where a casino is said not to have paid out when a customer won. It stands to reason that a significant number of residents want to gamble and would welcome some assurances that a casino is "trustworthy."

I imagine a secenario wherein an arbitrator (or something similar) signs up casinos in advance. They agree to arbitrate disuptes through the arbitrator or another arbitrator selected by the first one. They may put up some amount of L$ as a bond or surety for losing a dispute. The arbitrator may require the casino to use machines that announce the name and amount of any winners, and post listener objects to monitor and record such winnings. The casino may require large winnings be claimed from some sort of trusted escrow service or bank that ensures an outside record of winnings paid.

To list:
A slot machine that publically reports bets and winnings;
A way to record those bets and winnings;
A casino to provide the machines, keep the bets, and pay any winnings (profit comes from bets minus payouts);
A bank that receives payouts from the casino and pays the winner (profit comes from fees), keeping records of what the casino has paid and what winners have been paid;
An arbitrator who maintains records of winnings and may receive records of payouts (profit comes from fees or interest on bonds)

Such a system could provide a big boost to the SL gambling industry. The key player is the escrow agent or bank that confirms payment has been made.

As i have already posted in the Linden Answers forum (before it was closed) it might be a failed money transaction. Had that just yesterday for nearly an hour. I guess some of you might have seen it first hand, you try to tip someone and then you get an error that the transaction was stale or something. Always happens when there is heavy load on the database. Most time its just for a few seconds, but if you get some kind of automated payment that moment you are very unlucky...

I work in a Pokerhouse and its always a real pain if someone does not get payed out because of this bug. They advertise SL as a way to run a businees, but then the one thing most important for doing so is not working 100%. It should be a top priority to move money in the database, failing teleports are annoying, but this just gets everyone angry and loose trust.

And your case is really bad... As far as i know there is no record in your account history, maybe if the slotmachine is scripted in a cool way it keeps track of who won what and that could be checked against the history, but i doubt it...

I live in Europe, so there is no ban on onlinegambling here, but i see it is a bad way to approach Linden with the problem, but it also applies to any other object paying you. I don`t like camping myself, but new players that sit in a chair for hours and not getting payed because of this bug won`t be very happy too, or spoders. Tringo what ever. I am not totally sure, but i think it also works the other way around when you buy something, either you just get the error telling you your payment did not work (you will still have your money then) or the item just does not get transferred to you...

Anyway, this is a serious bug, flaw in the design of the database or how you wanna call it. Always gets me upset when it happens and i have to tell people that its not me trying to scam them...

"Guys and Dolls"
MGM 1955
Musical
starring:
Marlon Brando,
Frank Sinatra,
Jean Simmons(Actress, Not lead singer of Kiss).

Plot Outline: In New York, a gambler is challenged to take a cold female missionary to Havana, but they fall for each other, and the bet has a hidden motive to finance a crap game.

I'm a Fan of Old Movies, what can i say?

Angel.