This week’s casino news starts off with a mega-mistake. We all know the importance of being bang-on with lotteries yet one announcer’s key mix-up turned some winners into losers, and vice-versa.
Mega Millions Host Reads Wrong Jackpot Drawing Number
Apparently, Steve Harvey isn’t the only show host that makes mistakes when announcing winners.
A faux-pas of epic proportions happened this past week when the Mega Millions host announced the wrong numbers for a jackpot prize. As a result, payments ended up getting suspended for some people as a Mega Millions Lottery.
The host had called out a six but the number on the ball was actually nine. This mishap ended up resulting in a number of people believing that they had won an $86 million jackpot when in reality, they didn’t win a single dollar.
Mega Millions has since apologized for the confusion that they may have caused by this error. However, it is almost a guarantee that people who thought they had won the jackpot won’t be satisfied with this apology.
It was reported that the Lottery paid out several thousands of dollars to players because of the misread ball as the process of payments automatically started. The estimated number was $5,538 before they managed to stop it from going further. The organization did say that this money was recouped automatically and that there won’t be any impact on the education funds or taxpayer funds.
Director Of Ohio Nonprofit Embezzles $400K For Gambling
The Latino Resource Center, a nonprofit based in Ohio, is closing down after a complaint was filed against its executive director, Sabina Serratos. Serratos was fired from the organization after board members found out that there was fraud taking place within their finances. The audit discovered approximately $400,000 that went missing and the paper trail pointed back to Serratos.
As executive director, Serratos had access to all the company’s debit and credit cards. Instead of using that money to help the organization advance, she took money out of it to use for her own gaming endeavors. Those endeavors include a wild gambling habit. She eventually admitted to visiting different casinos to play while losing about $340,000 of that money to the Hollywood Casino Toledo. This happened in April, August, and November in 2021.
Serratos hasn’t been hit with any criminal charges at the moment but there are already petitions starting to take down the entire board of the organization because of this incident. She’s likely going to face the long arm of the law but it’s unclear how severe her punishment might be at this point.
Man In Japan Gambled Away Entire Town’s COVID Relief Money
Speaking of irresponsible gaming, it doesn’t get much worse than this next story.
Sho Taguchi has been arrested by police after gambling away an entire Japanese town’s COVID-19 relief money. The 24-year-old woke up one day to find that he had an extra $360,000 in his bank account, which was dropped in due to a clerical error. The money was actually meant to be spread out to everybody in the town of Abu but instead, it went to one account – Taguchi’s – rather than being spread out evenly. 3,300 people had been expecting to receive at least $780.
Taguchi didn’t ask any questions about the bonus check and didn’t wait to spend it either. He took the money straight from gaming where he had hoped to make something more out of it.
Taguchi’s lawyer has come out and said that the money was blown at casinos that were overseas, so that might be one way he can circumvent some punishment. He also said that Taguchi himself was incredibly remorseful for losing all of that money and even hopes to repay it little by little as time goes on. We’ll have to see how the town handles it as it’s unclear if Taguchi actually broke a law.
