slot machines overpaying

I remember years ago playing slot machines and every once in a while it would overpay me an extra coin or two. I had them short change me too. I just read a story on google where these three guys claim they made hundreds of thousands of dollars playing slot machines that were overpaying. They claim it was legal. Is this true, and did anyone esle ever get paid extra coins playing a slot machine?

This used to be possible on games that paid coins and these are very rare now. It was a bigger problem in slant top machines because of the type of coin hopper they used. In one case I know of, the casino noticed a shortage on a machine and found that it was paying too many coins. The players didn't even have to play the game. Instead, they were inserting $40 a time and cashing out $40 to $42 on a slant top with dollar tokens.

The crooks got away with about $500 per machine before the casino found out, but they didn't realize it until performing the drop for the day and the game was off by more than enough coins to fill the hopper.

Personally, I've never been paid extra, but I do remember some slots in AZ about 17 years ago that would not register all coins inserted. That's also illegal.

Quote: CrystalMath

The crooks got away with about $500 per machine before the casino found out...

Well, this raises and intersting question... was that actually considered stealing? Cuz if so they would have most likely been arrested. And I could be wrong, but this doesn't sound like stealing at all in the same way counting cards is only considered cheating. They would put $40 in the machine and get $42 out, but there was no guarantee that they would get that extra money each time they did that. In a sense I think it was smart of those guys to do it, they took advantage of a flawed system and those machines are the responsibility of the casinos, those people have no responsibility in this situation. Maybe this is making me look like some sort of immoral wretched person but I don't think what they did was necessarily dishonest.

They weren't arrested because the casino didn't know until they performed the drop at 2am and the casino cameras aren't like the ones they show on TV, they are more like cruddy webcams.

In Missouri, gamblers accidentally put a nickel into a $5 coin slot and realized that the coin mechanism credited them for $5. In one weekend, that machine cashed out $95,000 in tickets and had no bills inserted, only nickels. These people did get caught because it was when Missouri had a loss limit system and the machines wouldn't work without the player card inserted. More than likely, this was an inside job where someone altered the coin comparitor.