DraftKings and White Hat Gaming must pay a total of $22,500 in fines to the state of Connecticut after their online slot machine failed to win players for a week. reported that the state’s Department of Consumer Protection had detected a non-paying slot machine and issued fines.
The sports betting and gambling site was fined $19,000, while White Hat Gaming was fined $3,500. The website promised its players that this Deal or No Deal Banker Bonanza the online slot machine would pay 95 cents for every dollar it received from players. However, a report by the Department of Consumer Protection found that the slot machine did not pay out a single red cent between August 15 and 21 last year. A total of 522 players bet almost $24,000 on the machine over 20,569 spins during the time the machine refused to pay out any winnings.
A wrongly downloaded file caused the machine to crash and not allow players to win the advertised amount. DraftKings and White Hat Gaming restarted the game on August 22, 2023 after a faulty file was found and determined to be the cause of the crash.
The report also found that DraftKings and White Hat Gaming did not disclose the faulty machine to state officials until the Consumer Protection Department requested the information last year. One player told the gaming site that they played “several hundred spins” for 20 cents per spin, and the machine never paid “a single winning spin or partial win,” according to the report. DraftKings officials responded to several complaints with messages such as, “I understand that it can be frustrating to have a bit of a cold streak, but I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with the game itself.”
The slot machine continued to hold the winnings for another week until White Hat Gaming identified the glitch and repaired the software a second time. White Hat also states in the report that all customers received refunds “without any notification from DraftKings,” according to the report.
The representative of the Consumer Rights Protection Department also informed about this NBC News White Hat Gaming “quickly responded” to investigators’ inquiries. However, DraftKings’ response was “not satisfactory” and hence the higher fine.
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