It told her she had won $42,949,672.76. Someone was making a ticket. The lights went out. There were groups of people. A 40-cent bet on a Sphinx Wild penny slot machine at Resorts World Casino in Queens, New York, changed Katrina Bookman’s life for a few hours in late August 2016. Bookman was a single mother of four who had grown up in foster care and went through some of her teenage years without a home.
It wasn’t. The casino said it hadn’t, though. When Bookman went to get her winnings, the casino staff told her to come back in the morning to look over their official decision again. In passing, she heard a worker say that she “didn’t win nothing.” She came back with her ticket after a restless night. She was given $2.25, which is how much the machine actually said she owed, and a free steak dinner. The most money that the machine could legally give out as a jackpot was $6,500. She didn’t get that or even close to it.
She went to court. The lawsuit was filed in Queens County Supreme Court and named the casino as well as the companies that made and ran the machine. Alan Ripka, her lawyer, said that the machine’s actions—the lights, the sounds, and the printed message on the ticket—were like a promise. The casino’s case was easier to understand: the machine had broken down, and a standard disclaimer on the machine made it clear that when machines break down, all wins and bets are void. The New York State Gaming Commission agreed with that view. The court finally threw out the case in favor of the casino after years of delays that included problems caused by the pandemic.
Seeing this story pop up online again after almost ten years makes me think it plays on something people already half-believe about casinos. The comment threads get full very quickly. “Casinos are scams.” “Pay her.” “The house always wins.” A common frustration, and Bookman’s case has almost come to represent it: the normal person, the strange number on a screen, and the institution that gets away with nothing.
Being fair about the way the law works is important, even if the result doesn’t make sense. Casinos are regulated in part to stop crazy situations from happening. For example, a machine glitch showing an impossible number shouldn’t be able to put an operator out of business. It was said that the Sphinx Wild machine could pay out up to $6,500. The number $42.9 million wasn’t just a stretch; it was actually impossible because of how the machine was set up. In 2011, when an 87-year-old woman was denied a $42 million payout in a similar case, Iowa’s Supreme Court made a decision that was very similar. The legal precedent makes sense, but it’s not enough.
It’s not really the legal question that makes people wait. It’s dinner with steak. That detail, which was given by the person in charge that night without much thought, turned a disagreement into a story. It made the difference between what Bookman thought she had won and what she actually got seem so small that it was almost like a stage set. It didn’t work out well, whether it was an act of kindness or a bad attempt to lighten the mood. It still does.
She told a local news station at the time that she couldn’t stop thinking about her family and how hard it was for her to deal with everything. Her son wanted to open a barbershop, and she had already told him that his future was safe. That conversation took place. After that, the reversal took place. No matter how legal it is, that order is hard to understand.
It’s still not clear if casinos have really changed how they deal with these situations in terms of communication, how they look, and how humane their responses are. There may be no way around the fine print legally. People keep being reminded of Katrina Bookman’s case that the experience it creates is something else.
