Suit claims Megabucks machine was rigged

Grace Leong

Thursday, March 16, 2000 | 11:07 a.m.

A patron at the Regent Las Vegas is seeking a court order to force the Summerlin hotel-casino and International Game Technology to pay her an $8.37 million Megabucks jackpot she claims she would have won if not for a slot machine she claims was rigged.

Karen Nakagawa, a visitor from Hawaii, claims she hit the jackpot last July 16, a day after the resort's grand opening when it was called the Resort at Summerlin.

Nakagawa filed a petition for judicial review on March 1 in Clark County District Court to reverse a Feb. 10 Nevada Gaming Control Board order that denied her claims to the jackpot. She also requested the court schedule a jury trial and authorize investigations as to whether the Megabucks progressive system was fraudulently operated.

The Feb. 10 order, which upheld gaming board agent Shirley Paris' decision on Sept. 20 to deny Nakagawa's claims to the jackpot, said she wasn't entitled to the winnings because they found a malfunction in the slot machine, which under Nevada gaming law, voids all pays and plays.

But Nakagawa, who maintains the odds of a malfunction occurring just as the Megabucks symbols were approaching the pay line are remote, seeks an order to stop the Regent and IGT from using that as an excuse to deny her claims.

Nakagawa, who first reported the dispute to the gaming board on July 16, said after she pressed the maximum play button, the first and second wheel Megabucks symbols approached the pay line. When these symbols touched the pay line, both wheels reversed for a moment and as the third wheel Megabucks symbol fell to the pay line, the machine "tilted" under a code "42" indicating a malfunction.

"The remoteness and coincidence of the machine malfunction at that precise moment in time wherein the three Megabucks symbols appearing on the pay line questions the integrity and honesty of the game," Nakagawa said.

Neil Friedman, IGT's legal counsel, disagreed. "That would fly in the face of the fact that we awarded three Megabucks jackpots in the past six weeks." Megabucks jackpots were hit at Desert Inn hotel-casino on Jan. 26 for $34.9 million and at the MGM Grand on Feb. 4 for $7.6 million. Another jackpot was hit at the Bellagio on Feb. 14 for $7.7 million.

"We believe that the allegations contained within the petition for judicial review are without factual foundation and the recommendation of the hearing officer that was subsequently adopted by the Gaming Control Board reviewed the facts, and arrived at the proper determination that Nakagawa was not entitled to the Megabucks jackpot," he said.

The Feb. 10 order denied Nakagawa's claims of machine-rigging because engineers of the state gaming board and IGT found the final position of the Megabucks symbols' reels on the game -- whose outcome is predetermined by the machine's game software program -- wasn't the top winning alignment.

"The assertions that a predesigned error condition would be integrated within the device's software program to interrupt otherwise winning games with tilt conditions as a means to avoid paying jackpots is completely without merit," said the Feb. 10 order.

"State regulations require that the outcome of each play of a gaming device be determined by a random selection process. ... The reels stopped on an alignment of 'Blank -- Double Bar -- Single Bar,' a nonwinning alignment," the Feb. 10 order said.

Nakagawa, however, alleged the Feb. 10 order was "arbitrary and capricious, made upon unlawful procedure and unsupported by any evidence," because the Gaming Control Board's Paris allegedly failed to conduct thorough investigations and merely accepted IGT technician Samuel Gutierrez's representation of the problem as "gospel."

But Richard Deguise Jr., a gaming board hearing officer, disputed her claims, saying he agreed with IGT and the Regent's diagnosis that a problem with the bill validator door switch caused the malfunction.

"Evidence of the machine's malfunction was supported by video tape," he said. "The game is in no way fixed or rigged. That is completely untrue. The outcome of a game is predetermined by a random number generator. If something occurs to interrupt the game, then the machine will be in a tilt mode until the malfunction is corrected."

"The signal sent by this faulty switch incorrectly reported a 'door open' condition which interrupted the game in a tilt mode," the Feb. 10 order said. "This condition is a means of game protection security so that the doors cannot be opened and the reels set to a jackpot alignment whereby fraudulent awards could be claimed."