AC Casino Refuses To Pay $1 Million To Baccarat Winners

The Golden Nugget Atlantic City has refused to pay a group of players the more than $1 million they won playing mini-baccarat because the casino claims the cards were unshuffled at the time.
On April 30th, 14 players were gambling at the baccarat table when they apparently noticed the same sequence of cards were being repeatedly dealt. The canny players then decided to raise their stakes from $10 to $5,000 a hand and before long their winning ways attracted the attention of  casino security, who were convinced they were witnessing “a sophisticated swindling and cheating scheme”.
Even after 41 consecutive winning hands, the Golden Nugget Atlantic City couldn’t figure out what exactly was going on, and so allowed nine of the players to cash out $558,900 worth of chips before preventing the others from doing likewise with $977,800 in chips.
After the casino finally figured it out, it has now brought a lawsuit against the players to recover the cash, while also filing a lawsuit against Gemaco, Inc, the card manufacturing company which provided the defective shipment of unshuffled cards.
However, the casino patrons are resisting demands to return the money and three of the gamblers of Chinese origin have filed a counter lawsuit claiming discrimination against their Asian heritage. One of the men even claims to have been woken in his casino hotel room in the middle of the night by four Golden Nugget employees, who allegedly pinned him against the wall before searching his room.
The fiasco is now set to develop into a costly legal battle and as the lawyer representing the men, Benjamin Dash explains : “The Golden Nugget appealed to gamblers to come in and play games licensed and sanctioned by the state of New Jersey. My clients did exactly that, and then were denied their winnings. There is absolutely no law in New Jersey that would permit the Golden Nugget to declare the game illegal because it failed to provide shuffled cards.”