Nevada Miner Wins $12.5M Slots Jackpot

A 64-year-old Nevada man has won an astounding $12,515,708 while playing the Megabucks jackpot at the Gold Dust West Casino in Elko County.
Originally from Chihuahua in Mexico, Efren Aguirre moved to the US in 1968, before starting his career as a miner in 1973. For the last sixteen years, he worked for Newmont Mining as a gold miner, and following his life-changing win said had no intention of quitting his job, and wants to “stay busy.”
Efren Aguirre struck the huge jackpot at 11:11 p.m. on Tuesday, March 22nd, whilst visiting the Gold Dust West Casino with his wife of 44 years, Maria Aguirre. As the casino’s Marketing Manager, Stacey Yurmanovic Sawyer, then explains Mr Aguirre had $100 in the Megabucks slots machine, and hit the jackpot on the seventh spin.
At first, Mr Aguirre was not at all certain what had transpired, and so he called over a casino employee and said:
“Hey something happened to my machine, it’s not running no more, maybe broke.”
The reply he received was: “No, you won a big pot.”
Interestingly, the first employee thought he may have won $1,200, until another member of staff confirmed the amount to be $12.5 million.
His wife, Maria, subsequently cashed out her more meagre winnings from another machine she’d been playing in order to find out how much money her husband had won. Describing the moment when she found out the magnitude of her husband’s win, Maria said:
“I didn’t believe it, and then my tears come out and I ask him if he’s OK.”
As to what the couple intend to do with their new-found fortune, they now have their sights set on a dream house in Elko. The rest, they said, would be put away for a rainy day.
The last time a Megabucks jackpot had been struck in Nevada was in March 2015 at the Westgate Las Vegas casino for $10.7 million. The largest ever Megabucks jackpot win in Nevada, however, took place in 2003 at Excalibur for a whopping $39.7 million.