Over $17,000 Found Under Slot Machines at Sands Casino Hotel in Atlantic City

It's a casino equivalent of money fallout when you look under your chair and find a dollar or some change. That's what happened at the closed Sands Casino Hotel which found $17,000 worth of loose change that had accumulated over the past 30 years under the slot machines at the casino. The casino was shut down in November 2006 and will be demolished to give way to a new gambling establishment.

So on April 4, 2007, when the staff began taking away the 2,350 slot machines to be used at the other casinos that are managed by the parent company of Sands, they were expecting to find some loose change, but they did not expect to find $17,193.34. The spokeswoman for the Pinnacle Atlantic City commented that it is just shocking and that they were not expecting to find that kind of money.

The cash belongs to Pinnacle Entertainment Inc., the Las Vegas based company which bought Sands just last year. The state of New Jersey gets an 8% tax share in the money. Some of the cash was lodged into the small areas between the slot machines, but a lot of it was found under the machines.

The older versions of the slot machines had buckets inside of them to catch the coins that were fed into them and when they overflowed, some of the coins got under the machines which had not been moved in Sands' 26 years of operation.

It took 4 people to move the machines. The employees even found some cash under the carpet of the casinos. The slot machines will be transferred to other casinos owned by Pinnacle in Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, Missouri and Argentina. The non-gambling equipment in Sands will be sold next month and the establishment will be demolished in the fall.

Sunday, 29 April 2007
Kori Woffendin