Winning Bets Refused Pay-Outs by High Street Bookies

The Devil is in the Detail!

Winning isn’t easy – if it was, there would be no bingo, casino or sports betting products offered, that’s why, when we do win, we can’t help but celebrate and get excited, but it was a very different story for two very (un)lucky winners from the UK.

Stories have appeared in the media over recent years of bookies refusing to cough up winnings, the most recent being in September of 2019 when James Longley, a self-made millionaire from Leicestershire, placed a bet and won £286K but Paddy Power refused to pay – this is still the matter of a very big court case.

Over to the US now, and in 2019, Veronica Castillo who rarely visits casinos, managed to drop an $8.5million prize on a jackpot slot machine and instead of staff coming over to congratulate her, they shut off the machine and refused to pay her the jackpot! A golden winning ticket was handed to her for the sum of $80.35 and to this day, she hasn’t received any of her millions of dollars of prize money!

Happy to Take, Don’t Want to Give

Instances of bookies or casinos not paying out are rare, that’s’ why when it does happen, we’re shocked, but not as shocked as these two! A hard-working Dad from Bracknell, 59-year-old David Toomey, was working on maintenance in Bracknell high street when he decided to place a bet at Ladbrokes. His first two bets lost, but he decided to place a third bet and it won!

What happened next? The cashiers claim he placed the bet four seconds late, even though they took his £100 stake off him. Furious with Ladbrokes, he hot-footed it to Ladbrokes in a different part of the town where they told him his bet was in fact 38-seconds within the time limit given. All they were offering him was his stake back. Visiting the other branch of the popular high street betting shop proved to work in his favour, as staff there eventually paid him what was rightfully his!

Neigh Way

Not all instances of refused winnings end in the punters favour, as 83-year-old Mick Keane from Erdington found out. Thinking he had scooped £2,400 from a horse betting accumulator, he headed to the branch of Paddy Power where he originally paid his bet, but soon after, he ended up in hospital!

On Saturday 9^th October, he handed over his bet to the cashiers who checked it before changing the start time of the last race from 4:05pm – his time, to 4.10pm, a slight change that would end up costing him dearly! Once the races were over, he was only offered £364.48p instead of the full £2.4K because of that 5-minute time alteration made by the staff at Paddy Power.

A spokesman for Paddy Power said: "Where a meeting is stated and there is no time or an incorrect time, with all multiple bets the selection will be void, unless the sequence of selections written on the slip make the intended time clear."