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Posted on 04/25/2025 3:15:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
his is the fascinating tale of a twentysomething suburban Chicago man who won $800,000 in sports bets, which he traveled as far as Iowa to place. When it came time to cash in, the casinos refused.
Thomas McPeek, 24, shares a home with his parents. The basement is a shrine to their favorite teams, including the Cubs and the Bears. McPeek read a stack of books to make some educated sports wagers. He placed stacks and stacks of bets last year, complicated wagers on football called parlays, where several events all have to happen for the gambler to win.
"It was a calculated attack where I thought I had an edge," McPeek said. His first stop was the sportsbook at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, in August of last year. He went in with about $30,000 over the course of around a week, and his wins amounted to $350,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at kcci.com ...
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The casinos should pay up. Few people can beat the house. When one guy wins, it makes all of the suckers think they can win too, when they don’t put in the time and are just compulsive gamblers. Not paying is very bad advertising. If people think the casino won’t pay them if they win, marginal gamblers won’t gamble.
You’re allowed to lose all you want. Just make sure you don’t figure out how to win.
Not enough details to figure out why his bets weren’t honored. There’s no way to know who’s right and wrong here.
I figure he got ripped off by the casino.
That’s why I’m laughing at him. He gambled.
Ha ha.
“Not enough details to figure out why his bets weren’t honored.”
Not in this article but there are dudes that look for errors in odds payoff calls and only bet those.
The casinos accepted the bets, therefore they must pay off when they lose. It’s awfully convenient for them to say, after they lose, that he broke the rules. But if he lost all of his bets, they wouldn’t have said a word about any rules.
.
Money-laundering. What he did was post several small bets rather than a single big one (those “hours upon hours” making bets at a kiosk). So he made a hundred $100 bets instead of a single $10,000 (numbers used for the sake of argument). Some casinos have rules against this because it can be used to launder money.
To me, he should have checked the rules first before going that route. But the casino should have also had security in place to catch the betting before it was made. I’m on the gambler’s side simply because the casino took the wagers, peiod.
FYI, got the details from The Sun. Yeah. I know. But it was also the onlty thing anyone siad that made sense. lol
Yep. We were standing in line to eat at one of the Vegas casinos back when you could get prime rib for $6.99 and my mom says “watch that guys foot.” He was spinning a wheel with different denominations of dollar bills. As the wheel slowed he would pump his foot right next to the leg of the betting table and the wheel would stop on large denominations. When someone would come over and bet, it would stop on $1 or maybe $5.
But that’s different!
Maybe he tried to skirt taxes somehow. Lots of small bets that don’t require reporting.
I could see the potential ‘money laundering’ angle, and maybe he did break the house rules. But they should pay up. They took the bets.
This guy is a liar.
He “says” he wants to be anonymous and yet agrees to be featured in this article?
I would say being in this article is 100000 times more exposure than going up to person to place your bets.
Sure there is. They are in the business of taking bets. They took his bets. He won. They should pay.
Sure I can see that angle. But they should have had better systems in place to prevent it. They had him on the eye in the sky standing there for hours. The kiosk didn’t have a fail-safe such as not allowing the same parlay bet to be made mroe than 3 times within 20 minutes or something. They took his bets because they are generally considered sucker bets and thought they would win. It only became a “problem” for the casino AFTER they learned he had won. I have seen many stories like this and they are all shady on the part of the casino.
There is a woman who won a progressive table game something like $680,000. When it came time to pay her they told her “she was trespassed from the casino 7 years ago and is not allowed to play so they won’t pay”. But she had been playing for 7 years on junkets. The “trespass” incident had to do with a trip 7 years prior where she intervened to get her drunk cousin on the bus BEFORE they got thrown out. She claims she was never given a formal trespass, and besides she had been back time and time again year after year without being told to leave. Only when she hit the big one, the casino gets chintzy.
If he has a good case, a good lawyer will rep him on contingency.
...
Caesars maintains McPeek's betting activity was an attempt to circumvent their rules, and as a result, they voided the wagers. Caesars adds McPeek can get his money back that he used to place the bets, including the losers.
I was going to say that they didn't mind keeping his losing bets when they voided his winning bet. Then I read the last paragraph where it said the casino would refund ALL of his bets as if he never wagered at all.
This reminds me of all the stories of casinos refusing to pay out progressive slot machine jackpots, claiming that the slot machine "malfunctioned." I would demand to have all my money that was put into the slot machine refunded, arguing that how do I know that those losing bets weren't also malfunctions?
-PJ
I read the Sun also and can’t figure out what he was doing.
Apparently he was placing a large number of small bets versus a fewer number of big bets to avoid his bets being voided when he placed them. I guess he would have to go to a live person to place a big bet and that person may reject his bet.
But, what was he doing that was against (except money laundering rules)the casino rules?
Anyone know?
I agree. If they offered, and accepted the bet. They MUST pay.
If not? Shut down EVERY gambling site or location. Period
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