Some women really know how to push a guy’s buttons, but most of them don’t get paid $100k for doing so.
The Miami Herald recently profiled gambler Jan Flato, who thought he’d won $100k playing the Double Top Dollar slot machine at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Fort Lauderdale on January 31. The International Game Technology machine, which costs $50 a spin, had lined up a winner, but Flato has yet to see a penny of that jackpot and likely never will.
Flato wasn’t alone at the casino’s High Roller room that night, having paired up with a 35-year-old woman, Marina Medvedeva Navarro, whom Flato had known for two years. It was Navarro who walked out of the casino that night with Flato’s $100k, and the ensuing he-said/she-said exchange should serve as a warning for all slot jockeys, male or female.
According to Flato, immediately prior to the machine hitting paydirt, he’d asked Navarro to “push the button for good luck.” Flato claimed it was his money that was fed into the machine but because the casino’s security video showed Navarro’s finger actually setting the reels in motion, universally accepted casino policy meant the $100k payday was rightfully hers.
Navarro disputed Flato’s version of events, telling the Herald that she’d fed $400 of her own money into the machine. She also claimed to have offered Flato a cut of her winnings, which he allegedly declined. Nevertheless, she reportedly asked casino security to keep Flato at bay while she left the venue with a $50k check and the rest in cash.
Former Las Vegas resident Flato, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to former Mötley Crüe singer and current ‘before’ picture in a weight-loss ad Vince Neil, says Navarro texted him a few weeks after the incident, saying that she missed him and asking if he still hated her. (Is there an emoji for passive aggression?)
Flato said lawyers have refused to take his case and he’d only gone public because he wanted “everybody to know what happened so it won’t happen to them.”
