A handful of New York casinos abruptly closed this week because of an issue affecting the statewide lottery system used by video gaming machines.
By Friday, all of the impacted NY casinos were reopened, including Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel in Islandia, which had been shuttered for the better part of three days.
Video lottery system caused ‘service interruption’ throughout state
A spokesperson for the New York State Gaming Commission told Newsday that the statewide video lottery system was the cause of the problem. Non-class III commercial casinos in NY use video gaming machines (VGM) rather than random number-generating slot machines.
Brad Maione, a spokesman for the NYSGC, said Everi, the video lottery central system operator, “experienced a service interruption that impacted some gaming operations across the state.”
Michael Bonakdar, chief gaming and hospitality officer at Jake’s 58, told customers on Wednesday that the Suffolk County gambling parlor was “one of multiple casinos throughout New York which suffered service disruptions due to issues affecting the company that operates the statewide system.”
CEO confident Jake’s 58 NY casino will reopen soon
In a statement to media outlets Wednesday, Phil Boyle, president and CEO of Jake’s 58 parent company Suffolk OTB assured the public that the system issues were not the result of a cyberattack — like the kind that affected Empire City Casino and other MGM properties across the US last month — or external digital breach.
Boyle said:
“We always take it very seriously and are concerned with potential hacks, we saw what happened recently with MGM (Resorts International) in Las Vegas and Caesars (Entertainment). We don’t want to see that. We have a tremendous IT team and cyber security team focused on this.”
Boyle noted that other NY casinos have already reopened, and “we have been assured that Jake’s 58 will be next. We expect to reopen soon and will let you all know as soon as we do.”