Biggest Casino Wins in Las Vegas

There is nowhere better in the world if you have the gambling bug than Las Vegas. The city of bright lights and 24-hour casinos has seen some of the biggest casino wins in the world, along with some of the best stories to accompany them!

For example, back in 1999, an anonymous gentleman from Illinois casually put just $10 into a Megabuck machine at Caesar’s Palace and on his first spin managed to hit the jackpot of $21,346,952.22!

Known as the “Suitcase Man,” William Lee Bergstrom is known for having walked into Binion’s Horseshoe casino with two suitcases, one empty, and the other with $777,000 in it. He placed the entire amount on the Don’t Pass line of a craps table and managed to double his money with just one dice roll. He filled his second suitcase with money and left a whole lot richer.

One man who played the game fairly but won incredibly was Don Johnson from Bensalem Penn who managed to take home an impressive $15 million from playing blackjack in three casinos across Atlantic City. Due to the recession, in 2011 there were a lot of discounts and incentives offered to players to drum up interest in the industry. Johnson made the most of these and ended up $15 million better off!

Back in January 2000, waitress Cynthia Jay-Brennan was a lucky winner of the jackpot of $34.9 million at the now closed Desert Inn hotel-casino. Sadly, just a few weeks later she was involved in a car accident, due to a drunk driver, which killed her sister and left Cynthia paralyzed. Even when you’re a millionaire, life can still sneak up and bite you. 

Some people have all the luck. For example, a woman in her sixties won $680,000 on The Wheel of Fortune machine at the Palace Station Hotel. A few months later, she won over $27 million as the jackpot for the Megabucks, making that $680,000 seem like nothing!

Another example of double winners is Elmer Sherwin (an apt surname!), a 76-year-old World War II veteran who won $4.6million Megabucks jackpot, in the first 10 hours of The Mirage opening. He won another $21 million in the same way, sixteen years later, and kindly donated a big chunk of his money to charities, including the Hurricane Katrina fund.

One of the largest ever Vegas payouts was won by a 25-year-old LA man at the Excalibur Casino. He only ended up at the casino to kill time while waiting for a basketball game to begin and left with a record payout, of a huge $39.7 million! He opted to receive $1.5 million every year for the next 25 years, leaving him pretty golden until he is 50 – and then some!

As we have seen, casinos can pay out unbelievable amounts of money, regardless of who you are, or where you come from. If lady luck is on your side, you could leave the casino with a whole new life.