Just ask these people, who thought their lives had changed forever, only to have their hopes dashed ...

If life loves to beat one lesson into our heads over and over again, it's this: If something is too good to be true, it almost always is. And it also works if something seems exactly good enough to be true.

5 Casino Pays Out False Hope

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Picture yourself sitting at a slot machine in Vegas. Maybe you're there on your honeymoon. Maybe you've saved for months for the trip, or maybe you're an addict with a serious gambling problem and no friends or family to stage an intervention. Maybe the Russian mob has given you one hour to come up with the 20 grand you owe them before they feed you to their wild boars. With your last spin, your screen bursts into flashing lights and congratulatory sirens. The dream of every gambler the world over just exploded in your face.

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"Sweet positive reinforcement! It burns!"

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If you were Chuck and Tisha Barry, your screen said you won $31,000. If you were Louise Chavez, it was $43 million. For Behar Merlaku, the number was an absurd $57 million. That's freaking lottery money!

Next step: sashay on over to the money counter to collect the dollars that you'll be rolling naked in for the next few decades.

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You. You and 80 whole dollars.

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The Heartbreaking Truth

Not so fast, Scrooge McRockefeller. All the flashing lights in the world don't add up to a payoff if the casino in charge claims the machine experienced a malfunction or a software glitch. After all, slot machines these days are just computers, and computers screw up all the time.

Just ask Chuck and Tisha Barry. When they went to collect their $31,000, the casino scoffed and said it was all one big, hilarious mistake. The Barrys walked away with nothing but the 80 cents they put into the machine and a deep regret for screaming "IN YOUR FACE, PEASANTS!" to all the other casino patrons.