A 16-year-old girl who was visiting a casino in the Chinese territory of Macau accompanied by her mother and grandmother, won $100,143.66 in a slot machine. The girl played $12, which her grandmother had given to her as a lunar New Year’s gift.

The casino, run by Las Vegas Sands, at first tried to avoid paying the prize arguing that since the girl was 16 she was underage and not supposed to be in the casino. However, Macau’s gaming regulatory body forced the casino to pay because they considered that gaming regulations only specify a minimum age for entering the casino and not for gambling inside.

"We have decided that the money must be paid, not to the child, but to her mother," Manuel Joaquim das Neves, Macau’s gaming bureau director, explained. Meanwhile, the gaming bureau is amending the territory’s laws so as to clarify the rules and eliminate the ambiguity.

The gaming board has temporarily banned the girl’s mother from Macau’s casinos as a punishment for taking her underage daughter to a casino.