The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG), the government agency that operates the province's casinos, temporarily took 87 machines from casino floors on Feb. 22 after the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) filmed the machines and recorded images of them flashing jackpot signals for a fraction of a second while in use. Some officials feared that the messages may have been aimed at convincing gamblers to remain at the machines.

The three shuttered video slot-machine models, called Sgt. Fritters, Most Wanted and Billionaires, are all manufactured by Las Vegas-based Konami Gaming Inc.

An OLG spokeswoman said Friday that that the machines were carried from the casino floors after the agency was informed of the messages by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), the province's gaming regulator. "There are 87 machines out of 22,000 across Ontario," she said. "It's a very small number. In no way does it interfere with the integrity of the machines, and nobody has said that it had any effect on the outcome of the games."

The spokeswoman said the machines are expected to be returned to the casino floors after Konami "produces a software upgrade to eliminate the potential glitch."

The jackpot messages were discovered during a slow-motion viewing of a CBC film of machines being operated at Ontario casinos, said a spokesman for the AGCO. The news organization showed the film to the regulatory agency early last month, then aired the footage on television during a news segment on Feb. 26.