Gaming Fraud

Want to know where a portion of your slot dollars go? You guessed it; gaming fraud. (Fortunately it's a relatively small portion because guys like The Donald and The Steve do not like casino cheats and aggressively prosecute those whom they consider to be taking unfair advantage of their billions!)

There are hundreds of scams, but we're going to tell you just a few of the more "entertaining" ones we've discovered. The names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, by the way.

1. Clyde Crackerjack was a computer programmer. He was one of the guys who wrote a program for one gaming manufacturer's video poker machines. Clyde, whose greed was exceeded only by his brilliance, put an imperceptible "loop" into his program, and he did it in such a way that it was nearly invisible. He told the computer program to act like a combination lock (for lack of a better way to describe this particular scam). Since the machine took one to five coins, bettor's choice, he directed the machine to recognize a secret 20 sequence betting pattern, e.g., 1-5-3-4-2-2-1-1-5-4-5-3-2-4-4-3-1-1-3-2. Understandably, there are multi millions of possible combinations, but Clyde alerted the machines to only one. Then, IF the machine recognized that particular betting sequence, it was to deal a Royal Flush on the 21st hand. If somebody just happened upon that sequence -- nearly impossible when you think about it -- that somebody would have a 1 in 5 chance of randomly betting five coins on the 21st hand. But if somebody KNEW Clyde's secret, for instance one of Clyde's friends or relatives or specifically hired employees, you could be sure that the 21st hand would get a bet of five coins and surprise the player with a jackpot.

2. The scheme was brilliant. In fact, if it weren't for one of the above mentioned employees ratting Clyde out in order to get a lesser charge dismissed ("Hey, if you let me skate on this penny larceny charge, I will give you the information on a WAY bigger crime!"), Clyde would still be sitting on Easy Street today. His house of cards came tumbling down, however, when the police took the little criminal up on his offer to go easy on him. And Clyde landed in jail.
   How about the blackjack players who just couldn't lose? Once again, it was an inside who came up with the scam. We'll call this guy Monte Mayfair. Good old Monte was one of the guys who sat up in the surveillance room of the casino, manning the "eye in the sky." Monte figured out a scheme in which he intercepted the delivery of brand new decks of cards. He carefully slit the plastic on one side, opened the decks, and marked the back side of each card with a special invisible ink ... with a number 1 thru 10. All face cards got a 10. What made the ink special was that it ONLY showed up through special infrared glasses. Then Monte carefully put the cards back in the box and closed them up. The slit in the cellophane was virtually imperceptible.

Monte worked alone in his casino. So he'd sit up there with his glasses on and wait for one of the tables to show up with marked cards. Then he'd call in his partner, Al Caponi, via a special frequency of 2-way communication and tell Al which table to sit at. Al would pull out a pocket of $100 chips and play big. It was hard to lose when he knew what the dealer's hole card was and when he also knew what the next "hit" card was going to be. Al won ... big.

These guys, too, went to jail. A security guard coming to work one day just happened to pick up the odd conversation on his car radio, and the bad guys got busted. Way busted.

There have also been weighted routlette tables, ultrasonic devices that affect coin payouts, bottomn-dealing dealers and plenty more. The cost of fraud is passed on to the rest of the players, like YOU, so the money is essentially coming out of YOUR pocket when the Clydes and Als of the world come up with a new scam.

Fight Fraud America!

PS: Card counters do not fall within the definition of "cheaters." Those M.I.T. students were just using their brains in what was perhaps a non-appreciated way (by the casino owners.)