Thursday, May 27, 2010

Does She Look Like a Casino Cheat?...Well, She's the Latest Slots Cheat Convicted in Singapore, as Casino Cheat Wave Continues in New Casinos

Back on February 15 at the Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore, Alice Lau Qian Xiu, a forty-six year old accounting assistant, decided that counting other people's money was not as good as counting her own...so she decided to become a slot-player thief. Her first known victim, and I stress "known" because no one knows how many there were before she got caught, was Soh Wee Chen, a thirty-two year-old salesman who was playing a Russian roulette machine and walked away from it leaving his credits. Evidently, Chen thought that his remaining credits would be automatically transferred to his casino player's card.

Lau Qian Xiu was on the lookout as she played the slot machine next to Chen, and when she spotted the credits on his machine immediately snatched the credits printout and cashed out $630 at the casino cage.
But then two things happened: the first was that Lau Qian Xiu, like many other degenerate low-level casino cheats, did not leave the casino after committing her crime. Instead she returned to the same slot machine she'd been playing on when she spotted her victim and began playing again; the second is that the victim realized his mistake and went back to the machine to claim his credits. When he got there he saw there were none left to claim. He reported the incident to security, then surveillance ran back the video and saw Lau Qian Xiu steal his credits, just as she unbelievably still sat at the same machine while surveillance watched the footage of her crime.

Lau Qian Xiu was prosecuted and faced two years in jail, but her lawyer convinced the judge that the friendly and harmless-looking woman was desperate and acted on impulse and was by no means a pro, and won her a lenient sentence: $1,500 fine.

My Take: She does look a little too nice and innocent to be a casino cheat/thief, but I'll tell you this: Had she gotten away cleanly this time, she would have been back out on the prowl as soon as she blew her first known victim's $630.