Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Two More Cases of Insider Dealer Cheating in Singapore--This Time It's Roulette

Crooked Casino Dealers in Singapore's cheat-plagued casinos have been working in cahoots with gamblers to cheat the country's two giant casinos, Resorts World Sentosa and the Sands Marina Bay. Mostly the casino-cheat partnerships have been attacking the big-money wheels and the Pai Gow tables, but now we are getting news of two major insider roulette cheating cases. One involves the dealer actually controlling the spin of the ball to a point just enough to make it a profitable casino cheating enterprise, both involve deliberately overpaying winning bets.

In early October, 2010, 24-year-old Ng Wuey Kiang and 39-year-old Leong Teck Leong cheated the Resorts World Santosa out of $30,000. Ng controlled the landing of the roulette ball to within 20 of the 38 numnber slots on the wheel with a close to 90 percent accuracy, which is good enough to get the money. I do not know how good his spins looked, meaning that they could have been very short spins that would be much easier to control than a long legitimate spin. In any case, the dealer and his accomplice both received 21 months in prison. Singapore is handing out pretty stiff sentences to casino cheats, trying to make examples and stem the wave of casino cheting that has hit these two young casinos since they opened last year.

To make matters worse, when Ng missed the 20-number target he overpaid Leong n the next winning spin to make up the money they lost on those spins that didn't hit the group of numbers, something really stupid. Surveillance cameras finally caught on to the overpayments if not the crooked spins.

Casino surveillance departments in Singapore are quite weak, which is understandable, and they need to get some serious game protection training as its casinos are rivalling Foxwoods in Connecticut as the casino-cheating candy stores of the world.

Leong's attorney told the judge that his client had quit hia job and become a compulsive gambler, losing his life savings of $50,000. The judge did not take that into consideration at sentencing.

My take: I can only imagine how much insider casino cheating is going on in Singapore's two casinos. It has to be massive, and we are only hearing about the few crooked casino dealers getting caught.