Tuesday, March 20, 2018

New Slot Machine Hacking Scam in Eastern Europe

Bulgarian Slot Cheats Busted
The Russian casino cheats have become famous in recent times for high-tech slot machine scams, but let's not shortchange the rest of the Eastern Europeans!

This time the sophisticated slot-cheat team is out of Bulgaria, a country that continues to produce both highly skilled international casino dealers and supervisors and just as skilled casino cheats. In short, Bulgarian casino people, whichever side of the tables they may be on, are very sharp.

The details of this new high-tech slot scam are sketchy but here's what I know:

Four Bulgarian individuals have been detained in Bulgaria by the General Directorate Combating Organized Crime, which seems to be like a US criminal task force investigating American organized crime. The four Bulgarians, who have not been named at this time, were found to have defrauded casinos and "gaming halls" by hacking into their slot machines to manipulate outcomes and payouts that are said to be "large," although no actual amounts or estimates have been given.

The investigation seems to be somewhat secretive at this time.

The report does say, however, that the four slot cheats devised a very sophisticated program for obtaining remote access to the victimized slot machines. It goes on to say they operated as a coordinated team where each of the four had a particular function. One cheat was showing false play on the machines while another was accessing the codes and meddling with them. A third was responsible for fabricating the devices they used to trick the software.

All in all, it seems like a very professional operation but no details as to how they were caught were given. I am going to guess, however, that an unhappy associate or girlfriend dropped the dime on them.

My take: I can identify very well with their multi-faceted team operation. The best coordinated casino-cheating teams in the world use the same modus operandi where each member is assigned a specific function, much like a military commando operation. Each cog is equally important to the operation, and if one member does not complete his function correctly, the operation falls apart.

I might mention that back in November I was called by a Bulgarian casino who questioned me about a roulette scam where they were sure the cheats were controlling the ball's landing to some degree, but had no idea how. They mentioned they though slot cheats were involved and wanted my opinion, but I told them I could not offer one without actively investigating the case with the video evidence they had. In the end, they didn't want to pay my fee.

But do I think this Bulgarian slot-cheating team had something to do with rigging those Bulgarian roulette wheels?

Most likely not, whether or not there actually was any rigging of those Bulgarian roulette wheels.