Anthony Weiss Interview of Casino Cheat Turned Game Protection Consultant Richard Marcus

1 ) Anthony Weiss: You spent parts of your youth in Jersey involved in typical schoolboy gambling scam hustles. Is cheating something that is in your blood or is it developed over time?

Richard Marcus: I don't think cheating was ever in my blood. What got me involved in cheating at a very young age was being a victim of cheats myself. While flipping baseball cards as a ten-year old, some kids a few years older than I fleeced me out of my entire card collection by pulling seconds much the same way blackjack mechanics do in handheld blackjack games. When I discovered I was being cheated, I turned the tables on them and soon began developing the skills needed to hold my own in poker games infested with sharks. After my schoolboy hustles, I gave up the cheating and went to Vegas just to gamble legitimately. That I actually became a casino cheat happened by chance, not by my wanting to.

2) AW: What causes the adrenaline to flow, getting the cheat move on or the payment of the scam?

RM: The successful result of pulling the wool over the casino's eyes is what gets the adrenaline flowing. Just like in any other endeavor, legal or illegal, when you work hard to develop a skill and see it work and pay dividends, you get an adrenaline rush, which of course is most intense when the move gets paid. The first time I got paid $10,000 on a $5,000 check on a roulette column with the Savannah move, I can tell you that the adrenaline rush was truly better than sex!

3) AW: As you moved towards your early twenties and the hustles became larger, it was apparent that Vegas would eventually call out to you. It is interesting that you fell victim to “the hook” by having a large win on the baccarat tables as your first experience in the gambling Mecca. Once the streak ran its course and you were broke, it was obvious that you needed a job. That is where dealing seemed to be a perfect fit. Vegas had no idea what they were in for as you were given the keys to the store. Every procedure, security measure and precaution employed on the table games were being explained by seasoned downtown pit bosses. Do you feel that you had a huge advantage over many of the typical grifts out there as you knew many of the game protection policies from the inside?

RM: Not really. Although I did learn much about casino game protection policies as a dealer, a lot of that knowledge is easily picked up by skilled casino cheats from the outside. It doesn't take long to see how a casino reacts when a questionable bet comes into play, and a cheat can watch as the heat develops and moves about the casino. Most casino people on the floor have no idea how to act and react when they are suspicious of a cheater at the table. There is usually no subtlety and lots of panic. My own security systems (which all good cheat teams have) were always better than the casinos', to the point where I never had to worry much about the cameras above. So please, don't blame Vegas's pit bosses for letting me put the screws to their tables!

4) AW: You had a run of organized team cheating for well over a decade prior to Savannah coming into your life. Please enlighten us how it is possible to pull off past post moves on craps, blackjack and roulette knowing casinos know the moves. How important is the selling of the move as compared to the move itself?

RM: That's where you're wrong. The casinos THINK they know the moves, but they really don't. To illustrate what I'm saying, let me use an allegorical equation. If a cheat move equates to 5+5=10, the casino only knows about the 10; they don't know what the two 5s are. Putting this into a pastposting example: sure, the casino knew about my pastposting $100 checks straight up on roulette numbers. So they put their dealers and pit personnel on the lookout for unannounced $100 checks showing up on winning numbers, with instructions to immediately call surveillance for bet verification. Hence, the "10" sum of the equation is the unannounced winning $100 check on the number. But what are the two 5s? They are the essential ingredients to the move that makes the 10 possible. One 5 is the way I set the casino up, the other is the psychology I use that enforces the set-up and convinces the floor personal that I am a legitimate high roller who bets $100 chips straight up on roulette numbers. The result is that the pit supervisors very seldom call surveillance, despite their having been told to do so.

This is the selling of the move, which is as important as the move itself. If the casino doesn't buy it, the move, no matter how much talent the pastposter displayed laying it in, it is for nought.

5) AW: Please detail a few variations of your moves that were changed out of necessity over the years? How did you get the large gaming cheques purchased knowing you need high-denomination gaming cheques on your person prior to a large pastpost.

RM: Before the advent of the Savannah move, my casino cheating operations were based on preventing the floor personnel from calling surveillance. My main weapon for this was the use of set-ups and psychology. One of my blackjack pastpost moves was where I switched an original bet of three $5 checks to two $500 checks with a $5 check on top AFTER the bet won and was paid, and then claim the dealer paid me wrong. I made two major changes to that move over the years, which kept its pay-rate above 95% for two decades. One was to gently tap the dealer's hand when I claimed the mistake. This completely shocked the dealer because no player ever touches a dealer's hand. The dealer forgets what he'd originally seen in the betting circle and only comprehends what he sees now, the move checks.

The second change was to push the dealer's payoff checks back toward the dealer, which prompted the dealer to pick them up and put the three $5 checks back in the table check rack. This served me well when the supervisor appeared at the table and only saw my two $500 checks capped by the $5 check in the betting circle. What he was looking at was "clean." And don't forget, I had ten more $500 checks on the layout, which had been hidden from the dealer before the claim, to back up my credibility. This same philosophy was used when switching $25 checks for $1,000 checks and $100 checks for $5,000 checks.

Getting the large denomination checks was done through off-set procedures. One player would go to a baccarat or craps table, buy in for a large amount of cash and get $500 checks right away on the buy-in. He would give a little action, while being off-set by one or two other team members betting approximately the same amount on the opposite side (bank/player pass/don't pass), then simply leave the table. This was done to avoid losing money. When $1,000 and $5,000 checks were needed, the primary player would go to a second table already having the $500s, give a little action, then color up to $1,000s or $5,000s. To avoid repetitive buy-ins to get $5,000 checks, I kept a reserve of them from all the Vegas casinos that used them. Game protection measures could have caught on to this if properly followed in casinos.

6) AW: The Savannah move is actually complex in its design. You utilized principles such as vantage point and perfect angles within the peripheral vision of the dealer to camouflage the large wager. The obvious choice was noting the first column wager was the furthest wager from the dealer. It didn’t hurt that you were getting 2-to-1 odds when the move was successful. What other physical designs were utilized in your career that would not normally be considered?

RM: Every move I've ever done took into consideration the measurements of the "green-felt battlefield," as I liked to call it. With Savannah, it was, as you say, a question of creating a perfect angle with the checks to camouflage the large denomination checks underneath. Doing other conventional moves before that, I was mainly concerned with controlling the dealer's movements, especially at roulette. So by betting a specific number of checks in certain areas of the layout, both inside on the numbers and outside on the proposition boxes, I forced the dealer to move about his working well and the layout as I wanted, giving me the split-second I needed to physically do the move. Selecting certain color roulette checks because of their position in the dealer's well enabled me to perform certain pastposts. In craps, I preferred to do my moves right next to the dealer, whose hands paying bets blocked out the vision of both the stickman and boxman. Other moves, such as the blackjack pastposts, I did from every position on the table. No physical design was needed there.

7) AW: The roulette staff takes great pride in running a smooth operation. I have worked with table games and surveillance professionals from Ireland, England and Scotland who understand all of the known cheat moves such as the non-value denomination switch, Italian past post team distractions and chip pass-offs, computer play and even Savannah. Please explain how scouting the staff and knowing their experiences is important to getting the scam in place. What are you looking for when scouting? Do you concentrate on each casino’s procedures and lack of enforcing game protections? Is a strong pit supervisor or dealer more of a concern to a cheat team?

RM: Most professional casino cheating teams will do a lot of scouting of the staff, but top teams such as mine do not concern themselves with doing this. In my team's case, our moves were designed to beat ALL casino dealers, floor staff, and when it came to Savannah, even all the surveillance personnel. In fact, I preferred going up against the most skilled and sharp casino dealers and pit personnel because the less skilled dealers often caused problems by their ignorance, and they often needed help form their supervisors to get the payoffs right for my moves. These scenarios sometimes evolved into a steamy situation because of all the confusion. There are some funny stories in my book "American Roulette" about how green dealers in the early days of Atlantic City, Foxwoods and Mississippi inadvertently created problems for me simply by trying to get the payoffs right. You can imagine the chaos on craps tables when I switched $1505 and $1505 (three $500s and a $5) for two $20 bets (four $5s), one on the pass line and the other the odds bet behind! Break-in dealers had a heck of a problem figuring how to pay the odds on a $1505 bet.

Run of the mill cheat teams will look for sloppy dealers or for dealers and pit personnel who seem preoccupied or uninterested. They take advantage of the monotony of a dealer's job. Back in the late '70s when I did my first cheat move as a dealer, which was a false-shuffle baccarat scam exactly the same as the one done by the Tran Organization 25 years later, I took advantage of my pit boss who was an ex-boxer who didn't care about the job and spent his time talking boxing and flirting with women players instead of watching the games.

8) AW: Here we are in the year 2009. Surveillance now places heavy emphasis on table games performance by analyzing wins. We look for patterns that show up in daily gaming win versus loss spreadsheets. Surveillance staffs are made up of experienced veterans and young associates working together to protect every angle of operations within the casino. The possibility exists that Savannah would expose herself as a large win with short play in the performance of a table game and reviews. Many surveillance departments now track players and pick up entire gaming sessions that might include the pinched switch on another game prior to the actual legitimate win of the Savannah move later in the day. Surveillance is getting better at developing theories to investigate scams and the equipment and databases are improved and communication is at an all-time high. At what point do you take surveillance serious enough to factor us in your preparation?

RM: Naturally I will always factor surveillance into the carrying out of any move. When you speak of surveillance interfering with a move in progress on its own, that never happened. When you speak of surveillance stopping a payoff, to prevent that I "worked" the floor personnel to avoid surveillance being called. If surveillance wasn't called, they were effectively disarmed. When you speak about surveillance picking up on Savannah after I've been paid and am long gone from the casino, that's a different story.

First off, whenever I laid down the Savannah bet in any casino, win or lose, another bet would not be made in the same casino on any shift for at least 24 hours. That policy more or less wiped out any chance of surveillance "marrying" a payoff to a pickup, which would of course expose the move. On some major event-nights in Vegas, such as boxing championships at Caesars and the MGM Grand when the casinos were mobbed up with lots of $5,000-check action, we would hit them with double and triple moves but leave after the first loss so they couldn't put it together. With tons of action in a high-limit casino, it would be hard for casino surveillance to pick up on this kind of move simply because it lost $20,000 at roulette for the shift. Back in the mid 90s when we were switching $300 blackjack bets into $10,100 with two $5,000 checks capped by one $100 check, we had three occasions where we beat two different casinos for more than a $100,000 on a single shift. We did twelve to fifteen moves each time, all of which were paid with not one pit supervisor even thinking of a surveillance verification. True, it might not be that easy today, but unless casinos are better prepared to understand how cheaters really operate, surveillance recaps and tracking alone will not stop professional cheat operations.

9) AW: New Jersey is considered to have one of the strongest regulatory enforcement acts (Casino Control Act). Do jurisdiction regulations matter to a cheat team? How aggressive was your team in the early days of tribal gaming?

RM: What mattered to my cheat team was only the laws if ever we got caught! For instance, when Yassir Arafat opened his Gaza casino in 1993, we weren't about to go there, no matter how easy it would have been to take it down...Why? Because if you get caught, they chop off your hands! Once we were relaxing on the beach in the middle of a European casino trip when my partner suggested we go to Istanbul, Turkey and do a few moves in its new Hilton casino. I looked at him as though he were nuts and said, "I guess you never saw the movie "Midnight Express!"

As far as regulatory bodies go and how strong the enforcement was, this was not much of a factor. In the vast majority of the world, casino cheating crimes are generally not punished very severely, except for major repeat offenders and interstate slot rings. In spite of that, I always knew I could go to prison but the chances were very low. My moves were quite good and they had very little exposure and no repeat action. So the reward well outweighed the risk.

The fact that New Jersey has one of the strongest enforcement acts doesn't filter down the game and slot protection viaduct from the sky to the floor. What I mean by that is that there is little difference in how the casino floor operates from Vegas to Atlantic City to Connecticut to Mississippi. I remember (with a laugh) the Gaming Enforcement officials in Atlantic City who walked around in their uniforms spying the games. I moved in front of them on several occasions, and they had no clue.
Early days of tribal gaming? Read my book! What happened at Foxwoods during their first month of operation was a brutal rampage. To give you an idea how inept they were, you could toss a $500 chip across the casino, and if it landed anywhere on a gaming table they would pay it! Of course I am exaggerating a bit, but that gives you an idea how aggressive we were. Same thing in Mississippi, and Atlantic City was so great the first six months that my team rented a house in Brigantine!

10) AW: I remember back in 1985 predicting Villanova could beat the mighty Georgetown Hoyas in the NCAA basketball championship if they played the perfect game. I felt like a genius as they won the game and proved all of the skeptics wrong. You basically called the poker corruption scams well before anyone even thought it was possible and must have felt some sense of pride within the prediction. Here's another chance to show the industry your insight: In your opinion what is the next major scam that will hit the gambling industry? Do you see one area of concern that casinos continue to overlook or disregard?

RM: Well, Tony, if you predicted Villanova beating Georgetown in '85, I think I might be able to use you on my next roulette wheel-clocking team!!! LOL... You're right about the poker scams. When I predicted them in my book "Dirty Poker," lots of people accused me of this and that, only to learn in the end I was a hundred percent right. As for the next major scams to hit the industry, I think we will see some more high-tech scams, especially aimed at marking cards at poker and, in spite of the difficulties, more computer-chip hacking scams aimed at slots. I think there's a chance as well that we might see some major marker/credit scams as ID thieves and hackers could do a number on casino credit departments. This has been happening recently in Canadian casinos.

However, as casinos shift their surveillance operations more toward high-tech cheating, some very clever low-tech cheaters are going to take advantage, and someone will duplicate the simple ingenuity that I had in thinking out and designing "Savannah." in fact, I don't know if I should tell you this, but about a year ago I thought of a move that could be even better than Savannah. Of course, I am long retired and would never bring it to the development stage, so I guess I'll just take it to the grave.

I don't see casinos overlooking an entire area of asset and game protection, but what I do see is an involuntary overlooking of certain aspects because of faulty information that passes around these fields. I will give an example of that in response to question 13.

11) AW: Let’s gamble? How about a hand of poker? Are you bluffing with the $5,000,000 reported career total? I will “call” you and say it’s more?

RM: Who reported ONLY $5 million? Tony, are you moonlighting as an IRS agent?

12) AW: You have had a successful series of books exposing cheating in the gambling industry to include your career with your favorite girl, “Savannah”, documentaries, articles, key note gambling convention engagements and traveling around the globe as a paid consultant. Our question to you is what happens when you get that itch? Are you John Elway who went out on top or Brett Favre who says he retired and can’t help getting back in because it really is in his blood? For the sake of the industry, thanks for honestly answering our questions and bringing light to the thought process of a casino cheat.

RM: No, Tony, I am long done. When I made the decision to write the book "American Roulette," I knew I would never again do a casino move unless it was for educational or entertainment purposes, which as you know, I've done for both. I am the John Elway here. To be both frank and honest, even though I now teach casinos how to defend against cheating, I am not doing that out of guilt or remorse for my having cheated casinos for 25 years. I am doing it simply because cheating casinos is the only thing in life I know. I am not old enough to retire to Florida, so I need to keep myself occupied. Getting into game protection training is just the natural course to follow for someone of my experience and talent.

My 25 years cheating the casinos were great, and I loved it! Heck, I get adrenaline rushes just telling the war stories in bars and parties! But as far as me getting the itch and doing another move for real...stick a fork in me.

AW: Final Question: Obviously you have greatly enlightened the casino industry about how cheaters operate and what some casino weaknesses are, but some casinos will hesitate hiring you to consult for them on game protection training. What would you say to them? Why would it be beneficial for casinos to hire you instead of a conventional game protection consultant?

RM: There are many valid reasons for casinos to hire me to shore up their game and asset protection defenses. First off, not only was I probably among the most skilled casino cheats ever, I was also a casino dealer and I know the inner workings of casinos and what their weaknesses are, especially their vulnerabilities to inside scams. I also have very intimate knowledge of casino cage operations and how cheat teams use them to avoid taking heat cashing out their ill-gotten gains, which would expose their very operations. As well, I am always abreast of the latest money laundering and credit scams that victimize casinos. I wrote extensively about this in my book "Identity Theft Incorporated."

And finally, and perhaps most important, I know how cheats, fraudsters and major criminals clandestinely communicate in casinos. This is super important and something a conventional consultant does not know. If a casino can recognize a cheat team's mode of communication, it can get one step ahead and have a shot at catching them in the act, instead of waiting for table reports to tell surveillance that "something must be up."

When it comes to learning how to defend your business from any threat, best is to go to the source, someone who has actually done what your trying to protect your entity from. There is a great difference between learning game protection from a conventional consultant and learning from one who has actually done the moves and can hands-on teach the dealers and floorpeople how to avoid being victimized. Learning to protect your casino against cheats from someone who's never been one is like being in a flight simulator instead of flying the plane; it's just not the same. This is why security companies use ex-computer hackers to design software to prevent future hackings into information systems. Online casinos do this as well. The same should hold true for brick and mortar casinos. However, some casinos just can't reconcile themselves to hire an ex-cheat, but really, it is very foolish for casinos to think there is any harm in hiring me. I can only give them knowledge that no one else can.

In a previous question, I referred to an abundance of false information that spreads throughout the game protection industry. Let me cite an example of this: I often read casino industry magazines in which there are articles on game protection. Some of the writers, who are respected game protection consultants, have on several occasions made reference to me, my moves and other moves I had taught them. In writing about these moves, which I had detailed to them in person, they have made errors in their articles not only about the order and mechanics of the moves, but also on how and what casinos should do to protect themselves from them. I imagine that the same consultants while training casino personnel at the properties make the same mistakes showing the casino how these moves go down and how they can be defensed.

Of course this could be dangerous to casinos wanting to protect themselves from the cheats, but no one can expect a conventional game protection consultant to know cheating moves in and out if he has never done them himself. But when the moves and game-protection advice come from me, you can bet that the casino is going to have the best chance to defend itself. I like to say at the beginning of a casino game protection seminar that my goal for the casino is for it to be able to catch me doing moves should I come back in a month and try them.

I have discussed this possibility with one European casino, where I would enter the casino with surveillance's knowledge but unbeknownst to all floor personnel and do the moves. As of now they have not agreed to this blatant form of game protection training. If this ever happens, I will be sure to let you know.

If you want complete and accurate info about Savannah and many more cheating moves, it is available on my website richardmarcusbooks.com