South Africa, known casinocheatwise for being the land of the famous Las Vegas chip cup scam, has been hit with another inside dealer cheat scam, albeit one not quite as devastating as the chip cup scam that rocked South Africa's casinos in the 1980s. Five people, including two Carnival City dealers, were busted for the latest high-tech digital camera scam that happened on the casino's punto banco tables, a game similar to US baccarat. Apparently the scam came apart because the scammers appeared nervous at the tables, which given the fact that Chinese were involved is quite surprising, as they're usually cool under the cheat gun. It must have been non-Chinese dealers who gave the scam away. The casino surveillance department picked up on them and began watching the videos of their tables.
The three Chinese hid a tiny digital camera in a cigarette box to take pictures of cards being dealt while playing punto banco. This is not the first scam to use a box of cigarettes. The most famous is the French Cigarette Scam using a Marlboro box. In the South African scam, the dealers purposely dealt the cards slow so that their confederates' cameras could film them clearly. The pictures were then sent to computers in a hotel room, from where one of the cheat-team members would watch and then send his partners at the table the card information via sms. More than three million rand was taken out of the casino.
Overall, this sounds like a pretty good scam that had a weak link: the dealers
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