I haven´t heard of any professional casino or poker cheat-teams coming out of Africa, but apparently at least one of them is in business, and not surprisingly it is in Singapore, where the newly-opened Sands Marina Bay casino has quickly joined its brother Singaporean casino, Sentosa's Resorts World, as a prime target for professional casino cheats from all over the world.
As I might have suspected, a casino cheat team from Tanzania would be a bit less than prime, and they got caught trying one of the biggest roulette-cheating pastposting (bet-placing after winning outcome is known)moves since my professional cheat team broke up after our huge score on New Year's Eve, 1999. They had the balls to try pastposting a $1,000 casino chip straight-up on a number at the bottom of the wheel. Reports are that the move was done by a two-man operation, which is a little short for a cheat-move of that magnitude. They probably didn't have much check-betting (process of laying down bets to create move opportunites and chip-camouflage) going on, as that's usually done by people not involved in the mechanics of the move or in claiming the winning bet.
The one thirty-four year-old Tanzanian man identified, Kipuyo Lemburis, was arrested and taken to court on Friday, charged with trying to fraudulently convince the dealer on the roulette game to pay him $35,000, which is what the legitimate payout on a $1,000 straight-up-on-the-number bet would have paid.
My take: I think the attempt was a little too big for the casino. Maybe they should have tried the same move with a $100 chip straight-up for a $3,500 payoff. If they indeed had tried that and received a payoff or two, they should have continued with moves of the same value. They may have been able to get away with ten $100-chip moves instead of one $1,000-chip move.