Piggyback Casino Cheating...Can it be Done?

I was asked an interesting question yesterday: "I am a fairly intelligent guy and was wondering if I can go to Vegas and spot a casino cheat team or individual cheat or a poker team and piggyback onto their operation without taking any of their heat if they get caught?

Like I said, interesting.

Well, as far as the poker piggyback cheating goes, forget it! You can't join a collusion ring your not part of, nor can you read marks on cards their marking if you don't already have the right lenses in your eyes.

But in casino table games it is possible, albeit rare and difficult. With advantage-play teams at blackjack and baccarat tables, it may be possible to read their advantage if they are counting cards, ace-tracking, hole-carding or any of the other scams done on those tables that do not involve chip manipulation. On craps tables the idea of piggyback cheating would be more feasible. One example would be with dice-sliding, where the dice-cheat slides one of the dice so that it does not tumble or hit the back wall, therefore staying put on the number he has set up, usually six. If you pick up on a guy throwing dice and one of them not hitting the back wall and consistently coming up six or any other number, you could piggyback onto the scam and not take heat because you are not rolling the dice. So if you can see a guy rolling one of the dice six, you know that on a come-out or come-bet roll, you have a 2 to 1 edge right off the bat of a winner 7 or 11, against a craps loser 12. And there are many other opportunities like this involving field bets.

UK Casinos Say Their Video Software Will Thwart and Catch Poker Cheats and Casino Cheats

Source: newscientist.com

People trying to cheat in casinos may soon be taking more of a gamble than they realise. Grosvenor Casinos, a major UK chain, is assessing software that can spot cheating at the roulette table and alert the croupier.

Some people cheat at roulette by placing their chips on the table after the croupier has already called "last bets". Doing so gives a player a real advantage, because as the ball slows it becomes easier to predict which quarter of the wheel it will land in, says Boghos Boghossian, head of technology at London-based Ipsotek, which has come up with the system. Cheats will often work in pairs, with one trying to distract the croupier while the other places bets.

The new software would be installed on the existing CCTV cameras in casinos. To prevent cheating, the software analyses the video feed to first monitor the speed of the ball to determine when last bets are called. It then detects whenever a hand enters the betting area of the table and leaves a chip. Footage from the cameras is used to train statistical models to look for this type of event or activity.

It can also pick out another form of cheating called "top-hatting", which hinges on each player using specific-colour chips. This is when a cheat places a bet after the ball has landed, but the stack they place includes different coloured chips, borrowed from an accomplice, at its base.

If the croupier is on the ball and spots the late bet the cheat's chips will be removed from the table. But unless the croupier is really sharp they may assume that the accomplice's chips were already there and so leave them on the table. The software spots this by keeping tabs on the colours of chips placed during betting. So when a late bet is made and removed, the system knows if other chips have been added.

"When you have 10 people around a table all trying to place bets as late as possible it can be difficult to see these things," says Sean Cunningham, director of security for Rank Group, which owns Grosvenor Casinos. The software is currently only designed to work on roulette tables but if trials go well the plan is to extend this to blackjack and baccarat, says Boghossian. The group is due to make a decision on installing the software in January.

Casinos have used surveillance cameras for some time, but having an automated system to spot cheats is like giving the croupier an extra pair of eyes, says James Ferryman, who researches automated surveillance systems at the University of Reading, UK.

It's not the first time such software has been used in casinos. One system called MindPlay, now discontinued, used embedded cameras and invisible ink to keep track of cards. But it required specialist hardware and was not successful at detecting cheats.

Ipsotek's software is different because it uses the existing CCTV network. "You're trying to pick up anomalies, or anything that is unusual in the context," says Ferryman.

Followed, one camera at a time
A system called Tag and Track can automatically track people and vehicles in a town as they move from one camera to another.

Developed by Ipsotek, the software first detects and categorises different types of object. Once identified, these objects can then easily be tracked by the camera.

What's clever about the system, claims Boghos Boghossian of Ipsotek, is that after being shown training footage it can automatically learn the location of the different cameras in relation to one another. This means it can infer when someone leaves one camera, and where they will reappear. The system was shortlisted at the Global Security Challenge in London last week.

My take: Well, all this high and  higher-tech video surveillance equipment in casinos is great--but it will never deter or catch the best of the cheats like myself and other highly-professional poker cheat and casino cheat teams.

UK Casino Cheat Dealer Goes Down For Inside Roulette Cheating Scam

Source: Bolton News

A cheating croupier teamed up with gamblers in a casino fraud to help him pay off debts. Peter Fisher paid over the odds when they placed bets at his roulette table at the Grosvenor G Casino, Bolton Magistrates Court heard. Two gamblers approached the croupier in January this year asking him to help them cheat. Crippled by a car debt from his teens and struggling to come to terms with his father’s death, he agreed. Fisher, aged 26, of Molyneux Road, Westhoughton, pleaded guilty at magistrates court yesterday to three counts of cheating at gambling.

Over three days, the customers made just less than £1,000, splitting their profits with Fisher. The town centre casino lost more than £2,000 in potential earnings, the court was told. William Donnelly, prosecuting, said: “All of a sudden, the punter has made a substantial profit without doing anything. “You can double your winnings without too much trouble.”
One of the gamblers had been discreet, always betting on the same numbers, the court heard. But the other was not, throwing money at Fisher for him to change. Another gambler spotted “something dodgy”, Mr Donnelly told magistrates, and reported Fisher to casino bosses. They reviewed CCTV footage of the table and uncovered the fraud. Fisher lost his job and his gaming licence, and following a police investigation, the former croupier was arrested and interviewed in May. William Birtwell, defending, said Fisher had brought shame on his family, especially his brother, who is a serving police officer. Mr Birtwell added: “He is disgusted with himself that he has allowed himself to get caught up in this. It was a moment of madness. He had worked hard to get where he was, but he has lost his gaming licence and can no longer work in the gambling profession.”

The court was told that croupiers were constantly asked to cheat by punters. Fisher had always said no, but finally relented in January this year, as his debts mounted. He had taken out a £5,000 loan for a car in his teens, but had taken out further high-interest agreements since then, in an attempt to consolidate his loans. January also marked the anniversary of his father’s death, the court was told. Chairman of the bench Frank Whittaker said: “You were caught redhanded. It is a significant amount over three days. If it had continued over, say, two years, it would have been an awful lot of money. You were a trusted senior member of staff. You didn’t do it alone, there was a level of organisation and premeditation.”

Police are currently investigating the other men involved in the fraud.
Following the hearing, Fisher said: “I do regret what I have done, it was a stupid mistake and it wasn’t like me at all. It was completely out of character and I have apologised for it.”

Fisher was warned by the court that he faces a high level community order when he is sentenced tomorrow.

More Trouble For Giant Online-Cheat-Plagued Full Tilt Poker--This Time It's a $900 Million Lawsuit!

Source: paidcontent.org

In a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal court, two Los Angeles men are demanding that Full Tilt give back money— $10 for one of the men and $120,000 in the case of the other—they say is owed to them after they were unable to cash out their accounts. They also seek punitive damages and $900 million for other Americans who are out of pocket after Full Tilt allegedly cheated them in games and after owners began helping themselves to customer money.

The class action, which names famous poker stars Howard Lederer and Christopher Ferguson, appears to be based on many of the dramatic allegations set out in an FBI indictment unsealed last April. The owners of Full Tilt are accused of using flower stores and pet shops as front companies to trick U.S. banks into processing customers credit card and check transactions. The owners used the front companies because payment requests from them did not carry a transaction code used to flag online gambling, which is illegal in the United States.

The class action also demands that the site owners and celebrity players repay customers for cheating in the online poker games. Full Tilt’s nastiest tactic allegedly involved the use of robots—computer players hatched by Full Tilt that would appear at sparsely populated games and use their card-counting skills to fleece the real players. According to the complaint, Full Tilt assured players that they had “zero tolerance” for robot players—but went ahead and deployed robots created by two company owners with degrees from MIT and UCLA. Even worse, Full Tilt used customer hatred of robots as a pretext to rob successful players:

Certain players who repeatedly lost to a skilled player would start on-line jihads against the successful player, accusing that player of being a robot. The Defendants discovered over time that cancellation of real player accounts accused of being a “robot” was another profit center, as the player account money of the wrongly-accused player was confiscated.

Online gambling is a vast and lucrative enterprise as evidenced by reports that the US government was able to seize $115 million from Full Tilt simply by intercepting a percentage of the payments made to the front companies. Full Tilt and two other major poker sites began struggling in the last two years, however, as increasing pressure from US authorities made it increasingly difficult for the companies to circumvent rules that forbid businesses from processing online gambling transactions. During this time, the Full Tilt owners allegedly began raiding customer accounts, leading US prosecutors last months to describe the company as a “Ponzi Scheme.”

It is unclear whether there will be anything left to collect if the class action suit is successful. The U.S. Department of Justice is already demanding a $1 billion civil penalty from many of those listed in the California suit. There may be good news for customers based on a report that a French investment firm is promising to make losses whole if it can take over the business. The bad news is that the new prospective owner served prison time for stealing from a soccer club he owned.

Poker Cheats and Casino Cheats Boot Camp?

Getting fit to poker cheat

According to an email I received today, that's exactly what one potential casino and poker cheating person wants. He directed me to the days of poker boot camps that I believed were started by Phil Hellmuth and a few other notable cheating and non-cheating poker pros.

Well, I can't take this poker and casino cheat request TOO seriously because even if I wanted to actually do it, it would be pretty hard to pull off. First off, it would have to be completely underground as I could not freely advertise it, even on my poker cheating website! Can you imagine me printing "Poker Cheat Boot camp Available To All!" or "Casino Cheats, Come To Me and I will Hone your Skills!"???

Afraid not! I might find myself in some serious trouble with all sorts of crime fighting agencies. And besides, I really don't want to actually encourage people to try cheating casinos and poker games. It is VERY dangerous!

Major Italian/French Poker and Casino Cheat Team Busted in France For Infrared Poker Cardmarking Scam Using Contact Lenses!

Three Italian poker players and two employees of southern French casinos were in custody Thursday, accused of netting thousands of euros in a high-tech gambling scam that involved marking cards with infrared ink.

The scam allegedly involved marking each of the cards in a pack with ink visible only when wearing infrared glasses, then planting the pack at a poker table in Cannes, Le Parisien reported.

The players then turned up to play wearing infrared glasses so they could see the marks.

"In a way, these players saw through the cards," a judicial source said.

I have much experience in this sort of scam and wrote about it in detail in both my books "American Roulette," ("Grand Casino Heist" in the UK) and "Dirty Poker." Although this particular card-marking poker cheat scam didn't use the ultra-modern laser card-markers, they seemed to have gotten the job done. I don't know how they got caught, so there must be something more to this than is mentioned in the following article. Two French casino employees were arrested in this poker cheat scam with a group of Italians. Well, it's nice to see a major poker cheat scam go down without it being pulled off by Asian Cheats for a change. For those of you who were around some thirty or forty years ago, the Italians, right behind the Americans, were the biggest organized casino cheats in the world.

Article:

Police became suspicious when the gang pocketed around $60,400 at a swanky casino in Cannes in August and set up a device to intercept them the next time they visited.

During their next visit to Les Princes des Cannes casino, the three Italians won about $27,460 but were stopped in the casino hallway as they tried to leave and were arrested. An employee from the casino also was arrested, along with a member of staff from a casino in Nice.

The three Italian players were "linked to serious organized crime," according to the newspaper.
Investigators were sending details of the trio to all casinos in Europe in case they used the same scam elsewhere.

Identity Theft Mixing More and More With Casino Cheating!

Casino cheats have been using quality fake IDs in and around casinos lately. Firstly, it is great to have a great set of fake ID if you're caught cheating a casino and get hustled off to the back room and interrogated, especially if you don't get arrested and never give up your fingerprints. In this scenario, all the intercasino bulletins will be looking out for a phony name, and if you disguise yourself up a bit, you will be able to cheat casinos under their radar.

Also, casino cheats are turning to thieving IDs while working slot and casino promotion and VIP player bonus scams, using various phony IDs to bilk the casinos out of complementary programs by racking up bunches of bonus points under phony names.

And stretching it a bit, at least one notorious casino cheat has used the best fake ID of all to avoid capture...that claiming he is "Mr. Dead"! This guy (I won't bother naming what is supposed to be his real name because it probably isn't) raked millions out of casinos in Singapore and the Philippines and then when the heat got hot, he simply had an obituary written on him and published in newspapers in both countries!

Not a bad way to beat the heat!!!

Major Las Vegas Dice-Sliding Casino Craps Cheat Scam Allegedly Run By Two PokerStars Online Poker Pros!

Source: Tightpoker.com

Wynn Las Vegas has filed a lawsuit against Veronica Dabul and Leonardo Fernandez, who are with Team PokerStars, for allegedly cheating the casino of $700,000 at Craps. The duo stand accused of collaborating with other players to scoot or slide dice, a system of throwing the dice in such a way that at least one of it shows a winning number. Dice sliding, however, is not easy and players hardly use this method to cheat the casino.

According to Craps experts, the objective of dice sliding is to get at least one six, which enhances the slider’s odds of collecting a large payout. Even if dice sliding does not result in two sixes, it is guaranteed to turn up a number greater than seven, enabling dice sliders to win large prizes if they bet on numbers greater than seven.

Legally, dice should be shot in such a manner that they bounce and rebound from the table’s back wall. Experts say that a dice slider distracts the dealer so that he/she fails to observe that the dice are being scooted. If the Craps dealer observes that the dice are not shot in the proper manner, he/she must announce the move invalid and ask the shooter to toss the dice once again.

Leonardo Fernandez of Buenos Aires is part of Team PokerStars Pro at present. He finished 257th and collected a large prize of $35,383 in World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2008. In January 2011, he finished second and collected $554,924 in the High Roller PCA $25k tournament.

Veronica Dabul is no longer a sponsored pro at PokerStars. She finished 235th and won $35,383 at WSOP 2008 Main Event. In 2009, she won the Shark Conservation Poker Tournament, which was held in Costa Rica. Dabul has won a total of $200k playing poker so far.

Wynn Casino has a series of video tapes showing the duo sliding dice at the Craps tables over a period of one month. The two hardly played together, and Fernandez never bet on the results of dice slid by him. According to the lawsuit, different teams of players indulged in dice sliding at different times and at different tables.

The office of the district attorney has not booked the two on criminal charges although they were arrested and Dabul was in jail for two days before being released, owing to which the lawsuit filed by Wynn Casino is of a civil nature.

My take: Wow! This is big stuff! I guess some of these online pros we heard about with contracts to represent online sites such as PokerStars aren't earning as much money from these online giants as one might think. This scam had been going on for a month and apparently included a significant group of people. We may be seeing this dynamic duo cheating brick and mortar poker tables by way of collusion...if they're not doing it online already!!!

Electronic Roulette Wheel Chjeats Out There!

Many of you may think that casino cheats cannot cheat electronic roulette wheels, but think again! Roulette cheats have come up with ingenious ways to do just that. In one case, a casino pit boss colluded with a group of organized casino cheats and pressed a button which signalled the ball to drop in one of the numbers his cohorts had wagered on. In another clever electronic roulette scam, the cheats converted casino comps into cash by covering all the bets on the layout which nullified their bets.

But the real ingenious scam on which clever electronic roulette cheats needed no inside help was the one where the cheats figured out, much the way they do on biased roulette wheels, that both the little ivory roulette ball and spinning wheel on several electronic tables never deviated speeds, thus they simply "clocked" those speeds and figured where the ball would land and bet accordingly.

My take: I love to hear casinos getting beat in areas where they think they cannot be!

Full Tilt Poker Denies Ponzi Scam Poker Cheat Allegations

In a statement made to Reuters on Wednesday, Washington-based attorney Jeff Ifrah, who represents Full Tilt Poker, has rubbished the US government’s allegations that Full Tilt Poker was engaged in running a global Ponzi scheme.

While admitting that Full Tilt Poker made some mistakes, the lawyer said that there is absolutely no evidence supporting the US government’s claim that the online poker giant ran a Ponzi scheme.

On Tuesday, the US government levelled a new allegation against Full Tilt Poker that its directors pocketed over $440 million after cheating its players. This is in addition to the charges of illegal gambling, bank fraud, and money laundering that the Department of Justice (DoJ) levelled against FTP in April. In connection with its latest allegations, the US government has sought that all FTP assets be seized by the government.

It may be recalled that the US federal government cracked down on Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and PokerStars on April 15 this year, a day commonly known as the Black Friday of online poker, seized their domain names and arrested their CEOs. According to the US indictment of April, 11 people associated with Full Tilt Poker were charged with illegal gaming, bank fraud, and money laundering, and on Tuesday, the federal government added the charges that FTP was involved in a giant global Ponzi scheme, cheating its players of millions of dollars.

The operators of a Ponzi scheme use funds supplied by new investors to pay existing investors till the funds stop flowing in and the scheme dies a natural death. Explaining the term, Prof. Daniel Richman of Columbia Law School says that a Ponzi scheme refers to the act of receiving funds and not paying them back, but sustaining them through future deposits.

The prosecutors say that Full Tilt Poker defendants deposited these funds in accounts at Isle of Man and Switzerland. They also claim that Full Tilt Poker continued running the Ponzi scheme outside the US following the events of April although it lacked the required funds to pay back its US players.

In June, US poker players proposed to jointly sue Full Tilt Poker for failing to refund them, in which case Jeff Ifrah might step down from his position as the legal representative of Full Tilt Poker and its board of directors. Last month, he had stated that to continue as FTP’s attorney “would result in an unreasonable financial burden on our law firm.”