Casino-Cheating Scams keep Piling up in Macau

Lots of Cheating in Macau

The biggest one lately of course was the employee theft of $6 million from the Wynn Macau. The dealer who stole the chips from the VIP room inside the casino has admitted his crime but has not told authorities where the thieved chips are.

But this scam is not the only major one in Macau lately.

In an unnamed Macau casino a husband-and-wife cheat-team beat a baccarat game for $50,000. She was the dealer and he was the fake high roller. The scam was simple enough: She just gave him more money in chips each time he exchanged cash for chips. She also overpaid his winning bets. Their scam started at the end of last December and was busted last week after a month. It is not clear how many times the pair worked the baccarat table.

There have also been reports of collusion overpaying scams at roulette. Here the dealers stick big denomination chips into roulette stacks they push across the layout to their cohorts who have placed winning bets. $1,000 chips hidden at the bottom of a roulette stack of $5 chips seem to go unnoticed in certain casinos in Macau.

Add to this all the "dead chip" scams and hustles in the VIP room and Macau can certainly be called the Wild Wild East of casino cheating.

My take: Much like the casinos in Singapore, the dealer-insider cheating-scams are quite banal but surprisingly suck out a lot of money before the casinos catch on to them.

New Baccarat Cheating Scam--This Time in Scotland

This shithole coughed up 300K???

It wasn't a baccarat edge-sorting scam, nor was it a baccarat false-shuffle scam. What is was is a bit unclear but the latest baccarat scam at Genting's Glasgow casino revolves around the transparent shoe used in the dealing of the game.

Apparently a team of casino cheats from Manchester, England visited the casino several times over a four-month period and were somehow able to tamper with the baccarat card shoe by distracting the dealer. I don't know what the tampering actually consisted of and I can't venture a guess beyond that it involved some form of marking the backs of the cards.

It would make more sense to me that a dealer or dealers were involved in this baccarat scam but there is no mention of that. What was mentioned is that the baccarat cheat scam netted 200,000 pounds and the manager of the casino was sacked.

Looking at the photo of this place, it's hard to believe that 200,000 quid came out of it!

Question about the $6 Million Chip heist at the Wynn Macau

Lots of Chips to Cash Out!

You've all heard by now that an ex-dealer at the Wynn Macau who says he's been a heavy gambler since puberty is responsible for the disappearance of more than $6 million of the casinos chips. But in spite of his confession, he supposedly is refusing to tell authorities where the stolen chips are or if some of them may have already been cashed out.

To me, that's the confusing issue: cashed out.

Like in most Vegas casinos, chips obtained at the Wynn Macau can only be cashed out at the Wynn  Macau. It is not like the old days in Vegas where you could cash out one casino's chips inside another casino, which was a great help for casino-cheat team looking to get rid of "hot" chips just used in a cheat move. Unless there was a city-wide casino-cage alert for one particular casino's chips, cheats and hustlers generally had no problem cashing out one casino's chips at another casino's cage.

But the free-cash-out privilege has long disappeared in Vegas and, as far as I know, never had validity in  Macau.

So, that brings me to the question. I have read accounts that the dealer and his cohorts, if there are any, may have "fenced" the $6 million lot of chips to an underground Macau banking system controlled by the Chinese Mafia, known as the Triad, but for just a piece on the Hong Kong dollar. I have also read that the only way to get rid of the chips and then turn them into cash is to cash them out at the Wynn Macau in small amounts so as not to pick up heat.

Which begs to ask: Did the dealer steal $6 million in chips of small denominations? If he did so he would have needed quite the large wheelbarrow to wheel them out of the casino. But if he stole the $6 million in high denomination chips, such as $500 and above, then I would think the casino can simply remove all their high denomination chips from circulation and replace them with another set. Doing so would make it impossible to cash out the stolen high-denomination chips and render them essentially worthless.

Unless of course the dealer removed the chips from the VIP room where there seems to be an inventory and accounting system much unlike that of the central casino cages. I have heard that the chips trafficked inside Macau VIP rooms are not easily tracked.

All major casinos across the world have sets of back-up chips that can be put into circulation at any time. So I am wondering which denomination chips make up the missing Wynn Macau six-million.

If anyone out there can enlighten me, please do and I will pass along the information.

Wild Wild Casino-Cheating East Originally Known as Singapore Gets New Casino-Cheating Sentencing Guidelines!

Singapore Casino labyrinth of Cheating 

I guess the judge has finally seen enough!

So have I...of the relentless attack by casino cheats on Singapore's casinos that is.

Singaporean Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon undoubtedly has seen quite a few casino cheats before him in his courtroom. Apparently frustrated with the lack of solid legal code concerning casino-cheating statutes and punishments, which is quite ironic for what is probably the highest-per-capita casino-cheating locale in the world.

What is even more ironic is that Justice Sundaresh has apparently taken a soft stance in sentencing convicted casino cheats. He has just reduced the sentence of one of the most sophisticated and damaging casino cheats in the world, Vladislav Logachev who is a member of the infamous Russian Cell-Phone-Slot-Machine-Cheating Syndicate.

Logachev was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 45 months in prison for emptying out slot machines in Singapore's two big casinos, the Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa, by using smart phones to record and transmit data to cohorts who played the machines. Justice Menon cut his sentence to 38 months.

To see the details of the Chief Justice's action read the Straits Times article.

My take: I don't really get it...is reducing sentences for casino cheats somehow going to lessen the problem for Singapore's casinos?

Really Good Article on Russian Cell Phone Slot-Cheat Team

Russian Slot-Cheat Team Scaling New Heights

Many of you heard of the ingenious slot-machine scam using cell phones that began around 2010 (hard to pinpoint since casinos didn't become aware of it until 2011) and is still going on, despite the fact that some of the members of this Russian slot-cheating syndicate have been caught and criminally charged.

The reason why the tremendous slot-machine is still alive and well is because casinos have no answer for it...or if they do have an answer, it is too expensive to fix.

For those of you who don't know the history of this Russian scam, this article by wired.com will give you a great read about it, tracing the scam's history, where it's going from here and how the casinos can stop it as well as can they afford to stop it.

Which Forms of Casino Cheating Dominated the World's Casinos in 2017

Cheating Hands all over Roulette

You know that in the real-estate business the three key words for success are "location, location, location."

In the casino-cheating business the three key words for success are "roulette, roulette, roulette."

Yes, it is the game of roulette that is cheated the most in the world's casinos, not baccarat as the highly recent publicized baccarat scams may have led you to believe. And it is roulette by far and away.

And it is roulette in practically all casino venues across the world, even those where other games such as blackjack and baccarat are far more popular than roulette. The reason why roulette cheating is so dominant in casinos is because there are just so many ways to cheat at roulette. The spectrum goes from simple bet-capping and pastposting to chip-color-out and advanced "pinching" scams, such as the casino-world-famous Savannah scam.

As far as insider-dealer scams where casino dealers team up with their agents to cheat the casinos they work at, the distance between roulette cheating and cheating the other games narrows, but cheating at roulette still wins the race. And one thing I can say for sure is that the audacity some cheating roulette dealers display in ripping off the house is just dazzling. I still see, and more often than you might think, roulette dealers marking losing numbers as winners and paying off their agents while the supervisor's back is turned and the surveillance people upstairs are not monitoring the roulette games at that particular moment.

The biggest roulette scams on the outside continue to be pastposting and color-out scams where the players hoard roulette chips from one table and then color them out at other tables for a higher denomination than they bought in for.

Don't expect the roulette cheating domination to end in 2018...in fact, don't expect it to end any year soon.

Disgusting Casino Crime over $6: Man is Decapitated.

Casino Decapitation Victim

This casino crime is so horrible that I cannot paraphrase it, so I am posting the entire online KTVQ.com article. It really reads like a horror story. All because the robbers were pissed off that the victim decided to protect money he won at the casino by leaving it with the casino staff. Apparently he had a very bad omen about what was going to happen to him.

Court documents state Donald Ray Cherry, 31, and Jeffrey Glen Haverty, 33, met the victim, Myron Knight, 41, at a Montana Lil's Casino on Oct. 26. According to casino staff, Knight, a regular customer, left with the two men about 10 p.m. 

Staff also told detectives Knight asked them to hold onto his winnings, totaling $120, in case the men wanted to rob him. He also reportedly told staff "if he did not come back, the men he left with were responsible."

Cherry's girlfriend, identified in court documents as "Z.W.", told police she was with the three men at the campsite where Knight's body was found. She told investigators Cherry told her that Haverty had struck Knight in the head with a hammer, and the two men planned to further dismember the body and burn it in a fire pit to help dispose of evidence, which did not happen.

When asked why the two men committed the crime, Z.W. told investigators that Haverty killed Knight after he robbed him and became angry that Knight only had $6.

A state medical examiner said "it was more probable than not" Knight was alive when his head was cut off.

The woman also said Haverty and Cherry had been living out of a tent on the West End but denied being there when Knight was killed. She said she was with the three men at the campsite the night of the murder, but left to go to the Town Pump nearby on King Avenue.

Casino staff also identified the two men Knight was with as Cherry and Haverty, and told detectives Knight said he was going with the two men to look at their tent. They also identified two other individuals who were often seen with Cherry and Haverty, Haverty's girlfriend, referred to as "J.F", and Ronald Bauer.

Cherry confirmed to police that he met Knight while he was with Haverty at the casino and they all left together. He denied going to the campsite that night, or ever seeing Knight again.

Cherry's girlfriend told police she and Cherry were at the campsite with Haverty the night of Knight's death.

She said she returned to the site about 15-20 minutes later, and saw Knight lying on the ground with blood on his neck.  According to police, she said she then watched as Haverty and Cherry cut off Knight's head with a knife.

She told police that after Knight was killed, the three of them went to a casino and gambled.

According to documents, Knights body was found in a clearing in a secluded area on the West End near 32nd Street West and Gabel Road. Investigators found Knight's body covered in a carpet and leaves. He had been beheaded. 

Investigators on scene also found a tent with similar carpet, and other items including receipts and women's clothing. One of the receipts was generated from an ATM at the Montana Lil's Casino on King Avenue.

Both men are being held on $500,000 bond, their arraignments are scheduled for later this month. 

Haverty has a former conviction of criminal endangerment in Wheatland County.

How will the Bitcoin Crash affect Online Poker and Online Casinos?

Only Bitcoin Bits Left

Bitcoin investors are currently getting a stern lesson in the laws of financial gravity as Bitcoin crashed and took the whole cybercurrency market down with it. In fact, Bitcoin has lost a quarter of its value in the last week. As online poker and casinos are expanding into the use of cybercurrency to drive their sites, online casino and poker players are wondering, "Is it safe?"

Well, just a little before I wrote this article about CoinPoker's cryptocurrency and how its reps were saying that the cryptocurrency would help protect against online poker cheating and customer account deposit theft. My initial take on CoinPoker's advent measures was that it all sounded good and probably safe.

Now, as the Bitcoin falls into little pieces in cyberspace, I am surely having my doubts!

Cambodian Casino Dealer Robs his own Casino!

Thai Casino Dealer/Cowboy

Casino cheating and dealer-cheat scams have been on the rapid rise in Poipet City on the Cambodian/Thai border.

This time 26-year-old Thai dealer Thirak Phath Tichakhun of the Paramex Casino robbed his employer by simply removing the money from a cashier desk when no one was looking.

Well, I don't know what that means, but a least a video surveillance caught the theft on tape. There was no money to confiscate, however, because Tichhakun quickly wired the ill-gotten proceeds to his Thai friends in Bangkok.

My take: Seems like Poipet City is becoming somewhat of Wild wild East, something like the Old Wild Wild West versions of Carson City and Sioux City.

Lots of Year-End Casino-Cheating Scams, Robberies and Online Cryptocuurrency Problems

Bellagio Poker-Cage Robber

Lets start of with the late-November robbery of the Bellagio Poker cage in mid-afternoon. The Bellagio, which was victimized by the Motorcycle Casino Bandit back in 2010, is now stranger to casino robberies.

This time the bandit, wearing a wig and big sunglasses, and prepared with a big-money bag into which he put the loot, walked right up to the poker cage, pointed his gun at the teller and demanded the cash. The teller immediately gave him an unspecified amount, though I think it would be in the neighborhood of 50K.

And he did it so calmly as is seen on the video. Very few people noticed.

Actor James Woods, who played a banker that Axel Freed (James Caan) nearly strangled to death with a telephone cord, just happened to be there when the robbery went down. He said, "The Bellagio staff were fantastic. They surrendered the money quietly, so no customers would get hurt. Nobody even realized it was happening. Excellent staff, cool under pressure."

The "cool" casino-cage robber then jogged out a nearby exit, hopped into a suburban vehicle and simply drove away.

My take: Let's see if this guy is a little smarter than the casino bandit, who put an ad in the Vegas newspaper offering discounted rates for the high-denomination chips he stole.