MGM National Harbor Dealer Pleads Guilty in New Casino's 1st Big Baccarat Cheating Scam

High-Limit Baccarat Pit at MGM

It was a combination false shuffle/digital camera scam, where the baccarat dealer exposed part of a baccarat deck so his cohorts playing at the table could photograph it, and then protected the slug of cards by performing a false shuffle.

The scam netted more than $1 million.

The dealer, Ming Zhang, worked with a group of players with whom he shared the proceeds from the scam. I don't currently have details on how the scam was detected or if any other casino employees may have been involved.

Zhang will be sentenced on January 31, 2019.

My take: Where there is baccarat...there will be big baccarat scams.

Listen to UK Supreme Court Justice Deny Phil Ivey's Appeal in $12 million Baccarat Edge-Sorting Case

Phil doesn't look to happy listening to this

GREAT RULING AND THOROUGH EXPLANATION!

My take: This judge leaves no doubt as to what Ivey planned and did...and he got what he deserved!

It wasn't a Casino-Cheating Murder!..Good thing!

Scene of accident not murder

Yesterday I blogged about this case where a Mohegan Sun Pocono casino dealer who had led casino authorities to a huge $400,000 free-slot-play credit scam was found dead in a creek near that casino. There was speculation that the dealer, Matthew Crane, might have been murdered as a revenge payback for causing the convictions of three people, two of whom are currently in jail.

I stated in my blog account of the case that I thought it was highly improbable that this really was a payback murder, based on my analysis of who the three convicted casino cheats are. One was vice president of player development at the casino, another a cocktail waitress there, and the third a gambler who frequented it.

It turns out that an autopsy has determined that Crane died of accidental drowning, nothing more.

I'm glad to hear that it was not a sinister case of killing someone of casino-cheating.

Did this Casino-Cheating case lead to murder?

Casino Dealer found dead

In 2016 a Mohegan Sun Pocono dealer named Matthew Crane blew the whistle on a $400,000 free-slot-play credit scam using the theft of personal information that sent three people to prison, one of them Robert Pelligrini who was the cassino's vice-president of player development at the time, another a casino cocktail waitress named Rochelle Poszeluznyj, the third a gambler who frequented the casino named Mark Heltzel.

Well, tragically, Crane's lifeless body was found yesterday in a creek in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, not far from the casino where he worked. Although the police have not given details as far as a cause of death, nor stated that it was a homicide, it is easy to make that assumption based on the fact that Crane was an informant who helped send three people to federal court and plead guilty to various federal crimes in connection with the case.

Pelligrini received a federal prison term of 32 months, while Heltzel got 18 months and Poszeluznyj six months house arrest and two years probation. Allegedly Crane led casino authorities to the scam because he had been dating Poszeluznyj while she was also involved in a romantic relationship with Heltzel, which caused him to be jealous.

Pelligrini and Heltzel are currently in prison, so they could not have physically murdered Crane, but of course that doesn't mean they were not somehow involved in it, if, of course, it was a murder.

My take: This one is difficult to call. The prison sentences were not too lengthy and neither incarcerated man has a history of organized crime involvement, as least none that has been reported by the press. Poszeluznyj was described at trial as being a student who was also holding down two jobs. Taking all this into account, I find it improbable that any of these three initiated or participated in a murder-for-revenge scenario.

But stay tuned...I am sure something very interesting will surface with this case.

Playing Card Manufacturer Released from Liability in Ivey Edge-Sorting Case

Off the hook!

The Borgata Hotel and Casino has dropped its claim of expressed warranty breach against Gemaco Inc., the card-maker who supplied the cards Ivey and his partner Cheung Yin Sun edge-sorted to beat the Borgata casino out of some $10 million, which a New Jersey court ruled they had to return.

To read more about edge sorting and the details of the edge-sorting scam Ivey and Sun used to be casinos, simply search out more articles on this blog by entering "Edge-sorting baccarat cheating scam" or "Phil Ivey baccarat scam."

Two Roulette-Wheel-Clocking Pioneers Inducted into Casino Cheats Hall of Fame

Richard Jarecki

Richard Jarecki and Joseph Jagger, two tremendous pains in the asses to European and American casinos who assaulted their roulette wheels by simply clocking their performances to note imperfections they could exploit, have been inducted to the Casino Cheats Hall of Fame.

Both with extremely colorful histories, they are the 32nd and 33rd casino cheats to be bestowed with this honor.

Joseph Jagger

Should casinos have the right to prosecute a patron who stumbles upon a computer glitch and then uses it to gain free slot credits and cash out large sums of money?

Major Redeeming Credits Case

This article stems from the recent ruling of three appellate judges in a Singapore slot-machine credits case. A Hong Kong woman in the casino playing slots stumbled upon such a glitch and ended up maximizing the casino error to the tune of nearly a million bucks!

She did so by enlisting the help of two people to help her cash out the money to stay under the radar, thus preventing the casino from realizing the computer malfunction for as long as possible.

She and her two recruits were subsequently arrested and charged with conspiring to dishonestly misappropriate a large sum of casinos funds.

At trial, her lawyer argued that the case was no different than someone finding a wallet on the casino floor and keeping the money, which did actually happen in the same Singaporean casino, and ended with the acquittal of the person charged in that case.

But in this case, obviously involving lots and lots more money, the court convicted the woman and her friends of the charge and sentenced them to prison terms. The guilty parties appealed but to no avail.

The whole argument is based on, or at least should be based on, the woman's state of mind when she first came upon the glitch. She obviously had no premeditation on her mind at that moment, and only later decided to take advantage of the glitch, moving into a "conspiracy" once she brought the proposition to the two other participants.

One thing to note here is that the two other participants entered into the "conspiracy" with premeditation to take advantage of the glitch, which doesn't necessarily mean they were guilty of a crime but does mean they were never just stumblers onto a get-rich-quick scenario.

You can look at this case similarly to the Phil Ivey baccarat edge-sorting case, where he and his partner came upon defective cards in casinos and then premeditatedly used those defective cards to win millions from several casinos. In two major jurisdictions where Ivey pulled off the feat, neither charged him with a crime, in spite of his forethought to swindle the casinos out of the millions.

That said, you might think the woman taking advantage of the Singaporean computer glitch is even less guilty of a crime than Ivey was judged to be. After all, she did not come to the casino thinking of scamming it out of money, whereas Ivey and his partner did.

Also, some might believe it's just plain-old human nature for any person, or perhaps I should say "most people", to look upon the situation as serendipity and thus milk it for all it's worth. Therefore, you may think the casino is responsible for their own error and should not have the right to prosecute people who happen upon it and take advantage...especially so far as the woman is concerned.

I guess you could look at the situation somewhat differently once she got the two other people involved, seeing it as the furtherance of a conspiracy...but did that conspiracy ever really exist in the first place?

So you might still say the woman should not have been charged.

I also guess that you could look at the case of the two other people she recruited differently, since they entered the situation with the intention of ripping off the casino--if you want to call it that.

Here, you may not be so sure, but then again, how could you accuse the recruits of a crime if you're not accusing the woman who first stumbled upon the opportunity to commit the crime...if you want to call it that?

I realize all this sounds a bit discombobulating to say the least!

What do you think?

Wait a minute! Do we have another Father of Modern Roulette Wheel Clocking?

Is he the first father of modern roulette wheel clocking? 

Just a week ago I wrote an article about Richard Jarecki, the father of modern roulette wheel clocking who passed away at 86 years old after a lifetime of clocking biased roulette wheels for a living while he moonlighted as a doctor, researcher and scientist.

But suddenly an article has appeared in the UK Daily Mail newspaper claiming that a broke Victorian textile boss in the 1880s is the real father of beating casinos out of fortunes by clocking biased roulette wheels.

The man's name was Joseph Jagger, and according to the newspaper's account Jagger beat the storied Le Grand Casino of Monte Carlo out of 80,000 pounds back in 1881, which is the equivalent of 7.5 million pounds today.

According to a new book by Jagger's great-great niece Anne Fletcher, who happens to be a historian, Jagger was facing debtors prison after failing to pay off a series of loans he had taken while his textile business was going bankrupt. He then, as a last-ditch attempt, borrowed money from family members and friends and hightailed it to Monte Carlo, heading right for the roulette tables.

Taking advantage of a lifetime of working with textile wheels, Jagger was convinced he could survey all the roulette wheels in the casino and determine which ones had a bias in their revolutions. He knew that at the time no wheel of any kind could spin perfectly; there had to be a tilt in each one. So he spent an entire month, twelve hours a day, sitting at roulette tables and observing and recording the spins of every wheel in the grand casino.

Then he finally made his move, beat the casino for a small fortune, returned home to the UK, supposedly bought 30 houses, one for himself and his family, the rest for his friends, and lived happily ever after.

Le Grand Casino is said to have refurbished all its roulette wheels in Jagger's wake.

My take: Well, I don't know whether to believe this father-of-modern-roulette-wheel-clocking story...but then again, I don't know if I believe the first father-of-modern-roulette-wheel-clocking story about Richard Jarecki either.

But I ask myself one question: Didn't anyone working at Le Grand Casino in Monte Carlo notice the guy sitting at roulette tables twelve hours a day for a month without ever making a bet???

Do Today's Legitimate Brick and Mortar Casinos Cheat Their Players?

Sexy woman luring victims?

I bet you have all heard stories about legitimate gambling casinos in the past willfully cheating their players. Most likely you heard the stories about card "mechanics"operating in the early days of legalized gambling in Nevada back in the '30s. Or those about shady casinos on cruise ships sailing in the middle of a dark and murky ocean.

But what about today's casinos? Do they cheat you?

Most of you would probably say no. Casinos have so much the best of it as far as odds go and are so heavily regulated that they simply would not and could not cheat their players...right?

WRONG!

And guess what: legitimate casinos cheat their players far more than you think.

Many of you probably disagree. You're working in reputable casinos all over the world and news of your casino deliberately cheating your players would be "fake news."

So let me qualify my statement.

I said that casinos today do deliberately cheat their players--but most of the time they are not actually doing it themselves and at times might not even be aware they're doing it.

At other times they are surely aware of it but feign ignorance to it.

Now you're saying to yourselves, "What is this guy talking about?"

I will give it to you straight.

The vast majority of casinos that intentionally cheat their players do it indirectly. By that I mean this casino-cheating happens through a process in which casinos lease casino space to disreputable gaming operators that are private entities and not affiliated with the ownership or operation of the casino itself.

A prime example of this are the casinos in the Dominican Republic. In many of them, off to the side in a shaded corner of the casino often not covered by surveillance cameras, are carnival-like bingo and keno games fronted by a sexy girl dangling free-bet coupons to draw players to the game.

One of these games goes by the name Jackpot-8 Ball or other names like Super Bonus Bingo or Keno. This questionable game is played at the Avalon casino in Punta Cana, the Diamante casino in Santo Domingo and in others throughout the country. Each casino offering it has the sexy girl luring customers to the table, which has a roulette-type layout for the bets.

The game starts where you get eight balls in a cup and have to throw them into a bin with numbers. They tally all the numbers and you get a chip on the corresponding number. There are three spaces on a board where your bet will double as well as the pot. These are common numbers, so the bet doubles frequently and you cannot lower your bet. They give you several legit ways to win but in order to win the jackpot you must reach 100 points total on the board.

That's where the scam comes in. The game itself is not a scam but making you believe you can win the jackpot is the BIG SCAM...HUGE SCAM!

You see, the only way you can get the 100 points and win the big jackpot, usually more than a hundred grand, is by repetitive investing in the game. And as it doubles and doubles again that investment becomes a fortune and ultimately breaks you.

So if you start out betting $10 and the pot is $1,000, you think you're looking good. Then you hit the double and your bet doubles to $20 per roll and the pot doubles to $2,000. Then both the betting and pot double again and again, and while this is going on the dealer and supervisor (who happen to be Americans I am told) are notifying you that all kinds of payment forms including credit cards are accepted to keep up with the frenzied betting pace.

What eventually happens is that the players max-out their credit cards because they've already invested all their cash, and finally the corresponding banks say "no more credit" or the players finally realize they cannot take the chance investing more money into this crazy game in a Dominican casino.

The casino con men running the scams know this...that everyone chasing the jackpot will eventually bust out chasing it. Therefore, no one wins and the casinos get an average take of about seven to ten grand per victim.

And they can claim there was no scam because the prospect of winning the jackpot is real.

This is a brutal scam and one to be very wary of. And for those who fall victim to it there is no recourse. The casino claims it has nothing to do with the game and refers you to the "casino vendor" who runs it in their casino. The vendor, you will painstakingly realize, is virtually non-existent, at least as communication goes. And the actual dealers and supervisors of the scam, who may or may not be real employees of the actual casino, will deny any knowledge of any impropriety whatsoever.

Then when you go looking for a casino gaming commission or control board, you learn there is neither in the Dominican Republic. And when finally, exasperated, and heartbroken over a ruined vacation, you go to the United States Embassy, or that of any other major country, you are cordially informed that the State Department consular page on the Dominican Republic warns of this very casino scam and to avoid separated areas of casinos!

Damn! You should've listened...but how the hell are you supposed to know there was a casino-cheating warning on, of all  places, the State Department consular page for the Dominican Republic.

And your last bailout-hope...of course is your bank. You call them and explain you've been victimized by a vicious casino scam and want to stop payment. But your bank can't help you either: you have already authorized the payment and the transaction for it is etched in stone.

So you're stuck the money and hopefully you've learned a painful lesson.

And be aware! This type of leasing-casino-space-to-shady-gaming-operators scenario is not limited to the Dominican Republic. I have heard of casinos in Bulgaria and other Eastern European countries doing the same thing, and there surely are incidents of casino-cheating-by-casino in these areas.

Note that this type of scam almost never happens in reputable jurisdictions such as the US, Canada and Western Europe.

And be aware as well that in some casino jurisdictions willful casino cheating by casinos themselves, not by vendors leasing casino space, does go on. I would point at Cambodia, Vietnam and perhaps Russia as places to be wary of as far as crooked casinos go.

So now that you know that legitimate casinos, either directly or indirectly, can and will cheat you, I offer you one single caveat: Never and I mean NEVER chase a jackpot or any other casino proposition where you have to keep paying to obtain your "guaranteed" win or jackpot.

And never...EVER...get your credit cards involved!

It all goes back to the ages-old axiom: "If it seems too good to be true..."

Beware of 8 Ball Scam against American tourists in the Dominican Republic...

Crooked Keno/Bingo in Punta Canta

The scam game

especially in Punta Cana.

I have gotten several reports on this and noticed the same reports in the Trip Advisor blog.

They use a game called Jackpot-8 Ball (or other names like Super Bonus Bingo) where you get eight balls in a cup and have to throw them into a bin with numbers. They tally all the numbers and you get a chip on the corresponding number. There are three spaces on a board where your bet will double as well as the pot. These are common numbers, so the bet doubles frequently and you cannot lower your bet. They give you several legit ways to win but in order to win the jackpot you must reach 100 points total on the board.

That's where the scam comes in. The game itself is not a scam but making you believe you can win the jackpot is the BIG SCAM...HUGE SCAM!

You see, the only way you can get the 100 points and win the big jackpot, more than a hundred grand, is by keep investing in the game. And as it doubles and doubles again that investment becomes a fortune and ultimately breaks you.

So if you start out betting $10 and the pot is $1,000, you think you're looking good. Then you hit the double and your bet doubles to $20 per roll and the pot doubles to $2,000. Then both the betting and pot double again and again, and while this is going on the dealer and supervisor (who happen to be Americans I am told) are notifying you that all kinds of payment forms including credit cards are accepted to keep up with the frenzied betting pace.

What eventually happens is that the players max-out their credit cards because they've already invested all their cash, and finally the corresponding banks say "no more credit" or the players finally realize they cannot take the chance investing more money into this crazy game in a Dominican casino.

The casino con men running the scams know this...that everyone chasing the jackpot will eventually bust out chasing it. Therefore, no one wins and the casinos get an average take of about seven to ten grand per victim.

And they can claim there was no scam because the prospect of winning the jackpot is real.

The Dream Casino and Avalon Casino, both in Punta Cana, have been alleged to be running this scam.

My take: This is a brutal scam and one to be very wary of. Never and I mean NEVER chase a jackpot or any other casino proposition where you have to keep paying to obtain your "guaranteed" win or jackpot. It goes back to the ages-old axiom "If it seems to good to be true..."