More Casino Cheats Busted At Connecticut Mohegan Sun!

Widening Casino Cheat Crackdown Continues At Mohegan Sun in Connecticut!
More Dealers Caught Cheating With Outside Players.

First it was illegal gambling operations outside of the casinos, now it is the illegal gambling operations inside the casinos. Whichever is taking place, authorities are trying to stop the illegal activity.

In the past month, police have been cracking down around the country on illegal operations that are taking place within casinos. Most of the operations involved casino workers who were working with outside people to rob the casinos.

The latest arrests have come in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun. The casino confirmed that six people have been arrested for cheating the casino at the blackjack table. One of the people arrested was a dealer at the casino.

Rory Shaffer of Plainfield was busted on surveillance at the casino giving two men money at the blackjack table that did not belong to them. He was arrested along with Samuel Pierce.

Three others were also charged with sixth degree larceny for taking less than $250 that was not theirs from a dealer at the blackjack tables. Shaffer and Pierce were charged with first degree larceny, cheating while gambling, and conspiracy to commit first degree larceny.

Several of the men have been released on bonds ranging from $500 to $1,000. They will all have to appear in Norwich Superior Court on October 2nd.

Slot Cheat Makes Nevada Black Book

A convicted slot machine cheat became the 36th name on the state's List of Excluded Persons, commonly known as the Black Book, and the first new member since 2004.

The Nevada Gaming Commission took about 15 minutes Thursday to confirm the nomination of William Cushing to the Black Book, legally barring him from entering a licensed Nevada casino. Cushing, who was indicted by a Clark County grand jury in 007 for slot machine cheating, did not appear in his defense even though the state attorney general's office said he was notified of the hearing. Commissioners made no comments about the nomination following a 10-minute presentation by Chief Deputy Attorney General Michael Somps. Most of the discussion centered on reciting the Nevada Revised Statues covering the Black Book.

Cushing spent time in federal prison in the 1980s for gambling-related cheating convictions against several Strip casinos. He was also convicted of cheating violations in Clark County in the 1990s. Somps said the convicted slot machine cheat met three criteria under Nevada law for inclusion on the list, including felony convictions and having a notorious reputation. Somps made a similar presentation in May when the Gaming Control Board nominated Cushing for inclusion.

Two of Cushing's associates, who were convicted with him in federal court in 1985, are Black Book members John and Sandra Vaccaro.

Commission Chairman Pete Bernhard, speaking for the five-member panel, said Cushing met the qualifications for nomination. The board voted unanimously for inclusion.
Cushing's inclusion was the first since 2004, when two other convicted slot machine cheats were added to the list.

The Black Book now contains 36 names that date back to the 1960s and 1970s, when organized crime controlled Nevada's casino industry. The only way a person can be removed from the list is by dying. The law was set up to prohibit people with felony convictions against the gaming industry from entering a casino. It's considered a gross misdemeanor if someone from the List of Excluded Persons enters a gaming establishment. Casino executives can also face disciplinary action from Nevada gaming regulators if they knowingly allow a member of the Black Book to enter the property.

UltimateBet Online Poker Cheat Scandal Blown Wide Open! $85 Million Lawsuit Filed Against Canadian Software Company! Hellmuth and Annie Duke Cited!

MSNBC Reports:

Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit!
$75 million claim filed against Canadian software firm with murky pedigree!

Phil Hellmuth, the winningest player in the history of the World Series of Poker, makes a grand entry to this year's event in Las Vegas in his guise as general of the "Ultimate Bet Army." The company that owns UltimateBet.com has stated that players in high-stakes online poker games were victimized by a vast, long-running cheating scheme.

Allegations that cheaters manipulated the software powering a leading Internet poker site so they could see their opponents' hole cards have triggered a $85 million claim against a Canadian company, msnbc.com has learned.

The alleged subterfuge on UltimateBet.com — one of the 10 top poker sites — is the biggest known case of fraud targeting an Internet gambling site and its customers, according to the company that owns the site. It is similar to a case of cheating that occurred last year on UltimateBet’s sister site, AbsolutePoker.com, but this time the thieves ran the scheme for far longer — at least from January 2005 to January 2008, it said.

Word of the $75 million U.S. claim ($80 million Canadian) — the first indication of the scope of the alleged cheating — emerged this week when msnbc.com contacted a court-appointed liquidator overseeing the voluntary dismemberment of Excapsa Software Inc. of Toronto, which formerly owned and licensed the poker software to UltimateBet and other gambling sites. The claim was filed by Blast-Off Ltd. of Malta, a private company that currently has an ownership interest in Ultimate Bet.

“We’re taking it seriously and are in contact with the stakeholders with a goal of settling the claim,” said the liquidator, Sheldon Krakower, president of XMT Liquidations Inc. “… It’s a very touchy situation. We’re just trying to get everything done.”

Krakower said the amount of the claim did not directly correlate with the amount believed to have been stolen from UltimateBet players, but he declined to provide additional details. He said he was hopeful that the parties were nearing a settlement.

The unprecedented claim is just the latest twist in a slowly unfolding whodunit that began more than nine months ago when poker players posted comments about suspicious play on UltimateBet in an Internet poker forum. It’s a mystery steeped in international intrigue and featuring a cast of characters that includes some of the world’s most famous poker players, the former grand chief of a Canadian Mohawk community and executives of a secretive Oregon Internet security company.

The company that claims ownership of UltimateBet — Tokwiro Enterprises, headquartered in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in southern Canada — has issued some refunds and promised to repay any players who lost money once an outside investigation is completed. But many players who haven’t received credits remain fearful they will never see a dime.

‘Who's going to make them pay?’
“I know I’m not going to get my money,” one dejected player, Daniel Cardoso of Utah, told msnbc.com. Cardoso believes he lost several thousand dollars through the alleged scheme but has not been able to obtain records from UltimateBet to verify that. “I know there are thousands of people who aren’t going to get reimbursed.”

Adding to the sense of mistrust is the fact that Tokwiro Enterprises apparently is owned by Joseph Norton, the former grand chief of the Kahnawake Mohawks, who helped establish the territory as North America’s only bastion of Internet gambling.

“Who’s going to make them pay?” asked Nat Arem, a professional poker player and blogger who helped unravel the alleged cheating rings at UltimateBet and Absolute Poker, referring to Excapsa. “What court is this going to end up in?”

Though most forms of Internet gambling, including online poker, are considered illegal by the U.S. government, millions of players routinely risk their cash on the virtual version of the popular card game, ignoring the fact that many of the Web sites are unregulated or loosely regulated and are based in jurisdictions where a player would likely have no legal recourse in the event of wrongdoing.

UltimateBet is a popular destination for these players, largely because of its television advertisements featuring famous players such as Phil Hellmuth, the winningest player in the history of the World Series of Poker, with 11 victories, and Annie Duke, arguably the best-known female poker pro. UltimateBet and other poker sites are able to advertise on television by promoting free “play for fun” sites instead of their cash games, which are just a few clicks away.

As was the case in the Absolute Poker scandal last year, the UltimateBet case was uncovered by the players rather than Tokwiro Enterprises or the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, the agency charged with regulating online gambling from the Kahnawake territory, just south of Montreal across the St. Lawrence River.

Players aired suspicions in January
Suspicious players wrote in a Jan. 8 post on the Two Plus Two online poker forum that they had noticed that certain players in the highest-stakes games on UltimateBet were playing extremely unusual strategies and winning at an unbelievably high rate. (Click here to read a synopsis of the early posts.)

Two of the players — known by the screen names “trambopoline” and “dlpnyc21” — reviewed their hand histories and found that one account in particular, using the screen name “NioNio,” was making a killing, having banked an astonishing $300,000 profit in just 3,000 hands. They turned to the MyPokerIntel.com Web site, which tracks high-stakes online tournaments, where many thousands of dollars can change hands, and found that NioNio had won in 13 of the 14 sessions recorded there, cashing out with approximately $135,000.

When that information was posted, Michael Josem, a mathematics-minded Australian poker player, charted NioNio’s results in comparison to the results of 870 “normal” accounts with at least 2,500 hands recorded by poker-tracking software. The result, seen at left, showed that NioNio’s win rate was 10 standard deviations above the mean, or less likely than “winning a one-in-a-million lottery on four consecutive days," Josem said.

As the players continued to dig, they concluded that NioNio was at the center of a web of accounts that were able to change user names with ease, making it harder for victims to detect the cheating.

“They would get a regular player, one of the accounts would play them, then that account would leave and the other account would come play them,” said one poker player who helped uncover the cheating, speaking on condition of anonymity. “… They were careful to only play each player a few times, and then they went and created new account names."

Tokwiro said it was alerted to the accusations by UltimateBet players on Jan. 12 and immediately launched its own investigation.

‘Unauthorized software code’
Tokwiro issued an “interim statement” on March 6 stating that it had determined that NioNio’s results were indeed “abnormal.” Then, on May 29 — nearly five months after the first poker forum post —the company acknowledged that NioNio and other player accounts “did in fact have an unfair advantage” obtained through “unauthorized software code that allowed the perpetrators to obtain hole card information during live play.”

The company blamed the intrusion on “individuals … (who) worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October
2006."

Tokwiro’s chief operating officer, Paul Leggett, in a Two Plus Two Poker podcast on June 2, said that the cheaters were able to evade UltimateBet's anti-fraud protections by “setting up these accounts so they appeared as VIP poker professionals. Because these players had this kind of status, they were able to get fast withdrawals and basically bypass our security.” He also said that the company was “pursuing our options, both criminal and civil.”

(Tokwiro spokeswoman Anna Molley told msnbc.com that Leggett had stopped giving interviews at the request of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission pending completion of an independent investigation.)

The explanation is similar to that given by Tokwiro after the Absolute Poker cheating scandal, which it blamed on a “high-ranking, trusted consultant … whose position gave him extraordinary access to certain security systems.” The alleged cheater in that case has never been publicly identified because Tokwiro, in a private settlement, agreed to withhold his or her identity. The site did repay the players who lost money, however.

By blaming employees of a prior owner, Tokwiro might have resolved the mystery had UltimateBet not been the rubber ball in an international shell game.

A murky corporate pedigree
Published accounts indicate that the poker software used by UltimateBet was developed in the late 1990s by ieLogic, a Portland, Ore., company. After that, things quickly become murky.

An undated and unbylined article on the TotalGambler.com Web site, titled “The history of online poker,” alleges that ieLogic founders Greg Pierson and Jon Karl created the UltimateBet site at the end of 2000, along with “some secretive high stakes poker players.” The article did not identify the players, but it stated that Russ Hamilton, winner of the 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event and a well-known Las Vegas gambler, was employed as a consultant and began recruiting some big-name poker players, including Hellmuth, to promote the site.

An UltimateBet spokeswoman boasted about the presence of the poker pros in a May 2001interview with winneronline.com, saying, "UltimateBet is lucky to have so many world poker champions choose to be a part of our project. ... (They) have helped us develop a site that is true to the game."

Barry Greenstein, a respected professional poker player, has publicly stated that some of the players involved in the development of the site were given an ownership interest as compensation. “They are all very concerned that with these bad things happening, they’re not going to get their money,” he said in an interview on Poker Road Radio on July 16.

IeLogic never acknowledged any ownership interest in UltimateBet, saying only that it licensed its “multiplayer online games” software to the site. Then the company sought to disassociate itself from the Internet gambling business entirely by selling its gambling software to a newly incorporated Canadian company, Excapsa Software Inc., in the spring of 2004.

Pierson and Karl held onto the other portion of ieLogic’s business — “a system for predicting online fraud” — and changed the name of their company to Iovation, according to a January 2005 article in the Portland Business Journal, which first reported the sale of the gambling software.

But it is unclear to whom —and even whether — the software business was sold.

Excapsa Software, incorporated in April 2004 in British Columbia, eventually went public, making an initial stock offering on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternate Investment Market in Feb. 16, 2006, that gave it a market capitalization of approximately $393 million. Documents filed in connection with the offering listed nearly 40 percent of the shares as being held by insiders — CEO Jim Ryan and five irrevocable trusts that provided no clue as to the identity of the beneficiaries. (A spokesman for Ryan, who is now CEO of Party Gaming, operator of the Party Poker Web site, declined msnbc.com’s request for an interview, saying questions should be directed to Excapsa.)

In an earnings announcement on Aug. 16, 2006, Excapsa stated that it had a 20-year license agreement with UltimateBet’s owner, which it identified as eWorld Holdings Ltd. of Antigua.

Lines not clearly drawn
But the lines between ieLogic, Iovation, Excapsa and eWorld Holdings were not always clearly drawn.

When UltimateBet issued a news release on July 25, 2002, announcing a joint venture with another poker site, it for the first time identified eWorld Holdings as the owner of the site and listed Jon Karl, co-founder of ieLogic, as the person to contact for further information.

IeLogic also was the first company to register the UltimateBet trademark with the U.S. Patent Office in June 2000. A little more than a year later, the company abandoned the mark and it was re-registered by eWorld Holdings.

And Melissa Gaddis, identified as the public relations manager at ieLogic in a May 2001 article on winneronline.com, also is identified in papers filed in connection with Excapsa’s liquidation proceedings in Toronto as a “director of Excapsa since November 2006” … and a “beneficial shareholder.”

IeLogic co-founders Pierson and Karl, and other officials at Iovation, did not respond to msnbc.com’s repeated phone calls seeking comment and refused to meet with a reporter who visited the company’s Portland headquarters. Gaddis did not return a phone call to her home.

Excapsa’s run as a public company was short-lived, as it sold all its assets to Blast-Off Ltd., a privately owned Excapsa licensee based in Malta, on Oct. 12, 2006, and was delisted from the AIM exchange. Blast-Off Ltd., had previously been listed in filings as an Excapsa license holder for Elimination Blackjack, a tournament version of the popular card game invented by Hamilton, the ieLogic consultant.

U.S. legislation prompted sale
The sudden sale of Excapsa’s assets for $130 million, with $120 million deferred, was prompted by President Bush’s looming signature of the so-called Safe Port Act, which contained a provision barring U.S. banks and other financial institutions from doing business with Internet gambling operators. That effectively put to rest the argument that companies could legally provide Internet gambling to Americans because federal law on the matter was ambiguous, and heightened the legal risks faced by owners of gambling Web sites.

Nearly a year later, Tokwiro claimed ownership of both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. It later said it had acquired UltimateBet in October 2006 — the month Excapsa announced the sale of its gambling software to Blast-Off Ltd. — but it has never explained how or under what terms it had acquired the site.

Krakower, the court-appointed liquidator overseeing Excapsa’s bid to cease to exist as a corporate entity, said that Blast-Off and Tokwiro “are somewhat one in the same,” but added, “Blast-Off … that’s the key name.”

The tangled corporate trail has persuaded some players that Tokwiro is a false front created to obscure the true ownership of both UltimateBet and Absolute Poker.

“(Norton) may be the plurality owner, he may be the majority owner, but there’s no way he owns 100 percent,” Arem said of the former Kahnawake Mohawk grand chief, who did not respond to requests for an interview.

The ownership question could be cleared up at the conclusion of an outside investigation of the UltimateBet cheating ordered by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. On July 27, the KGC announced it had asked Frank Catania, a former New Jersey state gaming regulator, to conduct “a full forensic audit/investigation” of Tokwiro to ensure that UltimateBet’s games are fair and anyone connected to the alleged cheating ring is removed from the company.

‘The first significant incident’
“We are all well aware of the criticism that this has drawn and are doing our best to update and implement modifications to ensure that this never happens again,” said Chuck Barnett, a spokesman for the gaming commission, which has licensed more than 470 gambling Web sites operated by 55 different operators. “... In the KGC’s past decade of i-gaming regulatory enforcement, this is without doubt, the first significant incident.”

Some players questioned the selection of Catania, noting that he had helped the KGC develop its gaming regulations and could hardly be considered an independent investigator. But in an interview with msnbc.com he insisted he would pull no punches in getting to the bottom of the cheating allegations as well as the ownership issue — regardless of Norton’s stature in the Kahnawake Mohawk community.

“We’ll go in and look at reports from (auditor) Gaming Associates, we’ll look at employees, including ownership, look at the software … whether the games are fair and honest and what protections have been put in place,” he said. “It’s going to be a complete examination of the company and no one will get any special preferential treatment because of a past position with the tribe or anything like that.”

While the official investigation grinds on, the Internet sleuths have settled on a leading suspect: A professional poker player who was associated with ieLogic in the early days.

Their version of a “smoking gun” came from what they say is information on several of the cheating accounts leaked by company insiders. Arem discovered that one of the accounts, which used the screen name “sleepless,” was established using the address of a Las Vegas residence formerly owned by the poker player.

Poker pros visit prime suspect
After Arem published that information, poker pro Greenstein posted on Two Plus Two that he had spoken with other players who confirmed that they had received fund transfers from the player via the “sleepless” account.

Greenstein and his stepson, Joe Sebok, also a poker pro, said the player agreed to tell his side of the story on the Poker Road radio show on July 16, but later backed out on the advice of his attorney.

Instead they arranged to speak to the player in his lawyer’s presence — the only people believed to have done so. (Despite numerous attempts through multiple channels, msnbc.com was not able to contact the player.)

While the player told the men he couldn’t answer many of their questions, they said he maintained his innocence and predicted that his name will be cleared when the investigation is complete.

Both Greenstein and Sebok, who as poker players put a lot of credence in gut instincts, said they arrived at the interview all but persuaded of the man’s guilt, but left feeling less certain.

“We expected him to be dodgy, but he was just very comfortable discussing the situation as much as he could legally … that once everything did come out, he would not be among the people incriminated,” Sebok told msnbc.com.

Greenstein applied his mathematical perspective to the situation in a posting on Two Plus Two forum: “Before I talked to (him), I thought it was more than 95 percent likely that he was involved in cheating. … Now I think it’s more than 99 percent that he knows people who cheated well enough to transfer money with them, but I think it’s less than 50 percent that he actually cheated or knew that the people were cheating at the time.”

In an e-mail interview with msnbc.com, Greenstein said he believes it is likely that the KGC’s investigation will confirm that the crime was carried out by an employee or employees of the former ownership of the site — whether it be ieLogic, Excapsa or eWorld Holdings —not the professional poker players who lent their expertise to the site’s developers.

‘A bunch of kids ... who jump to conclusions’
“There is no evidence to the contrary, except for some circumstantial evidence against (him) and a bunch of kids on Two Plus Two who jump to conclusions every time they are given a name,” he said. “… I'm not saying these people (the poker pros) are clean. I don't know for sure. But just because someone's name is associated with a company where there was cheating, it doesn't mean that the person was involved.”

Arem, however, said he remains unconvinced by the player’s protestations of innocence. But he said he’s open to the possibility that the circumstantial evidence leaked by the company insider could have been an attempt to shift the blame.

“(The player) has said that within three months all the information will come out and he’ll be cleared,” he said. “… In my mind, it’s a tiny chance, but if I was the one being accused, I’d want someone to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

Tran Organization Baccarat Cheat Scam Keeps Getting Bigger!

Casino Dealing Couple Started Casino Cheating System That Netted Tens Of Millions!
Their Devious Gang Hit More Than Two-Dozen Casinos in the US and Canada

When the dealer at Table #206 at Ontario's Casino Rama started flipping cards for a mini-baccarat game, there was little doubt among the high rollers who would win. On that hand, dealt at 8:42 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2003, two players raked in $6,500.

That was chump change, however - just one hand in an astonishingly successful swindle.

When the gang hit the tables in earnest, they walked away from the Orillia casino with $2,062,927 in winnings, according to U.S. prosecutors.

Over the next five years, the joint Canada-U.S. gang stripped casinos of tens of millions of dollars with a cheating system built around corrupt card dealers and mini radio transmitters bought at a commercial spy-gadget shop in Toronto.

It eventually sparked the largest casino-cheat investigation ever undertaken in Canada or the United States. The sprawl of the gang continues to be unveiled in courts on both sides of the border. A long list of conspirators has already pleaded guilty and, this week, another 11 people were freshly indicted in California, partly on evidence from a Canadian who is co-operating with authorities.

After so many years of making a killing at casino after casino, the gang could be forgiven for thinking their system was foolproof.

The bosses - most of whom were related, extending to three generations of family members working the scheme in Canada - were living a life of luxury, dripping with flashy diamond-and-gold jewellery, multiple homes and fancy sports cars.

The casino cheat team, however, had humble beginnings.

The system was concocted by a husband and wife who were both dealers at a casino on an Indian reservation in California.

Phuong Quoc Truong and Van Thu Tran mastered a "false shuffle" that, in 2002, allowed friends to win small amounts at their casino. Truong was later caught and fired.

Undaunted, they joined with Tran's brother, Khai Hong Tran, 49, who lived in Windsor and over years finessed their system into a high-tech, cross-border effort worthy of a Hollywood movie.

First, they sought out casino dealers who were offered bribes - often thousands of dollars - to join the conspiracy.

"For the system to work, they needed people on both sides of the card table to be involved," said Ontario Provincial Police Detective-Constable Dave Balun, who investigated the Canadian portion of the case.

In hotel rooms, dealers were trained to perform a false shuffle in which a block of cards appears to be shuffled properly, but is really left in the same order they were dealt in the previous game.

"This allowed the members and associates of the enterprise to track the cards ... and predict the order in which they were dealt in the next game," according to a U.S. indictment.

Once a corrupt dealer was in place, members of the group would sit at his casino table and play blackjack or mini-baccarat.

One member of the team was designated as the "tracker." It was his job to record the order of cards used during play. For blackjack, he would use a miniature microphone, transmitter and cellular telephone to relay the order of cards to another conspirator, who entered the order of the cards into a computer. (For baccarat games, the cards were often just written down on a paper form casinos provide players in the normal course of play.) After using the cards once, the dealer would perform the false shuffle.

When the cards started coming out in the same order, the computer operator would predict the winner of each hand and radio it to the tracker who had a miniature earpiece to receive the call.

The tracker would then tell the players - sometimes by flipping a cigarette, other times by rubbing an eyebrow - which hand would win. The appropriate players would then dramatically increase their bets.

The system averaged US$50,000 in winnings each 10 minutes of play, according to U.S. indictments. On one occasion, the group made off with US$868,000 in just 90 minutes of play at a casino near Chicago.

The players then passed their large piles of casino chips to co-operating movers, who cashed them in amounts under US$10,000 to avoid the mandatory reporting of large transactions by casinos to the government.

Often gathering back in a hotel room, the bosses then paid out a portion of the winnings to the other participants.

Authorities traced the Tran organization's swindles to at least 15 U.S. casinos and two in Canada: Casino Rama and a charity casino in Brantford, Ont.

Things started going awry for the gang in 2006. Investigators had begun to probe the losses. Some of the bribed dealers co-operated with police in return for not being charged.

On June 6, 2006, Truong met with a man he thought was a Mississippi casino dealer but was really an undercover U.S. agent. The agent was trained in the art of the false shuffle in a hotel room.

In the United States, 30 people have been indicted, more than half of whom have since pleaded guilty.

In Ontario, police arrested 19 people, including seven casino employees, last year. Of those, 12 have since resolved their charges with pleas, co-operating with police, or with charges being stayed.

Earlier this month, Windsor's Khai Tran pleaded guilty to participating in a criminal organization. He received a sentence of more than 2½ years, believed to be the longest sentence given in Canada for a gambling offence.

Other defendants in Canada have a preliminary hearing currently underway.

New Anti-Online Poker Cheating Room In The Works!

Finally, after all the recent online poker cheat scams, an American man has decided to create an online poker website that really reduces the possibilites of cheating--not only cheating from the outside by the players but cheating from within. That's right, he wants to do away with all the insider scandals that have rocked online poker the last few years.

You might say that there’s gambling when launching a new online company, but then there’s Gene Gioia’s startup. The Denver entrepreneur is trying to translate his lifelong love of poker into creating a website players can trust because it deals hands based on the automated shuffling of real cards. He came upon the idea during a career as a JD Edwards consultant who audited the installation of software systems for large companies nationwide. Gioia would unwind by playing poker online in his hotel room at night. But that was very different from sitting at a table with other players and handling real cards. For example, his three-of-a-kind and full-house hands frequently got topped. “I even got beat with a straight flush by a higher straight flush — things I’d never seen at a real table,” Gioia said.

Audit trails and checking the integrity of things are in his blood. Gioia thought about starting his own poker site, where players could verify the authenticity of the deal. His business idea was dormant for several years, until his daughter pointed out a 2006 newspaper article about online gambling that highlighted the financial success of a popular poker site. She whacked Gioia with the paper and told him: “You should’ve done this,” he said.

And so he started Gioia Systems LLC. His biggest challenge was how to differentiate his site from the fast-growing number of popular Internet poker sites. “The answer was almost instantaneous: Play with a real deck of cards,” he said. Gioia turned to his brother, Andy Gioia, who worked for a company that made high-speed printers. They configured a machine they call the “Real Deal” to shuffle and deal cards continuously. It has the ability to transmit the results to computer servers that can manage hundreds of games simultaneously, Gioia said. The system stores information about every hand dealt and makes it available for later audit should players want it. That could be a big draw when tens of thousands of dollars are at stake, as they often are in online poker tournaments, Gioia said.

Gioia assembled $1.1 million in investment from friends and family and built his company, which employs five people. Gioia Systems plans to launch a demonstration site, www.realdealpoker.com, in a month, hosting games for no money. By attracting players, Gioia hopes to secure an angel investment and fund a full-fledged poker site on servers in the British Channel island of Alderney, the host of many international online gaming website servers.

He hopes to have the poker website hosting real wager games and drawing revenue this year. A 2006 law prohibits U.S.-based sites from handling money connected to gaming. Setting up servers overseas and accepting money only from players outside the United States avoids running afoul of the law. Gioia has been in touch with congressional representatives, hoping to legalize online poker in the United States. The 1 million-member Poker Players Alliance nonprofit, led by former New York Sen. Alphonse D’Amato, is leading the push, arguing that recent cheating scandals among online sites show the need for legalization and domestic regulation of the industry.

More On Connecticut Baccarat Cheat Scam State Of The Art Cheating Device

The baccarat cheating ring recently busted by Connecticut State Police that was operating at Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun casino apparently was using a micro computer with specially designed software to predict which cards would come out of the shoe with startling accuracy. Unlike the recent giant international false shuffle baccarat scam where players kept track of the order of cards dealt from an entire shoe that the dealer false shuffled to protect the order for the next shoe, this ring had computers that used super software to accurately predict which cards would come out of the shoe during play. Of course the accuracy of the device was not near the perfection achieved with tracking and false shuffling, but it was certainly good enough to give the cheaters a huge advantage.

In other news, there were 12 more indictments today in the Tran Organization baccarat scam that blanketed Indian Reservation casinos across the US and Canada from 2002 to 2007. There have already been scores of cop-outs and convictions in this scam, which is the largest organized casino scam in history--at least as far as is known! If there ever was a bigger one, either the cheats got away with it or the authorities covered it up!

More on Connecticut Foxwoods And Mohegan Sun Cheat Rings

Richard “Mr. Casino” Taylor of Memphis, Tenn., the man police say was the mastermind in an elaborate cheating scam taking place at casino craps tables, is due back in court today.

Taylor remains behind bars facing felony cheating and larceny charges. Police say others worked with Taylor to cheat the casino of thousands of dollar.

Police said Tuesday that dealers from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun will be among the 13 people arrested in coming days. Warrants are prepared and suspects are being given the opportunity to turn themselves in, police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said.

“Investigators are reaching out to all involved to give them a chance to surrender,” Vance said.

The group is alleged to have participated in a scam straight out of the movies — complete with code names such as “Strawberry Daiquiri” — to identify participating players and clandestine meetings where dealers collected their payoffs.

An investigation by the state police casino unit revealed some dealers were being paid in exchange for allowing late bets at their craps tables.

Craps is a dice game in which players place chips on spots on the table, anticipating the roll of the dice. Players who were in on the scam, called “shot takers,” would push in gaming chips to make a late bet when the dice already had been thrown and the outcome known by the dealer. The player would win money and later pay the dealer for his trouble, police said.

Taylor and former Foxwoods dealer Mattie Tarlton, 42, of New London were the first arrested, when a tip by a Foxwoods employee in December prompted an investigation.

Casino surveillance looked back at Tarlton’s work during the preceding month to find overpayments totaling nearly $60,000 between Nov. 24 and Dec. 8.

Going on for years:

A widening investigation turned up dealer after dealer who admitted to taking part in the scam, some who claim it has been going on for years, according to the arrest affidavit by state police Detective Richard Bedard.

The casino employees included floor managers and employees working surveillance and scheduling, according to one dealer.

Tarlton denied any involvement with Taylor, but admitted she knew him as a man who entered the casino like a “superstar,” tipping waitresses between $100 and $1,500. Other dealers have admitted to taking hundreds of dollars in payoffs from Taylor for allowing the late bets.

While the total cost to the casinos is unknown, police said they have documented evidence that shows Taylor’s “cheating enterprise” was responsible for $69,965 in casino losses.

Taylor has denied the charges and his defense attorney, Martin Schoepfer, said it would be inappropriate to comment so early in the case.

Representatives from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

What’s next: State police said Tuesday they expect a total of 15 arrests in connection with a cheating scam at craps tables at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.

Alabama Casino Tries But Fails To Cheat Slot Player Out Of $10 Million Jackpot!

Many casinos have been in the situation that Macon County, Alabama Greyhound Park was in back on May 2nd, 2006. A woman hit the jackpot on one of their machines, but was told by employees that the machine malfunctioned and that she would not be getting paid.

The woman, who was an employee of the casino, decided that she was not going to stand for that kind of nonsense. She sued the casino in hopes that a judge would see her side of the situation.

Now, she has been granted her wish. A circuit judge has ordered that the woman be paid $10 million by Greyhound Park. They will appeal the ruling, but the chances are that the judge has finally stepped up against these lame excuses that casinos use.

This is not the first case in which a person has not gotten paid after winning a jackpot. Casinos all across the world have used the excuse that a machine has malfunctioned, and most of the time they are not held accountable for their actions.

Sherry Knowles sued Greyhound Park back on August 27th and won the case this week. The track (of course) plans on appealing the ruling.

Connecticut Casinos Hit By New Wave of Casino Cheating Scams and Continuation of Old Ones!

Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun, two of the world's biggest moneymaking casinos have been stung again by organized cheat groups, some working with crooked dealers, others working outside cheat scams with lots of skill, balls and cheating devices, and still others working bank and credit scams inside both these casinos. While I was working as a professional casino cheater, Foxwoods was one of my favorite candy stores. Seems that they still offer a plethora of opportunities for organized cheats. And don't forget, the casino busts that I report on are only the cases where the cheats get caught. For every casino cheat nabbed, there are dozens who get away with their scams and earn big money.

Here are the recent new scams and further developments on old ones, as appeared in the Norwich Bulletin:

ANOTHER BACCARAT CHEAT SCAM!

Four New York residents were arrested Saturday morning after police said they used a cheating device at a baccarat table at Mohegan Sun. State police casino unit detectives said the gamblers were at a mini baccarat table using a cheating device to determine the order of the cards in the deck before they were dealt. Surveillance spotted the group acting suspiciously after 5 a.m. I do not yet know exactly what the device was, but as soon as I get more info on it I will pass it along.

The group now face charges of cheating while lawfully gambling, possession of a cheating device, first-degree larceny and first-degree criminal trespass. The following people were arrested and each held on $10,000 bond pending arraignment Monday in Norwich Superior Court: Yuan Chen, 50, of 749 57th St., Brooklyn, N.Y.; Dong Zhong, 45, of 1925 W. Sixth St., Brooklyn, N.Y.; Jim Tong, 41, of 500 E. Houston St., N.Y., N.Y.; and Yu Feng, 37, of 1225 White Plains Road, Bronx, N.Y.

CRAPS CHEAT CAPER WIDENS AT FOXWOODS AND MOHEGAN SUN!

When someone walked up to a craps table at Foxwoods Resort Casino or Mohegan Sun and said “strawberry daiquiri” or “hot chocolate,” the game was on.

The cheating game, according to police.

State police this week arrested the alleged ringleader of a scam in which dealers paid players for late bets and later collected payment for the favors. Richard S. Taylor, 42, of Memphis, Tenn., was charged Thursday with conspiracy to commit cheating at gambling, cheating at gambling and first-degree larceny. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bond (a huge bond for a casino cheat crime! Looks like connecticut wants to get tough on casino cheats). A dozen more arrests are expected.

The State Police Casino Unit began investigating in December 2007 after a floor person at Foxwoods notified a manager that a craps dealer was cheating. They initially charged Taylor and dealer Mattie Tarlton. They now say the scheme has widened to include 13 people and that the region's two casinos lost $69,965.

In craps, a fast-moving dice game, players place their chips on certain parts of the table to indicate how they want to bet. Players can also call out their bets to the dealers before the dice land. If the player makes a bet too late, the dealer is supposed to reject it by indicating “no bet.”

In casino lingo, those who cheat at craps by placing bets after the dice have been rolled are called “shot takers.” Police said they interviewed several dealers who admitted to paying the “shot takers” for bad bets, then meeting up with them later to collect payment. Some of the dealers said the scam went on for years.

Taylor recruited dealers and players to participate in the scheme and even colluded with a Foxwoods employee who scheduled craps dealers to ensure that friendly dealers would be working when his crew arrived at a table, according to a lengthy arrest warrant affidavit prepared by state police detective Richard Bedard.

Taylor instructed the dealers that the cheating players would use the code words “strawberry daiquiri” or “hot chocolate” when they approached the table.

The dealers told the detective that Taylor, who is also known as “Mr. Casino,” “Mr. C,” “Shorty” and “Shaft,” was a big tipper who would often place bets “for the dealer” along with his own bets. They said he bragged about cheating at casinos around the country and said he and another man, known as “Big Al,” had “pulled down $110,000” in Las Vegas.

”Mr. C. talked about how they were going to make a movie of them ripping off casinos,” one dealer told the detective.

The dealers described meeting up with Taylor at local hotels and restaurants to collect cash payoffs. Two of the Foxwoods employees said he gave them $1,000 gaming chips from Mohegan Sun, which they immediately cashed in.

Taylor was arrested at New London Superior Court Thursday when he appeared for the initial cheating case. Standing outside the courthouse before he was taken into custody, he denied wrongdoing and said the casino officials are suspicious of him because he always places bets for the dealers. Table games players often tip dealers by placing chips beside their own bets and declaring that they are betting for the dealers.

Taylor said he always calls his bets and that craps is a verbal game. When police interviewed Taylor following his January arrest, he denied running a cheating crew and paying off dealers.

”The bet is all up to the dealer/employee at the table,” he said. “If they think it's a late bet, they don't accept (the) bet. It's all on them.”

Taylor is married with three children and had worked as a truck driver until he suffered a disabling injury, according to his attorney, Martin W. Schoepfer. The attorney argued for a lower bond at Taylor's arraignment, but Judge Susan B. Handy, who signed the arrest warrants in the case, said Taylor appears to be the person most responsible in “an elaborate, long-term scheme to defraud the casinos.”

Stay tuned for more on Connecticut's Casino cheats' "Candy Store!"

Poker Joke of the Month!

Business as usual at the Mirage!

In a 10-20 Hold'em game at the Mirage, a drunk was begining to get out of hand.
"Well that was one pussy-pink river card from you dealer!" he bellowed after missing a flush. The dealer beheld the drunk gravely; "Sir, there is a young lady at the table. If you don't control your language, you will have to leave." On the next hand, the drunk doesn't improve his set on the flop and looses to a straight. "Jesus Christ! Why don't you just light my fucking wallet on fire pinhead!" The dealer was absolutely at his limit; "Sir, I'm telling you for the last time; there is a young lady at the table! Control your language or you will be escorted out of here!" On the following hand, every player in the game wades into the pot. There are raises and caps on every card. In the end, the drunk sucks out an inside straight and wins the 10-20 pot of the month. The drunk looks out over his pile of chips at the dealer and asks, "Do you boys pool your tips together or do you keep them for yourselves?"
The dealer replies "All dealers here keep their own tips." The drunk tosses two green chips at the dealer and says with a grin; "Well have a Goddamn toke on me, motherfucker." The dealer picks up the $50, turns to the young woman and says, "Miss, I'm afraid you'll have to leave the table."