Tran Organization Blackjack Dealer Gets Light Sentence For Ripping Off Mohegan Sun

Source: theday.com

A U.S. District judge sentenced former Mohegan Sun table games dealer Jesus Rodriguez Wednesday to two months in federal prison and three years' supervised release for participating in a card cheating scam operated in Connecticut and throughout the country by the San Diego-based Tran Organization.

Judge Mark R. Kravitz also ordered Rodriguez and others involved to re-pay the casino $126,000. The 40-year-old Groton man had admitted to being recruited by the organization, getting coached on performing "false shuffles" and helping the organization to steal more than $100,000 from the Uncasville casino in blackjack and baccarat games. He performed the false shuffle two or three times and was paid $2,500 to $4,000 each time, according to a court document.

Through the scheme, a co-conspirator tracked the order of cards as they were legitimately played, and then Rodriguez performed a false shuffle, creating a "slug" of un-shuffled cards. A co-conspirator tracked the cards until the slug reappeared as they were being dealt, then signaled to others as to how to bet on the subsequent hands in order to cheat the casino.

More than 30 people nationwide have been charged in an investigation led by Department of Justice Criminal Division's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. The cheating schemes occurred at more than two dozen casinos in the United States and Canada. Rodriguez had faced a lengthier sentence under federal guidelines. His attorney, Jeremiah Donovan, argued for a reduction, citing Rodriguez's prior lack of a criminal record and his history as a hard-working, law-abiding citizen. Each false shuffle lasted about 10 seconds, Donovan noted, "So the length of Mr. Rodriguez's overt activity in furtherance of the conspiracy was thus about 30 seconds."

Rodriguez, who had worked at the casino since 2001, resigned in 2009 after hearing he would be indicted.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael S. McGarry argued Rodriguez's actions hurt the casino owners and employees as well as the state of Connecticut, which receives a portion of the casino's revenues.

Indiana Card-Counting Case Goes to Court

Source: businessweek.com

An Indianapolis man banned from a riverboat casino's blackjack table because he counts cards just wants the casino to follow the rules, same as he does, his attorney told the Indiana Supreme Court on Wednesday.

"Grand Victoria has admitted that my client did nothing wrong," said Marc Sedwick, Tom Donovan's attorney.

The casino on the Ohio River at Rising Sun maintains that it, like any private business, has the common-law right to choose not to do business with anyone "for any reason or no reason," casino attorney Peter Rusthoven said.

But Justice Frank Sullivan Jr. had an idea what the reason might be.

"What you object to about him is that he's too good," he told Rusthoven.

Donovan, a retired computer programmer, said he's won about $65,000 playing blackjack since 1999. He learned to count cards by taking an online class in it after hearing a radio station interview an expert card counter.

Donovan sued the Grand Victoria Casino and Resort after it banned him from the blackjack table in 2006. The casino won the suit in a Marion County court, but the state appeals court reversed that decision and the casino asked the high court to weigh in.

"I'm not cheating at all. It's just using my brain," Donovan said.

Neither the state nor the casino has rules forbidding card counting, Sedwick said. In fact, he argued, state guidelines encourage players to keep track of their own scores.

Rusthoven countered that that applied only to the cards laid out on the table, not those left in the deck.

The core of the dispute comes down to which set of rules should apply: the common law that predates legalized gambling or the state regulations governing gaming. Sedwick pointed to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that cited that state's regulations in siding with a card counter who had been banned from a casino there.

"Gaming is a statutory creature" that didn't exist in common-law times, Sedwick argued, so state regulations should apply. Those regulations don't bar card counting, and the casino never asked the state gaming commission to enact a rule forbidding it, he said.

"The issue this court faces," Rusthoven said, "is whether the common-law right to exclude anybody for any reason or no reason has been abrogated by the commission's silence."

He argued it hadn't, and the commission couldn't be expected to anticipate every possible circumstance in its rules.

"Everybody who watches movies knows if somebody tries to count cards, casinos don't like it sometimes," Rusthoven said.

State Gaming Commission Director Ernie Yelton said that before the Court of Appeals ruling, it was generally understood that common law allowed casinos to ban card counters, as they are allowed to do in most states. He said two or three casinos approached the commission since the Court of Appeals decision, seeking a rule granting them the specific authority to bar card counters.

But the commission is waiting to see what the court decides, Yelton said.

"We're not taking a position on this," he said. "I respect the authority of the court in these decisions."

Rat Gets Major French/Spanish Roulette Pastposting Team Busted in Singapore Resorts World Sentosa Casino!

As I have been reporting, the casino cheating assault, both professional and amateur, has been ongoing at a ferocious pace inside Singapore's recently opened giant Resorts World Sentosa Casino. In prior posts I have stated that the cheats getting busted were strictly of the rank amateur level, but yesterday, Resorts World bagged its first major cheat team. But I must mention that it was by no means due to clever work by Sentosa's rookie surveillance department. The bust happened because a "rat" (a legitimate gambler at a table who alerts the casino that he or she saw a cheat move go down) playing on the same roulette table squealed on the cheats when he saw the move go down. Rats are generally not a problem for cheats in casinos, as most people prefer to mind their own business and not get involved, but during my 25-year cheating career they were occasionally a problem.

In this case, the 3-man cheat team, two middle-aged Frenchman, Fabrice Thierry Laurent Michel and Reynald Georges Victor Lasnel, and an older Spaniard, Jose Lopez Pintado, who have been around for decades and who I know and have seen from time to time working the same casinos as my cheat teams, apparently had an internal security breakdown as they did not act right nor follow good internal control and security procedures upon knowing they had heat. In fact, it seems that they have a lot more names than brains!

A week before getting caught, one of Frenchman pastposted (bet after the outcome was known) a large bet at a roulette wheel in the same casino and was in the process of getting paid before the rat started squealing. Instead of trying to smooth out the situation and control the heat, which is what I was taught is the only course of action in a rat situation by the legendary Classon cheats, the Frenchman panicked and left the table without picking up his bet and payoff. (You always gotta take the money!)

After that kind of mishap, an experienced casino cheat team has got to know that leaving town fast is a must! You have to assume that surveillance ran back the tapes, saw the move cleanly, and are waiting for you the next time you come back to the casino, if that is any time soon, which it should NOT be. But the European pastpost team behaved as if nothing had happened and returned to the casino just days later. They repeated their same move on two occasions, which is an efficient roulette slide move also done by professional Italian roulette cheat teams, and, as communication between surveillance and table games supervisors is often weak, the roulette dealers and pit supervisors had not been alerted to the prior events and paid the pastpost team a total of $13,400. However, surveillance was watching out for the team and got lucky to see them in the act on the second move. Security grabbed up the team as they were heading to the cashier to cash out their chips (another surprising mistake as delayed cash-out operations should have been employed), and turned them over to the Singapore cops. As I understand it, Singapore's laws regarding cheating in casinos have been set up to be strict, and the cheats face up to 10 years in prison!

My Take: Well...grudgingly...kudos to the Resorts World Sentosa surveillance team for at least not blowing the bust (this often happens when they have cheats dead to rights), and SHAME on you, Frenchman and Spaniard, for really acting amateurish when you're supposed to be one of the top casino roulette cheat teams in the world.

Cheating Roulette Dealers Working Indian Tribal Reservation Casinos With Their Agents!

I have just returned from a tour of Tribal (or Native American) casinos across the United States and found a little surprise in four different tribal casinos. Besides the usual rinky-dink casino scams that abound not only in these but in all American casinos, I stumbled upon four separate cases of cheating roulette dealers, and each one of them was pretty good. Since they were all working similar inside scams, I got to wondering whether this was a highly organized multi-tribal casino scam in the works, perhaps the first evidence of a Tran Organization-type scam transferring from baccarat tables to roulette wheels.

In each scenario I witnessed, the dealer was laying down the cheat moves for his agent, to whom he paid the winning chips. After the ball dropped into the slot for the winning number, the dealer would sweep the losing chips off the layout as usual. Then he paid the winning bets on the outside, such as the dozen-bets, column-bets, odd-even bets and red-black bets. The cheat moves were then performed as the dealer shifted his (and hers--I spotted one female dealer in the act) attention on the winning chips on the inside of the layout surrounding the winning number. When the dealer picked up the dolly atop the winning number to verify and re-stack the chips underneath, he very deftly dropped two or three chips that he'd already had palmed in his hand onto the stack. This was done only when there were already at least two winning chips on the number, as the dealers wisely knew that the cameras above could see whether or not there were winning chips on the number but could not tell how many there were. Only in cases when the cameras are zoomed in on the winning number from different angles would they be able to see how many chips are lying there. This would occur only when casino surveillance was looking for this type of move, which in reality is never. It didn't matter to the cheating dealers whether the chips legitimately bet on the winning number were their cohorts' or not. As long as chips were already there, the dealers continued putting the "icing on the cake."

I cannot name these casinos at this time for a variety of reasons, but it doesn't really matter because the dealers are cheating only the house and not the players, so if you happen to be on one of these reservation roulette wheels while this goes down, it will not affect your win or loss at all.

My take: Pretty good scam that will go on quite awhile as long as the dealers and their agents don't get to greedy. While I watched them in action, they took about $150 to $250 per hour off the tables.

Woman Looking to Sue Colorado Casino Over $43 Million Slot Jackpot Cheat Case!

Source: dailyfinance.com

If Louise Chavez's experience at a Central City, Colo. casino was memorialized on a tee shirt, it might read something like this: "I won $42.9-million at Fortune Valley Casino and all I got was a lousy breakfast."

While celebrating her birthday at the casino, Chavez hit pay dirt on a penny slot machine. The machine's payout window confirmed that she had won an eight-figure sum and, naturally, she was ecstatic. But then casino officials told her that the winnings were in error. Five hours later, they insisted that the machine would need to be inspected before a correct payout could be determined. In return for her patience and disappointment, the casino offered to comp her a night at a hotel, refund the $23 that she put into the machine and provide a free breakfast. She took the breakfast.

Will Chavez End Up a Multi-Millionaire?

Considering the Colorado Gaming Department's assertion that this particular type of slot machine is designed to pay off no more than $250,000, does Chavez have a shot at collecting anything close to $42.9-million – an amount which, she had been told, is more than the entire casino is worth?

"Her likelihood is slim," says Las Vegas attorney David Chesnoff, a go-to guy for clients who range from the town's biggest poker pros to celebrities like Britney Spears and Sug Knight. "If it's a factual mistake, the gaming authority will back the casino. If Colorado is anything like Nevada, whatever gaming says is what it will be unless she can show any kind of fraud."

Asked if he would handle this case, Chesnoff offers up an unequivocal "No!"

Maybe Chavez would have better luck with lawyer Bob Nersesian. Also based in Vegas, he's known as an aggressive player's advocate and once succeeded in getting a faulty slot machine payout resolved in the gambler's favor. "I got a $100,000 jackpot for a guy who played a machine that was programmed never to pay out more than nine grand," he says. "It was a similar kind of mistake; a mechanism inside the machine had been misprogrammed." But, says Nersesian, that case happened during a different time. "Today, I don't think I would win that case," he says.

In all likelihood, whether it's right or wrong, Chavez will receive whatever the proper payout should be based on what came up on the wheels, not the sum of money that flashed on the screen, says Nersesian. She and her attorney may have a bone to pick with the slot-machine manufacturer, with which the casino probably has an indemnity agreement, he says.

Even Nersesian, who wrested a large settlement from a casino and the Las Vegas police department after a blackjack player was wrongfully imprisoned for cheating, can see the excesses of this situation given that the $42.9 million is more than the casino is worth. "Bottom line, they are not going to shut down the casino for this. And, in all reality, that is what they'll be doing if they give her the $42.9 million," he says.

Should You Believe Everything You Read Online and in Magazines About Daniel Negreanu and Other Brick and Mortar Top Poker Pros Playing For Millions Online?

Well, I certainly don't. If you read Daniel Negreanu's recent blog post about his latest month playing $100-$200 no-limit poker online and his swings of being ahead $200,000 and now even, you might want to ask yourself why Negreanu would bother playing online poker for such stakes in the first place, especially given his huge success offline in brick and mortar poker rooms across the world.

My answer is that he probably isn't really playing for the amounts he says he is and blogs about. Then you have Mike The Mouth Matusow who claims to be another multimillion-dollar online poker player...and supposedly multimillion-dollar victim to the UltimateBet scam. Do I believe all this? Not for a second!

If you remember, I once wrote a magazine article about how I thought the TV show "High Stakes Poker" was nothing more than a staged script, with piles of purple $500 and yellow $1,000 chips stacked neatly next to huge wads of packaged $100 bills. All which looked great for the cameras. My challenge was, Why would Negreanu, Sammy Farha or any of the rest of them on that show risk that kind of money on TV or anywhere else? Why would they not stick to playing against players of lower caliber in big-time Vegas cash games and tournaments, where they strictly have the best of it? My grandfather once told me, "Richard, don't gamble anywhere unless you have the best of it." I would think that Negreanu's and Matusow's grandfathers told them something similar. I still think the "High Stakes Poker" show is jacked-up hype, endorsement money for Negeanu and the rest of them, and in a word--BULLSHIT!

So when I read about these same guys playing for millions online, when they cannot see their opponents' tells or even know who they are, and where they cannot invoke lots of the skills that made them great brick and mortar players to begin with, I get the same feeling--it's all bullshit!

Do you agree? Let me know.

New Breed of Casino Cheats

What is the major difference between casino cheats of today and casino cheats of yesteryear? Well, lets look at that comparison on several different planes. First, appearance: Whereas casino cheats of the last several decades of the twentieth century took on the look of ragged cowboys, good ol' boys and even bums, today's cheats dress and look as sophisticated as top-of-the-line Wall Street scammers and other financial con and scam artists. The new casino-cheats' look is business and leisure suits, dependng on casino location and time of day.

Intelligence: In this regard, today's casino cheats are definitely more intelligent, and they need to be as modern casino scams usually comprise the words "computer", "digital" and "laser." But don't mistake intelligence for "smart", especially "street smart" or "casino smart". Yesteryear's casino cheats certainly were smarter than today's gizmo cheats when it comes to recognizing heat inside casinos and protecting their asses. They were able to smell undercover gaming agents at a hundred feet!

Balls: Well, here I'd have to call it a draw between past and modern casino cheats. Not being able to hide from detection the way online casino and poker cheats do (I think the online cheats are scumbags), both the modern casino cheats and the old-timer cheats put their asses on the line underneath the surveillance eyes of the casinos they're cheating. The old-timers had to deal with surveillance guys looking down on them from one-way mirror catwalks, while today's guys have to ply their trade under the omnipresent phalanx of high-performance video cameras.

Where did my casino-cheat team fit in? Appearance and dresswise we were closer to the old-time casino cheats when we worked during the '70s and '80s, and in the '90s we donned the classier tone of today's casino cheats, especially when travelling to the ritzy casinos of Europe. As far as smarts and intelligence go, I have to say...well, you know...I'll just say that my record speaks for itself!

Will the Online Poker Cheat Scams Ever End?...Or At Least Will They Slow Down?

The answers to those two questions are "No and No"...or maybe "No and Perhaps a Little".

In asking whether online poker cheating scandals will ever end, the answer will always be the same basic truism that applies to where the money and availability to steal it is. I'm sure you've heard the famous question asked to the Newton Boys back in the 1920s about why they chose to rob banks for a living. Their response made as much sense as any: "Because that's where the money is."

Same thing applies to online poker cheats. They will always be out there because online poker is not only where the money is but affords one of the great cheating and stealing opportunities that abound on the Internet.

Many people supposedly in the online-poker-cheat-know have blogged that after the huge UltimateBet cheating scandal we would see a marked decrease in poker cheating scandals online. I laughed reading their positive cheat prognoses. Of course that never had a chance of being reality. The proof has been in the pudding ever since, emphasized dramatically by the two recent online cheat scandals surrounding Stox Poker. The first was when so-called online poker coach Jason Ho got exposed as being a complete fraud without the slightest poker-coaching credentials, ripping off online-poker-wannabees for thousands of dollars a pop. Then just a week later, Nick Grudzien, a highly respected online poker player was revealed as an online poker cheater specializing in multi-accounting, to which he has admitted, and probably collusion play as well. We should be seeing more evidence of the collusion cheating very shortly.

These two are only the recent tips of the online poker cheating iceberg who have been caught. Remember, just like in all criminal and cheating activity, there are dozens if not hundreds more online poker cheats operating successfully for each one who gets caught.

So why do I say online poker cheating might slow down after all? Well, it will. The law of averages says so...but the slowdown will only be temporary.

Cardrunners Main Man Taylor "GreenPlastic" Caby Knew of Nick Grudzien's Massive Multi-Accounting Cheat Scam Since January! Why Didn't He Do Anything About It?

Taylor “GreenPlastic” Caby posted the following on the 2+2 online poker forum:

Hey everyone, I have addressed the major issues from Viffer's post/this thread below.

David “Viffers” Peat Post:

"Taylor/CR knew Brian was multi-accounting, tried to cover it up, and Taylor actually encouraged Brian to get an office so he could play on a secret account"

Taylor "GreenPlastic" Caby Post:

To think that I would encourage Brian to do this, or to tell him to set up an office to do this, is completely ridiculous. Beyond the T&C issues, it's good for the company for our pros to be playing on their poker names, and more importantly, it's the right thing to do. There's just no logical reason why I would want Brian, or any CR pro, to be anonymous or to be breaking site rules. I found out about Brian's MA'ing sometime during the WSOP of 2008, which I believe was a few months after the multi-accounting started. I was very adamant that Brian should play on his normal account. I believe it was in late June or early July that allegations started to be posted at 2p2, and eventually, everything came out in August when Brian admitted to the MA'ing.

"Taylor played on other CR people's accounts. One time, I watched Taylor play on Ezra's account."

In June of 2008, I was living in a house with ~6 CR employees (we put them up in a house for the WSOP). Ezra was playing on Cake Poker and a bunch of us were sitting around playing poker, drinking beers, hanging out, etc. For a period of a couple of minutes (I'm guessing 5-10 hands), I played on his account. Ezra was tilty and we were all sort of laughing at how bad he was running, so I offered to step in and play a few hands while he was freaking out. After a couple of minutes, he got back on and played.

"At a party, I complained to Taylor about multi-accounting and how all the regulars were using different accounts. He told me I should just multi-account as well."

This conversation took place at a CR party in July of 2007. I remember this because I had a falling out with this person and this is around the last time we've ever had a friendly conversation. At that time, online poker multi-accounting was very common and many of the high stakes players did it. The sites didn't enforce these rules as well. I don't remember the details or context of the conversation, and I regret ever suggesting someone should multi-account.

TFPT accusations

There was also a post and some questions to follow from people about our TFPT promotion at FTP. I want to make it clear that the ex-employee that posted does not have detailed knowledge of our relationship with FTP and the inner-workings of the TFPT promotion. It would simply be insane for us to defraud FTP, as was suggested in his post. We have a great relationship with them, and they have been very supportive of our business as we have of theirs. When I returned home last night, I had received an email from the poster explaining his frustrations to me and apologizing for his contribution to the drama that has evolved. I spoke to him at length on the phone yesterday about the issues and motivations behind the post. He admitted to me that he didn't have first hand knowledge of our agreement with FTP, and part of the motivation for his post was his frustrations with the end of his relationship with CardRunners. The details of our specific arrangement with FTP will remain private.

Stoxtrader situation:

Finally, regarding the Stoxtrader situation, I'd like to clear up a few things. First, there have been some posts stating that we have long been aware of this multi-accounting and collusion claims and are trying to cover them up. This is just not true. In his blog and on the forums, Nick always said that his accounts were private. In retrospect, I should have pressed the issue. It's one thing to have private accounts on sites you don't make videos on, but it's not acceptable to have multiple accounts when it is against the T&C's.

I had no knowledge that Nick was using the 40putts account until sometime in mid January. Nick felt it was important to tell me about a personal situation that required him to share that he had been playing on that account. Nick agreed that when he resolved his personal situation and took some time away from playing, he would make a post explaining that he was now playing publicly on the stoxtrader account. During our conversation, I asked Nick about the fact that 40putts had been accused of collusion in the past. Nick assured me, and continues to assure me, that these accusations are false and that there was no collusion with this or any of his accounts. Based on all my interactions with Nick in the past I have no reason to believe this is not true. He also reminded me that Stars had investigated his account and found no wrongdoing.

Recently, an anonymous poster made a post to 2p2 outing Nick for his stoxtrader, 40putts, and some new screen names that he recently created, as well as collusion suspicions (and maybe other things, I don't have access to that post). I was unaware that Nick had created these new accounts or was even still playing poker at this time. At the end of last week, amidst collusion accusations, Nick admitted to playing on secret accounts. Since then, I have been in touch with FTP to give them the information of the accounts in question and to provide the background on the situation that I have detailed here.

Regardless of what happens with the collusion accusations, my company needs to set a precedent that it is not okay to violate the T&C's as representative of Stoxpoker or CardRunners. In the past, we have been more lenient on people for MA'ing situations, but we will adhere to a strict policy going forward. It was mutually agreed upon that Nick would be disassociated from CardRunners/Stoxpoker, both from a pro, financial, and management standpoint. I expect this transition to take at least a few weeks to be complete, and the decision is final.

RNGs and Casinos Setting Slot Machines to Cheat You? Anything to it?

There has been talk about casinos altering slot machines outcome through what is called secondary decisions. In other words, some people seem worried that a slot machine program can be set to accept or reject any combination of results from the random number generator (RNG), which would dictate to the slot machine to stop and pay or reject and continue to the next number in the RNG sequential alignment. Does this control the payout rates?

I would have to emphatically say "no" here. First of all, these so-called secondary decisions were banned in Nevada just after computerized slot machines appeared in casinos. New Jersey, Connecticut and Mississippi have also followed suit. So slot machines cannot refuse an outcome and go on to another RNG number. At least not legally.

Casino regulators take secondary decision bans very seriously. Back in 90s, a greedy slot machine route operator decided to test the waters with his slot machine cheat scams by avoiding paying out on the royal flushes hit on his machines. He installed a sub-program into his video poker machines. The result was that each time a royal was hit, a secondary decision was triggered to switch a card. He ended up getting convicted of felony cheating at gambling and served time in prison.

The reason Nevada gaming officials first banned secondary decisions was because the early Universal computerized slot machines selected an outcome from a pool of all possible winning outcomes, along with a weighted number of losers. When a winner came out, that result was displayed on the reels. When a loser came out, a secondary decision was made to show a losing combination on the reels.

However, at the time, this was not considered slot cheating because nothing in the program was actually cheating slot players or changing odds. Winning combinations were not replaced by losers. But the practice led people to question the true randomness of slot machines, which ultimately led to the secondary decision ban.

Remember that brick and mortar casinos know that the simple odds of legitimate slot machines will always keep them operating in the black. That said, there is absolutely no reason for them to revert to secondary decisions that are now strictly illegal and could result in large fines and loss of gambling licenses. So...don't worry about casinos rigging their slot machines against you.

What about online slots? There, I can't really help you. Although we haven't heard of any major online slot machine scams, they could indeed be going on. But I doubt the level of online slot machine cheating will ever come close to the cheating level we see in online poker.