Singapore Casino Big Money Wheel Cheat Team Face More Charges

The two casino cheats who got busted last week for an inside scam on the Big Money Wheel at the Marina Bay Sands Casino got hit with 3 more charges yesterday. Keith Yong Kee-Hwei, 24, the pit supervisor and dealer (photo), and Tan Tiong Loon, 32, the player/agent, were charged with cheating at gambling in the amouont of $13,500, which happened on October 7th, and attempted cheating at gambling for a cheat move that didn't get paid.

Yong used his hand to stop the spinning wheel on the Big Money Wheel game on the 45 to 1 bet made by Tan. The casino paid $18,000. Then an hour later the pair made the same move for $13,500 and got paid again.

But then they got greedy and repeated the move just a few minutes later. This time the casino got suspicious and ran back the surveillance video which showed Yong blatantly stopping the wheel with his hand.

Yong is being held on $30,000 bail, but Tan, obviously an unprofessional casino cheat, is being held without bail because he committed these alleged offenses while out on bail for another casino-cheating charge.

My take: I think this casino-cheating team oughta hang up their chips for a long time.

Feedback on My Recent Steve Forte Borgata Poker Cheats Article

Whenever I write articles like this, I always get a variety of comments. And like always, the two-dozen that have come in so far are a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. Here's a few of them:

THE GOOD

Hi Richard,

Thanks for that informative article. The way you accurately broke down the case and pointed out the facts that cannot be argued, I have to agree with you that Steve Forte is guilty of conspiracy and had to be a participant whether or not the scam ever got to its operational stage.

Mr. Marcus,

I have never met Steve Forte or you, but objectively speaking I think you are probably right. After reading your article I went to Forte's website and found the following paragraph written by Forte, which is curious, and certainly makes Jason England's article claiming Forte's innocence appear biased in Forte's favor.

"For those of you who have asked about the Gambling Protection Video Series, I have cut a deal with, and transferred the rights to, my friend: Jason England. Jason is one of many people over the years who have asked me to convert the series to DVD..."

THE BAD:

Mr. Marcus,

A judge dismissed the case against Forte. I don't know what planet you live on, but on Earth that means he is INNOCENT!

Richard,

I get the feeling reading your article that you are one of those know-it-alls who thinks he's always right. In this case, I don't think you are. I am sure that Mr. Forte had some viable reason for being in that hotel room...maybe it was a girlfriend or sex thing, but not setting up a person to be ripped off playing poker.

THE UGLY:

YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT AND JEALOUS OF STEVE FORTE!

Annie Duke's Comments on Blanca Games Acquisition of Cheat-Troubled CEREUS Poker Network

If you didn't know, the CEREUS Poker Network was bought by Blanca Games, now run by Stuart Gordon. Annie Duke was asked by Poker News Daily what she thought about this transaction. She responded, "It´s a very positive thing for the brand. The cheating was purportedly under the auspices of Excapsa in terms of software development and the person developing it was able to get into the group through his involvement with them. I´m happy that the brand is making a clean break from that, and that’s part of being able to move on. I´ve always felt like the full brunt of what happened was really put on the current UB.com management. I have tremendous faith in Paul Leggett (Tokwiro Enterprises COO). My understanding is that there won´t be any change in terms of his role. I think perhaps this will be an opportunity to do some house cleaning, but I don´t really know. Paul´s staying is a good thing because in every aspect of what´s happened. When you look around and see how he´s behaved, he’s been the most forthright and the most forthcoming. He´s had the most integrity and he´s taken a lot of blame. He´s gone above and beyond and I´ve been very impressed with how he´s handled everything that´ happened.

My take: Gimme a break, Annie! How much is Leggett paying you for this?

Inside Blackjack Card-Marking Scam Busted in California Casino!

This one really caught my eye! In a span of less than an hour, three people cheated the Turlock Poker Room and Casino out of more than twenty-five grand by marking the cards, apparently in quite an unprofessional way. Finally, when they got too greedy, surveillance caught on to their cheating scam.

Arrested were a floor supervisor and two players at the table, all charged with 11 felonies including conspiracy, burglary, grand theft, winning by fraudulent means and cheating at gambling. The supervisor was identified as forty-six year-old Robert Younan. The players were Gabriel Rodriguez, seventy-one, and In Cha Say, fifty-eight.

Casino surveillance got wise to Rodriguez and Say making blatant deviations from basic strategy blackjack, which seems like foolish play unless you keep winning, which is what they were doing--in huge amounts. It was then determined that the players had marked the cards with a grease-like substance, marking ten-value cards on the corners and sevens, eights and nines on the middle. The cards were not marked on the game, however. They were marked elsewhere beforehand, and Younan, the supervisor, was able to switch the marked cards into the game when his cohorts hit the table.

My take: Amazing that they got ahead $25,000 grand in such a small casino. This shows two things: One, that the blackjack cheats and supervisor were incredibly greedy and/or stupid; two, the casino floor personnel were incredibly inept not to catch on to them after the first few hands. Even though they could not have seen the marking taking place, the cards should have been removed from the game after a few winning hands for large bets that showed successive deviation from basic strategy.

Singapore Casino Busts Pit Supervisor in Money Wheel Inside Scam!

Seeing how easy it is to cheat Singapore's new casinos, some of their very own employees are getting into the cheat-free-for-all. Loads of dealers and pit personnel have been getting away with it so far, but finally one inside scam has been broken up. It occurred on the Money Wheel game, not a place where high rollers usually lay their wagers, which might have clued the casino into the fact it was being cheated by its very own.

Three Chinese nationals were charged last Thursday with cheating the Marina Bay Sands casino out of more than $18,000 by getting the dealer to control the spinning wheel of the game. The dealer who also served as a pit supervisor has been identified as twenty-four year-old Keith Yong Kee Hwei. One of the cohort players at the table has been identified as thirty-two year-old Tan Tiong Loon. Loon made a bet at 45 to 1 and Yong controlled the spinning wheel to make Loon's bet win, which looked like a huge, lucky longshot in the works. There were other unidentified players involved in the cheat scam.

This is the first incident of a casino employee being charged with involvement in an inside scam. I expect to see more of this as the cheating appears to continue to be extremely ripe in Singapore's two virgin casinos. 

Major UK Casino Cheat Conviicted of Roulette Pastposting Under 2005 UK Gambling Act

Source: Northern Echo

A NORTH-EAST fraudster who targeted casinos admitted a series of cheating and fraud offences today, police said. Iranian-born Bahram Sahami, 37, cheated at American roulette by adding or removing chips from the table after the ball had dropped or by stealing other players chips, Scotland Yard said. Sahami, of Coltman Street, Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to three counts of fraud, three of cheating at gambling, and two of theft, a spokesman said. His prosecution was the third of its kind in the UK since the Gambling Act 2005 came into force in 2007, he added.

Sahami, who had been nationally barred by all major casino operators for cheating, used at least four false identities to gain access to London casinos between March and July 2009, the spokesman said. These identities were supported by identification in the form of membership cards or UK driving licences.

It has been calculated that he would gain between £25 and £130 per cheat or theft. "It is difficult to be precise about the amount Sahami made from his actions but it is known that he would commit multiple offences at a time," the spokesman said.

He was arrested after he was caught on CCTV cheating at a Gala Coral Group casino. Detective Inspector Ann-Marie Waller of the Metropolitan Police's human exploitation and organised crime command said: "Sahami was a brazen and determined fraudster who cheated not only the casinos but fellow punters out of hundreds of pounds a time."

He will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on November 5.

Wanna Know a Good Way to Cheat?...Start Up a Phony Casino!

That's what a group of two-dozen Korean casino cheats did. They fleeced a bunch of rich South Koreans who were on a golf outing in China out of $7 million dollars. According to reports, the scam had the flavor of the "Ocean" movies starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, in which the cheats scammed major Las Vegas casinos for tens of millions.

Twenty-five men fell victim to the scam as the cheats engaged them in friendly conversation on golf courses at posh Korean country clubs and persuaded them to take a golf trip to China. There, the Korean scam artists set up phony casinos to swindle the victims who were eager for some hardy gambling action after a pleasurable day on the links, where some betting surely took place between holes.

Prosecutors in Seoul, Korea say they have arrested seventeen people, including one woman, and that a half-dozen more are still being sought. The leader of the cheat-team has been identified only as Choi and is said to be fifty-eight years-old. His thirty-seven year-old female partner has been identified only as Kim. Sex may have been used as well to lure the gambling cheats' victims into the bogus casinos. Choi is still at large.

The phony casinos were staged inside large banquet halls with fake camera-bubbles on the ceilings with all the works in hotels in Haikou, Weihai and Xiamen. The victims played their preferred game of baccarat while bystanders who were part of the scam rooted them on to "beat the casino." At first the victims won but then cheating dealing-techniques were used to quickly traansform their good luck into a nightmare. As they continued losing money, Choi's partners began lending them huge amounts of money at zero interest rates, and because welching on debts is extremely frowned upon among respectable Korean businessmen, they immediately wired the funds to pay off these loans once having returned to Korea.

One newspaper quoted a Korean prosecutor as stating that the cheats used scams similar to those depicted in the famous Robert Redford/Paul Newman con-artist movie, "The Sting" and the South Korean movie "High Rollers," in which ironically a temptress approaches businessmen at a golf club.

My take: Heck, I would have loved to see this go down! It takes balls setting up a phony casino in a hotel...especially if no one on the hotel staff was involved, which amazingly appears to be the case.

Caesars Casino in Indiana, Now Called the Horseshoe, May Have Been the Tran Organization's Biggest Victim in International Baccarat Scam

We have all heard about the infamous Tran Organization mini-baccarat scam, which by using casino dealers to false-shuffle decks of baccarat cards bilked dozens of US and Canadian casinos out of anywhere from $5 million to $30 million, depending on which report we're to believe. The lastest data on the huge baccarat swindle says the former Caesars Palace casino in Harrison County, Indiana was the biggest victim to the highly-organized baccarat cheats--to the tune of nearly $1.5 million. The losses occurred during 2004.

Charmaine Stokes was the key dealer hired to fix the cards by John Tran, one of the numerous Vietnamese with that same last name (hence the Tran Organization). After giving up the entire operation to Indiana authorites and then to the FBI, Stokes pleaded guilty to the felony charge of violating Indiana's gambling laws. In addition she lost her job and has been barred permanently from all Indiana's casinos.

This part of the Tran scam that came apart in Indiana did so because of pure greed. The organization kept operating day after day and didn't know when to stop. Had they not milked the cow so many times, not only would they have gotten away clean with the scam in Indiana, they may have been able to operate for years more if not indefinitely in the rest of North America. This is because the cheat-heat they generated in Indiana spread like wildfire and galvanized other Tran-baccarat-victim-casinos to examine their own baccarat losses, which were quickly pegged to the scam by a widening interstate and international investigation.

My take: It is always hard to know when to stop when money is coming easy from a poker cheat or casino cheat scam. That is the simple reason why almost all of them eventually get caught.

Full Tilt Poker's Stock E-mail to Online Poker Cheat Victims on its Site

This is a verbatim account of the standard e-mail that Full Tilt Poker's security department sends to its victims of online poker cheating and to online players complaining or asking questions about online poker cheating at Full Tilt.

"The Full Tilt Poker Security department has recently concluded an extensive investigation and we have determined that some of your opponents were in violation of our site terms.

We have permanently closed all of the offending accounts. In cases of proven cheating, 100% of the confiscated funds are returned to the players who were victimized. The reimbursement calculation is based on the number of tournaments or hands played against the offending players, and the amount won or lost against them.

We have determined that you are entitled to a refund of $X which will be placed in your account in the next 72 hours.

For a number of reasons, we are unable to provide any other additional information regarding this case, including the players involved and the game type where it occurred. We thank you for your understanding in this regard. The vigilance of our players in reporting suspicious behavior is an important addition to our ongoing diligence against unethical conduct, and we carefully investigate every concern of suspicious activity.

If you believe you have witnessed unfair play at our tables, please don't hesitate to contact us at security@fulltiltpoker.com. If there is any other way we can be of assistance, please let us know.

My Take: I hate to use cliches but it is what it is. In other words, not much.

Does Every Poker Cheating Dog Have Its Day?

What do I mean by this? well, if your native language is English you have surely heard this expression. Generally it means that every bastard or bitch in the world who takes advantage of, robs, or CHEATS other people eventually has his day of reckoning where he or she in turn becomes the victim. In this case I am talking about poker cheats who constantly cheat the poker games both in brick and mortar poker room casinos and online. The cheating dogs who work the live poker rooms and home games are quite more likely to "have their day" (get caught, busted or beat-up) than their fellow or unfellow online poker cheats. This is simply because they are in physical reality when plying their cheating trade. They can be accosted, detained, arrested, and in some cases, especially home games, have the royal shit kicked out of them and even be killed!

But the online cheating dogs work behind the cloak of non-identity and cyberspace, and when they are caught they have the luxury of using their cyberknowledge to come right back at you under different user names, IP addresses, etc. And even when they are identified, as was the case with Russ Hamilton, the crooked mastermind behind the biggest online poker scandal ever, the UltimateBet.com insider hole card-scam (biggest ANY poker scam ever), it is extremely unlikely that that dog will have its day. I mean, after all, does anyone think Russ Hamilton, the real ALPHA DOG of poker cheating, will ever have his day?

I highly doubt it!