Online Poker-Cheat Leak Gives Up Data For 3 Million UltimateBet Playes!

If UltimateBet.com hasn't already had enough poker-cheating and security problems!

Now, in the latest UB.com cheat scandal, the names, real addresses, e-mail addresses as well as phone numbers and account detailed account info including balances of more than three million UltimateBet and Absolute Poker players had been compromised to the public in early December. The culprit, although unclear of what the intention was and by whom, was a faulty security device on a web-spammer’s site.

The full history of how the pilfered info got into the claws of e-mail marketers has not been detailed but many experts believe it is related to UB.com's post-cheating scandal collapse and egregious mis-management.

My take: UltimateBet and Absolute Poker just seem to be forever married to cheating at online poker and other interconnected scams.

Poker Cheat Settlements Linked to "High Stakes Poker" TV Show.

I have been saying for years that the GAMING SHOW NETWORK's "High Stakes Poker" show is all bullshit where no real money changes hand. Here is an interesting piece of news involving Gabe Kaplan, the former TV actor-turned poker broadcaster who coincidently is one of the broadcasters of that fraudulent show. Read this and tell me if you still actually believe there is one grain of truth to the crap you see on "High Stakes Poker."

News: Tobey Maguire, the "Spider-Man” star, and veteran TV-poker commentator and broadcaster Gabe Kaplan have agreed to settle lawsuits which were brought by poker-cheat victims of a convicted racketeer who took part in Maguire's high-stakes Hollywood poker games. Maguire reached a settlement for $80,000 while Kaplan settled to receive $26,900. The claims were brought by bankruptcy attorney Howard Ehrenberg, who sought to recover nearly half a million bucks lost by an imprisoned man convicted of fraud, one Bradley Ruderman.

First Major Conviction in Online Poker Cheat Fraud Case! I Hardly Believe It!!!

But is has happened! And lots of you have been waiting years for this news!

Source: Part Time Poker

Brent Beckley, one of the pioneers of Absolute Poker, pleaded guilty today in federal court. U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis accepted the guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court. Beckley pleaded guilty to bank fraud, wire fraud and violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The UIGEA, passed in 2006, makes it illegal for banks to process payments for illegal online gambling businesses that accept players from the U.S.

Beckley became the first executive of an online poker room related to the Black Friday indictments to plead guilty. Beckley’s half brother Scott Tom was also indicted on Black Friday. Scott Tom is believed to have been the mastermind behind the Absolute Poker insider cheating scandal. Tom’s whereabouts are unknown.

Beckley worked in the security department at Cereus, which consisted of Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. His job also involved setting up payment processors for the online poker room. Beckley was accused of creating bogus companies in an attempt to get U.S. banks to process payments to Absolute Poker, payments the banks would otherwise have declined.

PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker banned U.S. players within 24 hours of the Black Friday indictments being unsealed. The Cereus Network continued to allow U.S. players to play for real money. These players just did not have access to the cashier section. After reaching a settlement with U.S. authorities, players in the U.S. were blocked and could not even see the real money tables in the software’s lobby.

Players in the U.S. have not received any payments since Black Friday. Players in the rest of the world have receive small payouts. Typically these payouts were made once a month and the maximum payout was $1000. In October, Cereus announced that they would go into liquidation. This was after payments to players outside of the U.S. stopped. It is estimated that players from around the world could be owed as much as $50 million.

My take: Boy! This has been a long time coming coming! Finally someone pleads guilty and faces real prison time in connection with online poker cheating and fraud. You gotta love this! Especially if you were a victim to one of these malicious online poker cheat scams.

Poker Card-Swapping Cheats Busted in Pennsylvania Casino

Source: Lehigh Valley Live

Giansergio Caputi, 33, and Fernando A. Rodriguez, 28, both of Sunrise, Fla., profited from swapping cards four times in less than 45 minutes this morning at the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, police said. One of the men won $1,221 during hands in which he received beneficial cards from his friend, and the other man gained $50 from similar moves, according to court papers. Caputi and Rodriguez were seen on video, police said, and monitored by security. Both men were charged with four counts of prohibited acts and one count each of theft by deception and conspiracy.

Caputi was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail. Rodriguez was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail.

My take: Card-Swapping at poker tables and casino derivative poker tables such as three-card and four-card poker is a very crafty casino-cheating art--when done by professionals who have practiced and perfected their art. These guys here seem like amateurs who never really had a chance of getting away with it for more than one hour, let alone one night.

Computer Casino Cheat Keith Taft Nominated For Poker and Casino Cheats Hall of Fame!

Keith Taft with "George"

With all the emphasis on high-tech poker and casino cheating these days, and old name from this type of casino cheating has come back to the surface and been nominated for 2012 entry to the Poker and Casino Cheats Hall of Fame.

Keith Taft was a real-life "Inspector Gadget" character, a true genius who spent three decades developing and perfecting electronic devices to cheat US casinos. He began working with casino computers with his son, Marty Taft, back in the late 60s. Today he is believed to be the first casino or poker cheat to develop a computer that captured digital video the way today's microcomputers are processing data filmed in false-shuffle and other baccarat and blackjack cheat scams.

While vacationing in the Bahamas in the 60s, Taft got interested in Edward O. Thorp's famous blackjack card-counting book "Beat the Dealer." In fact, he quickly became obsessed by it. However, he did not make any money counting cards at blackjack using Thorp's plus-minus count system.

Thus he turned his attention to developing computers to beat the blackjack tables. His first and now famous invention was a 5-kilo computer that he called "George." He used it to enter data while counting cards at blackjack, using his toes to enter the data to the prototype computer he had tucked underneath his baggy shirt. He later decided that George was a bit unwieldy and developed a lighter device that he called "David."

Taft had immediate success with David, beating Vegas casinos out of fifty grand in the first two weeks of operation. made $40,000 the first week he used it. After taking some heat in casinos, Taft decided he would do better by selling his minicomputers based on the David prototype for ten or fifteen grand apiece, which included his training of the buyers.

This decision Taft made after being grabbed up in a casino and taken to the back room, where he was interrogated by Nevada Gaming Control Board agents as well as the FBI. But neither law enforcement agency had the slightest idea of what the microcomputer actually was and failed to make any legal connection to casino cheating that they could use in court, therefore Taft was releaed.

Another casino.cheating computer deeloped by Taft´s sons Marty and Keith was called the "belly-telly." This was a small video camera they fitted into their belts and could film the dealer's hole-card at blackjack. The image was then transmitted to their cheating partners sitting in a van at the casino's parking lot. These cohorts would then send a signal back to the cheating blackjack players at the table, identifying the value of the hole card.

Yet another electronic gismo invented by Taft and his sons was the "Thor" computer, which could track the positions of cards in a multiple-deck shuffle. This was the first casino-cheat invention that directly led to today's high-tech video-reader devices that are used in blackjack and baccarat shuffle-tracking scams, which are currently costing casinos worldwide millions, especially in Macau.

In 1986, the Nevada Gaming Commission created a law making it illegal to use any electronic devices whatsoever in gaming casinos, which today is a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison.

A true casino-cheating pioneer, Keith Taft was also inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame in 2004.

Table Games Protection Training





Keynoting 2007 WGPC in Las Vegas/

  As casino table game cheating scams proliferate in the world's casinos, especially on baccarat and roulette tables, it is time to get the proper table game protection training for your casino staffs. And it is time to get that training from the BEST, the only casino table game protection specialist in the world


today who has solid bona fide experience from both sides of the casino's tables.

Richard Marcus was both a casino dealer of all the basic table games as well as the most recognized casino cheat in the history of legalized gaming casinos. For more information on his casino table game protection training classes and seminars click here.

Study Says Online Casinos Use Software that Cheats Craps Players!

Source: Pittsburgh Live

At least two online casinos use software that cheats craps players, two leading gambling statisticians say.

The software by BLR Technologies, based in Costa Rica, detects a player's bet and increases the chances of a losing roll, according to gambling consultant Michael Shackleford, known as the "Wizard of Odds," and Eliot Jacobson, operator of Jacobson Gaming, which audits and certifies casino games around the world.

Legends.com and World Wide Wagering (www.wager.dm) use the BLR software in their craps games, according to rating service SportsBookReview.com. A third operator, 5Dimes.com, said it dropped BLR after the studies were posted on Shackleford's WizardOfVegas.com site.

Rachel Miller, general manager of Legends, said the software used on her site plays fairly. She said the company has invested thousands of dollars in new random number generators to work with the BLR software. She said she could not agree or disagree with the Shackleford and Jacobson studies because they did not test the craps game at Legends.

"I guarantee that everything is perfect on our end," she said.

A spokeswoman for 5Dimes said the company had no comment beyond a statement to Shackleford's site that it had removed BLR software from its casinos.

"BLR was given ample time to address the concerns of (WizardOfVegas) forum members as well as our direct questions," the statement said. "No acceptable answers were given, so the casino platform was removed."

BLR and World Wide did not respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment.

Legends, licensed in Panama, and 5Dimes, based in Costa Rica, are among only five online sports books with an A-plus rating from SportsBookReview.com, which grades hundreds of sites for customer service, incentives and pricing. World Wide, licensed in Dominica, West Indies, has a B grade.

The complaint about the craps software surfaced last month in a WizardOfVegas player forum.

Norman Clem, 66, of Las Vegas said he had been playing craps at World Wide for about a year and was slightly ahead before he suddenly started losing.

"I thought I was just on a bad run. But it never stopped," he told Player's Advantage. He documented his play, recording each bet and each outcome in a spreadsheet. From May 14 to Aug. 27, he videotaped 3,200 rolls in which he bet "pass" or "don't pass," the simplest bets in craps.

Those bets should win almost 49 percent of the time. Clem said he won 856 times, about 27 percent.

Intrigued by Clem's postings, Shackleford played craps at 5Dimes, which was using BLR software at the time. He said he bet only the pass line, winning 81 times and losing 247.

"It would have been easier to win the Powerball two out of two times than to be as unlucky as I was," said Shackleford, who has helped design slot machines for Internet casinos.

Jacobson said he devised a test to see whether the software "would really misbehave." With his approach, he would win something unless a seven came on the next roll.

"Suddenly, it produced a lot of sevens," he said. In 74 chances, a seven came up 41 times, or more than once in every two rolls; with fair dice, a seven comes up an average of once every six rolls.

"Thousands of people have been ripped off by this software," Jacobson said.

Clem said World Wide refunded his losses.

"It's obvious I was cheated, so what were they going to do?" he said.

Shackleford said 5Dimes refunded his losses. It's unclear whether others received refunds.

Jacobson said BLR also makes software for online blackjack, video poker, roulette and slots, but he does not know of any research into those.

Legends, World Wide and 5Dimes are primarily sports books, but offer casino games as another gambling attraction. Miller said less than 10 percent of Legends' 7,500 active gamblers use the casino.

She said Legends continues to use BLR, in part, because the software works so well with the site's main function of handling sports bets.

The United States does not license or regulate online gambling. Federal law prohibits American gamblers from collecting winnings from Internet casinos.

The federal government's April 15 crackdown on Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Ultimate Bet was based on accusations that they violated U.S. banking law.

Although those sites were shut down in the United States, 300 offshore companies continue to offer online gambling to U.S. players, according to the American Gaming Association, an industry group.

Shackleford and Jacobson said the BLR case should hasten the move toward U.S. regulation of online gambling.

"It only goes to show that when there's no regulation, there's nothing to stop these types of things from happening," Shackleford said.

"This kind of issue just shows how much (regulation is) needed," Jacobson said. "People are going to continue to gamble at these sites. There are still thieves and crooks creating crooked software."

My take: Well, how do we know that this study is not using software to cheat readers??? Really, your guess on this is as good as mine.

Syndicate Casino Cheating on the Rise in Singapore

Asian Cheat Favorite 3-card poker

Ever since two giant casinos opened in Singapore, casino and poker cheating has plagued the nation`s gaming tables. At first the casino-cheating attacks came from small international professional cheat groups and rank amateurs mostly from Singapore, Malaysia and other Asian countries. But know big-time Mafia-type Chinese and Asian crime syndicates are getting into the act, and I don't mean only loan-sharking and money-laundering types of crime. I am also talking about good old-fashioned table games and slot machine cheating scams. These syndicates are specializing in baccarat scams and poker-derivative-game scams, especially 3-card poker where they are using digital cameras and other high-tech equipment to scam Sinapore`s casinos.

And what makes these kinds of cheats a real pain in the ass for casinos is that they have muscle behind their cheating scams. They can scare authorities into not taking legal action against them when they are caught.

My suggestion to Singapore casino game-protection authorities: Start teaching your floor personnel to spot and stamp out casino table game scams before the cash rolls out of the cages!

Good Example of How Casino Steaming Leads to Casino Cheating

Source: Asia One News

A Malaysian visitor was frustrated and angry after losing $18,000 on his first visit to Marina Bay Sands.

At about 5pm on Oct 26, Tan Kuan Loong tried to cheat at a three-dice game, sic bo, by placing a late bet of $30 on the winning combination.
It should have won him $1,500, but his cheating ways were found out after dealer Chaiyaboot Narumon told her pit manager about her suspicions of the bet.

As the surveillance department reviewed the video footage of that bet, Tan tried to sneak in another bet of $30, when one of the dice already showed a five.

Tan pleaded guilty to one charge, while the second cheating offence was taken into consideration by the judge in the sentencing. Tan's defense counsel Rajan Supramaniam asked for leniency, saying his client had a five-year-old daughter with a hole in the heart. He had also resorted to cheating in a moment of foolishness. Tan was fined $1,500. He could have been jailed for up to 10 years and fined up to $10,000.

My take: This type of entry into casino or poker cheating is always a risk for those who steam while losing at gambling and out of desperation decide to cheat. At least in this case, the authorities and the judge had the decency to cut Tan a break. It was hard to hear about the hole in his daughter's heart.

Piggyback Casino Cheating...Can it be Done?

I was asked an interesting question yesterday: "I am a fairly intelligent guy and was wondering if I can go to Vegas and spot a casino cheat team or individual cheat or a poker team and piggyback onto their operation without taking any of their heat if they get caught?

Like I said, interesting.

Well, as far as the poker piggyback cheating goes, forget it! You can't join a collusion ring your not part of, nor can you read marks on cards their marking if you don't already have the right lenses in your eyes.

But in casino table games it is possible, albeit rare and difficult. With advantage-play teams at blackjack and baccarat tables, it may be possible to read their advantage if they are counting cards, ace-tracking, hole-carding or any of the other scams done on those tables that do not involve chip manipulation. On craps tables the idea of piggyback cheating would be more feasible. One example would be with dice-sliding, where the dice-cheat slides one of the dice so that it does not tumble or hit the back wall, therefore staying put on the number he has set up, usually six. If you pick up on a guy throwing dice and one of them not hitting the back wall and consistently coming up six or any other number, you could piggyback onto the scam and not take heat because you are not rolling the dice. So if you can see a guy rolling one of the dice six, you know that on a come-out or come-bet roll, you have a 2 to 1 edge right off the bat of a winner 7 or 11, against a craps loser 12. And there are many other opportunities like this involving field bets.