How Exactly Did Poker Pro Phil Ivey Use Edge-Sorting Card Scam to Cheat Crockfords Casino out of $12 Million?

The best article with graphic descriptions I have seen on Phil Ivy's baccarat cheat scam is here. Ivy claims it is not cheating, but indeed it is because by asking the dealers to alter their mechanics while dealing the game is outright influencing the outcome of the game to his favor, which is one of the definitions of casino cheating. Once the dealers complied with Ivy's requests, they were inadvertently helping him to cheat.

Mohegan Sun Baccarat Deakers and Players Acquited in Baccarat Marking-Cards Cheat Scam

Well, this is quite surprising since the two dealers busted in this baccarat-dealer/baccarat player collusion scandal had admitted to marking the cards. I don't know the details of the trail, so if anyone has them, please do let me konw. The original news article on the case follows: Two New York City men accused of cheating a Connecticut casino out of more than $150,000 in a scam involving crooked dealers and marked cards pleaded not guilty on Tuesday. Leonard Hu and Hung Leung, both of Queens, denied felony casino cheating and larceny charges in New London Superior Court. They remain free after posting bail. State police said two dealers, Jian Ng and Bong Louie, both of Norwich, marked the 7, 8 and 9 cards at mini-baccarat tables at the Mohegan Sun casino in southeastern Connecticut by bending them with their thumbs and helped Hu and Leung win tens of thousands of dollars. Mini-baccarat generally is played with the same rules as regular baccarat but with lower betting limits. It involves betting on whether players' hands of cards will beat the dealer's hand. On Feb. 11 and in the early morning hours of Feb. 12, after Louie had marked the cards and left the table when his shift ended, Hu pocketed $101,600 and Leung walked away with $52,000, a state police arrest warrant affidavit says. The two dealers also were charged with casino cheating and larceny and were released on bail. Their lawyers didn't return phone messages Tuesday. State police said Ng admitted marking the cards eight times since last fall but told troopers he didn't know if any other dealers were doing the same thing. A Mohegan Sun spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday. The affidavit said Hu and Ng met at the nearby Foxwoods Resort Casino last fall and Hu asked Ng to mark the mini-baccarat cards in return for $1,000 a night. A week after winning the $153,600, Hu and Leung returned to the Mohegan Sun and won more than $30,000 at a mini-baccarat table where Ng had marked the cards, state police said. Hu took in more than $25,000, and Leung won $6,100. Casino patron win-loss records obtained from the Mohegan Sun by state police showed that Hu won nearly $235,000 at mini-baccarat from October to December of last year after state police said he met with Ng. He won another $119,000 last January, troopers said. From January to September 2010, Hu had $129,000 in losses and $37,750 in wins at the casino. Leung lost $100 at Mohegan Sun in July 2010 but went on to win $9,870 in November, $51,400 in December and $34,600 in January, state police said. No one answered phone listings for Hu and Leung on Tuesday. Their cases were continued to Aug. 2.

Pai Gow Tile Swapping...That's a First!

Well, I`ve written about card-swapping in poker games, derivative poker carnival games and baccarat. I've written about chip-swappng and swithing at blackjack, but now this new casino-cheating-switching-swapping incident is a new one: How about switching and swapping tiles in a Pai Gow game?

I know it's a tongue-twister just to say it, but these two guys actually did it...and got caught...twice! 39-year-old Tan Guo Yu of Boston, Mass, and 32-year-old Chaoyu Wu of Brooklyn, New York, worked a distract-the-dealer scam with one of them distracting the dealer while the other switched around pai gow tiles to make winning hands. They got caught at Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, and it turns out they'd been previously arrested for the same scam at Foxwoods' neighboring casino, the Mohegan sun. That was back in June.

I don't have info as to how much cash they swindled, but it appears to me that the Yu-Wu casino cheating team wasn't very effective and that soon, the only thing they'll be switching and swapping is a pair of prison cells!

How 'bout a Casino-Cheating Reality TV Show?

WEll, maybe it's not too far off in the future. If you have seen the UK TV reality show "Real Hustle," you may have seen a few of its episodes dedicated to casino scams, although they were not very good since the shows stars really have never been serious casino cheats. I think a reality show based on casino and poker cheating would be lots of fun. Maybe something like a professional casino-cheat team going through all the stages of planning their moves, carrying them out in casinos and getting the cash. And the best and most exciting part would be to see if they get away with it or get caught!!!

"We're Not in Las Vegas, Lucky For You,"....

...Common Pleas Judge Daniel T. Hogan told Mohamed Waes after Waes copped a guilty plea to one count of pastposting chips on a Hollywood Casino mini-baccarat table. All told, Waes had been charged with several felonies for his pastposts that totalled a mere $400, and the judge sentenced him to nine days in the county jail with a year of probation. Well, what I like about this case is the judge's remark about not being in Vegas. Even though it struck me as funny, the words are pretty damn right-on! Had Waes tried his pastposting/cheating luck in Vegas and got caught, he probably would've been sentecned to a year behind bars for his trouble. So, am I saying it's better to cheat in Ohio than in Las Vegas? Well, yes, if you're main objective is to avoid prison. But if you want to make any money, serious money that is, you're gonna have to go to Vegas or some other higher-stakes area and risk the consequences if you get caught!

Legendary $40 Million-Winner Gambler Busted at San Deigo Barona Casino in Small-Time Card-Marking Cheat Scam.

So Are Casinos Harder to Cheat These Days? Read This and....

...then ask me! Article: Casinos Tap Intelligence Networks to Catch Cheaters The man at the poker table had a ball cap pulled down almost to his nose, but his glance up at a television screen revealed a familiar face to Mohegan Sun's surveillance cameras: A photograph of the known card cheater had been sent by bulletin to casinos around the country. Within hours, the bettor was arrested, accused of marking cards with invisible ink. "The officer who identified him, basically she had a `Holy crap!' moment," said Jay Lindroos, the casino's surveillance director. "She saw the face and said, `I recognize that guy!'" Casinos from the U.S. to Australia use their own intelligence network to warn one another about cheaters. As table games spread across the Northeast, resorts are using it more than ever to stay ahead of suspect players - professional thieves and card counters - who can easily hit multiple casinos in the span of a few days. Mohegan Sun, one of the world's largest casinos, began sharing intelligence a decade ago with its giant, next-door rival in southeastern Connecticut, the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Although it was once less common for casinos to talk with competitors, the online network has evolved through mutual self-interest. "If something happens at Foxwoods at 1 o'clock, we'll be aware of it no later than 2, 2:30," said Joseph Lavin, director of public safety for the Mohegan Tribe, which owns and operates the casino. "It won't take more than a day or so before that information goes to Atlantic City, goes to Pennsylvania, goes out to upstate New York." The element of luck makes it impossible to know exactly how much revenue is lost to cheaters, but 100 percent casino surveillance coverage is a security standard for a U.S. industry that generates tens of billions of dollars annually. Workers at Mohegan Sun monitor feeds from roughly 4,000 cameras, scrutinizing the dealers as closely as they do the players. On a given day, they could be on the lookout for as many as hundreds of faces, some pointed out by other casinos, others by law enforcement agencies seeking criminals who might be trying to launder money. If a camera picks up somebody who's been flagged for possible cheating, security officials said they'll watch the person play before taking any action. The man arrested Sept. 15, Bruce Koloshi, 54, was the subject of a security bulletin issued two weeks earlier by officials in Louisiana. He had cheating convictions in Iowa and Nevada and was facing charges in Louisiana that he marked cards last month at the L'Auberge Casino in Baton Rouge. After the surveillance officer spotted him, Koloshi was seen moving his hands away from the Mississippi Stud poker table, allegedly for the marking substance, and cameras detected the ink that wasn't visible to the naked eye. Koloshi wore special contact lenses to see the ink, authorities said. He was arrested and charged with cheating, conspiracy to commit larceny and being a fugitive from justice. His bond was set at $300,000. When he was questioned in Louisiana, he surrendered $3,300 in winnings though authorities did not have enough evidence to charge him at the time, according to Capt. Doug Cain, a spokesman for Louisiana State Police. Mohegan Sun officials said Koloshi was arrested at their casino before winning a significant amount. A person who answered the phone at Koloshi's home in Summit, N.J., declined to speak with a reporter. His defense attorney was not available for comment. The warning about Koloshi was relayed by the Division of Gaming Enforcement in Delaware, where table games were introduced in 2010. The division's director, Daniel Kelly, said information sharing has increased as Northeastern states have legalized more types of gambling. It also has become more important, he said, because cheaters have so many potential targets in a small geographic area. "Within an hour, they can be in three or four different states," Kelly said. High-level casino cheats are considered rare, but Mohegan Sun officials say they frequently see card counters and other "advantage players," people who are not breaking the law but have skills that bend the odds in their favor. Lavin said card-counting techniques were glamorized by the story of a group of MIT students who scored big wins at casinos, including his, in the 1990s. One tell-tale sign for surveillance workers is gamblers placing higher bets than might be expected with the hands they're dealt. When card counters are discovered, Lindroos says, the casino will restrict their play by keeping them to betting the minimum or suggest they try a different game. "The professionals, as soon as they see somebody walking over toward them, they'll say, `OK, I'm out of here,'" Lindroos said. Well, now that you read it, my answer is NO. Don't forget: you only read about the cheats who get caught!

The gaff?

Say it went something like this:

A Crown Casino VIP Host explained to upper management that a high roller client has some superstitions about the shuffle process because the cards were shuffled in a different room ahead of time. The player requested that someone they trust (the VIP Host) be allowed access into the shuffle room to verify that everything is on the up and up. Not wanting to deny this big money player his sense of security, rules were bent to accommodate the request.

This allowed the VIP Host to either record video from inside the shuffle room or somehow obtain recordings from the surveillance system. The specific shuffle machine referred to was the Shufflemaster Deck Checker pictured at left.

If you look at it, you can see the Ace of clubs right on top of the pile. I’m not familiar with the specifics of the machine, but I believe that once a set of cards is verified to all be present (up to 8 decks) a serial number is assigned to that shuffled set of cards. That number and the order of the cards were then passed on to the player and he would play in the high limit room.

All he’d have to do then is wait for that set of cards to show up or, if the casino wanted to be really generous, he could fall back on the superstitious act established earlier and say he’d like to pick the set of cards that felt lucky.

Apparently, the high limit room might have some of these pre-shuffled sets of cards locked in boxes just waiting to be used. A very knowledgeable surveillance expert pointed out to me that these shuffle rooms are ridiculous and should not be used by casinos. All of these pre-shuffles should be done inside the gaming pits where the games are being dealt and played.

Still Another Possible Explanation for Crown Casino Scam!

Now I am not obsessed with it! But this one I just heard might be it! It is certainly plausible. A high casino surveillance source told me he had heard that the Crown Casino video that was viewed by an “unauthorized” person was video from the pre-shuffle room. Supposedly the Crown used a pre-shuffle room and a deck counter that verifies all of the cards are present in a shoe of up to 8 decks. It does its thing and spits the cards out one by one and face up. If you record that video and make a note of the serial number for that shoe, you would then have all the information you need to make over $30 million. Well, this is by far the best explanation I have yet heard!!

Listen to My Usenix 2013 Presentation!

As I posted a few weeks ago, I was an invited speaker at the 2013 Usenix Security Symposium in Washington D.C. My talk, which dealt with many facets of high-tech and low-tech casino cheating, seemed to go over quite well with the attendees, mostly very high-level computer and Internet systems security people. Listen to it here.