Cheating an age old problem

[John Connolly]

Cheating an age old problem.

I was wandering through an antique book shop in Budapest, when I came across a book written in English entitled “Monte Carlo Anecdotes and Systems of Play”, by the author of “Ten Days at Monte Carlo at the Bank´s Expense”. The book was first published in 1901 by William Heinemann and written by B.V. just the initials were submitted by the author as he obviously wished to remain anonymous. In that period it was still a taboo subject to even admit in certain social circles that one visited such establishments as casinos!
A later edition can be found in “American Libraries” on the following link:
http://www.archive.org/details/montecarloanecdo00bethiala
In this book there are two chapters on swindles or as they are called today, scams. The first describes how four Italian guests persuaded a croupier to introduce a stub of cards arranged for seven coups of “Trente et Quarante” or Thirty Forty, a game which is still popular today in the casinos of Italy and France. The two supervisors of the game were distracted simultaneously by change which was dropped to the floor and a tray of drinks which was spilled over an innocent lady sitting at the table, while the prearranged cards were introduced by the dealer on the top of the six decks waiting to be placed in the shoe. A crude enough trick which was certain to be discovered at the end of the shoe as more coups than the usual average of 26 were being played out, by which time the Italians were back over the border with their illicit 200,000 Francs. The dealer as usual took the fall and did his two years in prison, it is to be imagined that he at least got his promised corner of 60,000 Francs a tidy sum in those days but who knows.
In another chapter the first attempts at past posting onto the winning number on Roulette are described, a rudimentary version of the fine art, which is still performed today, more than 107 years later. Will we ever stamp it out, is a question for all concerned in the protection of profits in the modern casino world.
Throughout the last century in Europe casino cheating has prospered because of the ideal conditions created by the casinos in favour of the cheats. First of all it was a general understanding that casino guests wished to have anonymity and therefore there was a commitment by proprietors to cloak the industry in secrecy. Low levels of lighting with frilled lamp shades above the green baize were ideal shields for the cheats to hide behind. Then there was the wish to reduce bad publicity therefore cheats were seldom prosecuted, even to this day this attitude still exists and even some cheats still believe that they are immune. Camera coverage only really came into prominence during the final three decades of the century therefore there was little or no chance that security would discover them. There was also a lack of belief that a conviction could be brought against the perpetrators, not only with the unwillingness of the forces of order to take part but also the judiciary believing that casinos are fair game, (since they anyway cheat the public) and a lack of knowledge and understanding of what really went on inside those perceived dens of iniquity.
With only 3% of the population frequenting casinos there is also a credo among the public at large that casinos cheat their patrons, even among those who do visit casinos, they believe from time to time that they are being cheated especially when they go on long losing streaks.
Another advantage to the cheats is that in certain countries in Europe taxes imposed on the casinos can be as much as 80 to 90 percent of revenues. Casinos therefore have the attitude that for every 100,000 Euros lost to cheating the majority of the losses are incurred by the government and therefore the casinos are reluctant to spend vast amounts of their income on security and surveillance.
At the beginning of this year a scam was discovered in two European casinos in the same vicinity, involving six gaming table staff and 9 players who divided their enterprise between the two casinos. It was rumoured that the scam had been running for several months undetected and that the embezzled amounts were in the region of five to six hundred thousand. Twelve people were arrested in all, three more are fugitives but when the case eventually came before a local tribunal an amount of only 100,000 could be proved as the recorded evidence could not go back far enough and because of lack of evidence there will only be a case to answer for some of the accused. By way of compensation the Gaming Commission levied a massif fine on the casino, citing insufficient coverage by surveillance during this period, with at times only one camera operator on duty, who periodically had to leave the surveillance room and therefore a lack of attention towards the flow of cash on the table games included in the scam.
The cheats themselves are organized and they are becoming more and more high tech, so how do we stop them, one way is through the sharing of information between casinos and another is for the casinos themselves to employ the latest technology.
In a recent high tech scam in Moscow a team of Caribbean Stud Poker players had ingeniously hollowed out a stack of 100 dollar chips and incorporated a mini camera with battery, the signal was transmitted using blue tooth technology, in order to read the dealer’s cards as they were being dealt from his hands, fortunately the scam was discovered before it even developed legs because the casino itself was deploying equal high tech equipment, in the form of mini camera scanners to discover this type of action. Russians and Ukrainians are leading the cheating world with this type of scam, in an even more recent coup a group of Russians were arrested in a casino in Northern Cyprus; their equipment was so high tech it led the press to dub the scammers the James Bond mafia.
Going back to 2003, three Ukrainians were apprehended in Budapest with a roulette computer purchased from a British manufacturer, the equipment had been improved upon by the Ukrainians. According to the Ukrainians themselves they were caught because their mouth switch was broken and they couldn’t get batteries, over a five day period the user had to constantly keep his hand in his pocket. The computer was confiscated although they were allowed to keep the money which they had won, an amount of 20,000 dollars, which they confessed, stupidly they had brought attention to themselves by winning too much. Following this setback they had decided to give their enterprises a rest but then inspired by a later event in a London casino club they had been encouraged to start again, this time with an enhanced version of their original prediction device.
When two Croatian men and a Serbian woman walked into a certain London casino in March 2004, using an electronic roulette prediction device to relieve the house of 1.3 million pounds, how lucky were they? Had they walked into any other casino in town, they would have almost certainly been known but that casino was probably the only one in the city which was outside of the information sharing loop, at the time when this group had first come to prominence. A further testament to their luck was that the presiding judge allowed them to go free and keep the money because he proclaimed that they had not interfered with the outcome of the game and since it wasn’t stated in the establishment parameters that the use of electronic equipment was against the house rules.
Cheating groups have formed in the United Kingdom helped by the amount of casinos situated together in small areas throughout the country, in London alone there are 25 casinos operating today. The advancement of telecommunications over the last two decades has helped the cheats to organize themselves, through the use of the Internet ,they are able to learn where a casino is opening and when and at what time in the day. In recent casino openings, which I have been involved with myself, the organized cheating groups have started to appear through the doors as early as the first hours of operation.
To the credit of the metropolitan police clubs and vice squad and the creation of the new Gambling Commission in the U.K., with enhanced capability of enforcement and intelligence, certain convictions have been brought about and the judiciary have also begun to recognise top-hatting (past posting) as a fraudulent act perpetrated against legitimate business enterprises (casinos) .In a very recent case three men from different parts of the country and different ethnical backgrounds, all members of a larger organized group, were convicted of fraud and the use of false identity cards. Only one of them will serve prison time, because he was also in possession of cocaine with an intention to distribute, while the other two received suspended sentences. As in other recent cases those who walked free will simply go on a European tour.
By John Connolly
www.eyeontheaction.com
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