How Cheaters Win Millions In Las Vegas Casinos | Cheating Vegas Compilation | Wonder

Vegas is a world built on fantasy, but there is a dark reality just beneath the surface where good guys and bad guys fight every day. It's cat and mouse, just what we do all the time. Generally the good guys win, but there are

cheaters

who are very successful. in what they do they get away with it Millions these are their exclusive stories told by the guys who took a walk in Las Vegas and landed in the Hall of Fame of

cheaters

on the gaming tables of the Las Vegas

casinos

there are chips of colors of all denominations, only a handful of the companies make them and the manufacturing processes are kept top secret, so when two cheaters successfully spoofed ships, it catapulted them straight into the Cheaters Hall of Fame.

Las Vegas Gaming Control Board agents busted a counterfeiting ring operating out of a garage. The raid itself was the first of its kind, not only in Las Vegas, but Gaming Control agents say it was the first of its kind in the country, they had never seen an operation like this before, in a makeshift workshop, the agents find ships that are in the process of being converted from low denominations to high denominations. These are the four hundred dollar Queen inserts, which is what you stick in the middle of a one dollar chip with a little paint. and you have a hundred dollar chip, now you have a one dollar investment and a 99 profit.

I mean, it literally took some paint, some glitter, and a hair dryer, and one good idea behind the scam is a Unlikely pair of two former construction workers. Eric morakawa, 40, in an exclusive interview, murakawa reveals how he created ships that looked so real they fooled the experts, it wasn't that easy, but once we came up with it and figured out a way, it came fast. The story begins in In the late 1990s, construction in Las Vegas is booming. New

casinos

are being built all over the city and older casinos are being extensively renovated to remain competitive in 2000.

Small-time contractor Eric Morakawa from Southern California is moving to Las Vegas to find work soon. Murakawa has more work than he can handle. He hires additional help, including 20-year-old Jeremy Lewis. Jeremy I met him at a pool bar and he was out of work and I gave him a job, but Morikawa's new employee has a checkered past. Jeremy Lewis was the known bad boy, he had some drugs. and outstanding forgery arrest warrants in California and had also had multiple arrests here in the Las Vegas area, still Jeremy was a good worker for a few years, business was good, then in 2004 the economy collapsed, the industry of the construction collapsed and the work was not really There we were all already in the same situation, the money began to run out and we needed to take care of our families.

Murakawa and his team began doing jobs further and further away, but on one of their return trips, Murakawa sees something on the side of the road. That makes him think of the ship seen on the poster and he asked them how difficult it would be to make the chip. And we all agreed that it wouldn't be that difficult. At that moment, Murakawa and his crew decide to do what no one else has done successfully: fake. the Las Vegas casino chip currency, we went to Las Vegas and took the chip off the table, took it back to my garage and tore it up, split it in half.

I tried to see what was inside the chip. The casino chips are made from clay, sand and other earth metals that are heated to extreme temperatures and pressed into morakawa shapes and the team begins trying to replicate them. We were trying to make our own chips from scratch from different clays, injecting metals and trying to get them out. weight was difficult it was very difficult to be able to pass the fake chips they must have the same feeling of weight and the same hollow sound that the real chips make when they are dropped the team does its own sound tests this is the real chip and this is the Impostar the chips we made from scratch would be like a thud, and so we knew it was going to work.

What are we doing? What are we doing? Weeks pass, the team still hasn't created a working chip. Several were discouraged. The crew members leaving are now just Murakawa and Lewis, but they are not ready to give up together. They spend hours studying the chips at the Green Valley Ranch Casino. Each denomination has its own colors. The hundred dollar token is black and gray and the one dollar token. it's gray and teal, murakawa suddenly realizes that it would be easier to modify a chip than create one from scratch, it's a breakthrough, so i grabbed a sharpie pen and said, well, we just need to paint black, it looks like They can accept one. dollar chips and turn them into 100 chips with a little effort, they must first remove the dollar inlay from the center.

We try to heat it up to get it out. Heating it would bend the chip so we would put it in boiling water and it would penetrate the fouling, 212 degree water leaves the boat unharmed but softens the fouling allowing them to remove it easily. Next step duplicating the black and gray shades of the 100 chip that we would get our pants from at our supply store, we would sit there and just mix the colors that you know, mix them together and then put it on the actual chip and then wait for it to dry and both We look at it under the light outside, know different types of light and then make sure the color matches it. a t-shirt was very, very, very close, then it moves on to the painting.

They start with the gray accent color. Stripes known as Pips. Using an airbrush, they cover the entire chip. It had to be a light spray, which an airbrush spray is really light once. The paint dries, they block the pips with painter's tape and then airbrush everything else black when the tape is removed. The colors of the fake ship reflect the authentic one. Eric murakawa and Jeremy Lewis really did a good job matching the colors and that's not easy to do because colors are always unique, you can't do it perfectly, they didn't do it perfectly, but they got them very close once the color is in place, the next step is to create the fake 100 graphical embedding and scan a real one. a computer then prints it on clear plastic to give it a glossy look, then the plastic is glued onto a white backing made of bumper sticker paper, which you would roll the inlays over like a pasta roller, the new entry would fit perfectly inside of the chip.

The chip is ready, except for one crucial detail. If you run this chip under black light you will see a glowing top hat on a cane and that is one of its safety features. I went out and got the same color ink in a pen. shape and we would color the top hat and the cane there and we had a black light set up to check that you know the position is random so we just put it there and the laws just showed something under the black light that happens after a month of work finally have three counterfeit 100 chips murakawa and Lewis had 10 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip to the Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson Nevada to see if they could fool the casino.

I don't lie very well to be able to Not enter the casino and keep a straight face and go to the cashier's cage and throw away the chips. I feel guilty. Jeremy Lewis takes the lead. I'm sitting in the parking lot while he tries to catch these chips and the casino. I hope you know that everything is fine, nothing is going to happen moments later Lewis reappears next to the truck and gets in and says: you know, drive and we drove. I thought security was chasing them and looking over our shoulders but there's no one behind them and when Morakawa looks Lewis has three 100 bills in his hand the counterfeit boats work we were so excited we ran back to the house and made some more They could go down to the garage and in five minutes you could have a new chip, it was just that incredibly simple Morikawa and Lewis are able to fake 20 ships a day, they plan to carry out their scam throughout the city to match the various chips they stock in supplies , there are different colors on the chips, a lot of them were like glitter, so we would take the glitter pens and rub the glitter on there and give it that metallic look passed scam boats at eight different casino properties including Caesar's Palace and Mandalay Bay, these guys were all over town, they're on their way to the Cheaters Hall of Fame, but realizing that sooner or later, cashing in chips without playing a single casino game is sure to raise suspicions to avoid getting caught. , they need to change their game, we had to find a way that was foolproof and they couldn't do it.

They immediately figure it out to make the scam look legitimate, they start playing at the gaming tables, they buy real chips from the dealers, we put two thousand dollars on the table, they give us the chips and the camera overhead sees that, so we used it to our advantage and then we would exchange them in the bathroom or in the parking lot and we would get the fake ones and we would have the real ones. If you went to a cage and charged them and they caught it, you could always consult that table. They gave them to me later when I got the real ones back, they wouldn't question it because they were real murakawa and Lewis started spending more and more time in the casinos by the time we graduated from 100 chips to 500 chips, even thousand ones.

Dollars. and the money was coming in, the lifestyle was changing, we were eating a lot at nice restaurants and, being on the Strip, Maura Cala keeps the source of her new wealth a secret from everyone, including her wife, at first she asked but then she was like I don't want to know and uh she was buying new bags, clothes, at one point I counted 100 pairs of shoes in boxes in a closet, so yeah, she was benefiting from it too for three months. Eric and his wife are enjoying their extravagant new lifestyle, but my partner Jeremy Lewis is on a very different path.

I found him in an 800 night suite at the Riviera, the place was bigger than my entire house and he was there with a group of girls, he hadn't slept at all. was connected, Lewis' lifestyle soon becomes a burden, one day he was talking to one of the girls on the phone and I could hear him because it was so loud, so I said, "Hey, hand me the phone, I want to talk to she". He gave me the phone and she said, I know everything you guys do and I looked down and thought, why would you tell them?

I mean, my wife doesn't even know why you would say all this to a stranger. You know it and now you know it. She wants money now we have to pay her for a few days they pay her money for her silence but then she started wanting more and then she told us that she listen, my man is in jail, we have to get him out. I need money and I want it now. she threatens to reveal her scam to the police in an attempt to reduce her boyfriend's sentence so that he can get paid again a few days later it seems it's all over a cow's wife leaves the country to visit her mother as soon as she Morikawa leaves and Lewis begins to plan a trip to Atlantic City to go to its casinos.

I get hit with a door, there's a guy at the door and he says, "Hey, my son threw a ball and in your backyard, can you go get it?" The ball that comes out of the backyard grabs me and throws me to the ground but two other officers jump out of the bushes they are fully armed and run towards the house above me they are Nevada police officers Lewis's blackmailer from the Control Board Games apparently turned them over after all enough information was developed to obtain a search warrant and when the house was searched, all the evidence we were looking for was there, the entire setup was found, the chips are of such quality that some of those that have been approved in the recent past may not have been detected, they are still stunned.

Las Vegas authorities must now deal with the fact that two construction workers have compromised the security of casino chips. Murakawa and Lewis are in jail three days later. the couple is brought before a judge they were given a bail of five million dollars not for murdering someone not for raping someone for forging casino chips our state takes this very seriously since neither of them can pay bail murakawa and Lewis are taken Back to maximum security prison A hefty bail makes Morikawa a celebrity among inmates. When I walked in, a bunch of people were like, "Oh wow, your bail is five million," and they called another guy and said, Hey, you know he has a bigger bill than you and he was Russian. guy and not just any guy, the man has ties to a Russian gang met him and sat down and talked to him and told him my story and he was interested, it's business and he said, you know what we have to talk about once he gets out If you get out, you know, a few days later, Morikawa's lawyer got him a new bail hearing and reduced my bail from 5 million to I think it was like 12,000.

So he could get out on bail after scamming the casinos by dozens of thousands of dollars Morakawa ends up serving only 10 days Jeremy Lewis, his accomplice is not so lucky, his earringspending arrest for drugs and forgery keeping him behind bars murakawa is free but deeply in debt I made the house payments I paid most of the bills doing what I was doing and now I have a case and I need to pay my lawyers desperate call the Russian who also just got out of prison the russian wants more akawa to teach him how to make counterfeit ships he was very worried because he knew that if they caught me again I would not get out once again facing overwhelming debts morakawa looks for counterfeiting as a way out but this Maybe he won't get his hands dirty for 25 percent of the profits he agrees to train the Russians I would make him go out of the way to meet them I constantly watched people in my mirrors and saw if anyone was following me once the Russians were trained , fake chips start passing around in Las Vegas casinos, an alert casino employee sees some of them looked a little different on the shelf than the other chips and they turned out to be fake, so we had to back up a little and try to find these people.

The investigation leads to the only two people who have ever made ships that can pass for real. Jeremy Lewis and Eric Morakawa with Jeremy Lewis still in prison, leaving Murakawa. and the agents are approaching one day um, I was training the Russian guys and there is a knock on the door, the police we have all the chips and equipment lying around. I'm staring at the ceiling and trying to find a way out. and there's no way, as soon as they came in I knelt down and put my hands behind my head and I knew I was arrested.

I'm in jail and I didn't think he was going to get out until we got out. to court Eric Morakawa hires a shrewd defense attorney in Las Vegas It's a move that pays off in Spades in 2006 Murakawa makes a deal and pleads guilty to six felonies receives five years of probation and community service most of time spent in jail was a week and a half when I was arrested the first time, the second arrest. I was only there a couple of days before I was released on bail. Still, Murakawa must make restitution for all the fraudulent ships he passed.

The refund is 36,000, that's what they could only find on the chips I think. we made over a million and they claim their price Circulation of stones they can't even find them I wouldn't see Las Vegas again it's easy money and it's fast but it's not worth it it's not worth giving up your livelihood and your family and embarrassing your La Now Morikawa family counterfeiting scam is a wake-up call for Las Vegas Today many casinos protect their boats using a high-tech device called RFID, short for radio frequency identification. It has a small electronic chip embedded somewhere on the chip and they can keep track of what the chip is and how many of them are on the table.

It is an identifier. They use RFID scanners on both the gaming tables and in the cage, which does It is impossible for a low denomination ship to be confused with a high one no matter the face of the The chip reads the new foreign technology that keeps the chips safe from tampering. Easy money is always a goal for the world-class Las Vegas cheater. One in particular stands out for both the simplicity and sheer audacity of his crime. Anthony Carleo one of the things about Anthony Carleo was that he seemed to have this need to be a larger than life figure, we had this feeling of invincibility about him, he's not someone who lived the life of a criminal, I think he just had this downward spiral in the face of this sudden breakup in an exclusive telephone interview.

Carleo tells us in his own words how he became one of the most notorious criminals in Las Vegas. I don't know if you've ever been to a Catholic dance with those losses mounting. Carleo is desperate, he concocts a daring plan to capture a cash prize that pleases you. beats or lacks adrenaline on his motorcycle carleo makes his way through the Las Vegas traffic with ease enters the Suncoast Casino Suncoast is the West Las Vegas Hotel Casino that is usually frequented by people from the neighborhood leaving the engine running carleo walks directly To the cage dressed all in black with a motorcycle helmet he pulls a gun from his waist I knew there would be a lot of money there and I know it would be easy to get in and out at the end of the day 45 steps to the casino I'm saying 45 steps out of the door they told the cashier to get mad at the drawer, he grabbed piles of cash, put them in a bag, no security guard tried to stop him to let people have the money, i.e. funds are a liability, so in the end we'll just call the police, we'll let them handle it, that's their job, that's what they do in just minutes, it's over, carleo is heading into the neon night with almost twenty thousand dollars, you're sitting there looking at 20 grand and it's like, oh wow, that was it.

Didn't Carleo hit so hard and fast? Vegas is taken by surprise and as his bicycle helmet and visor make him unidentifiable, the police run out of clues just five days later, once again, Carleo gets on his bike and rolls through the heart of the Vegas Strip this time he is stops at the opulent Bellagio Hotel and Casino. I literally parked my motorcycle in front of the street. A wave in a carleo security guard runs into the casino, but the cage is too far away to reach quickly, so he heads to the luxury. the gaming tables literally just walked to the back of the table I told everyone to move I started grabbing the chips showing them in my bag I went straight to the high value casino chips which were the cranberry colored ones worth twenty five thousand dollars he also grabbed several targets that were valued at five thousand dollars if there had been more security presence there and he probably wouldn't have had the guts to go in there.

He was also aware of the fact that they were not carrying firearms, he shouldn't have. It's been that easy, but unfortunately it was this time. Carleo takes home more than a million dollars in chips. Although the chips are embedded with RFID identification devices, they can only be tracked within the casino. Outside of the tracking devices, the tracking devices stopped working. Yeah I was actually chased by a cop for a while they chased me on a very short rib because I was on a motorcycle I was probably going 115 to 125 miles per hour Carlio disappears in the night in response to casino robberies on the other side of town Undercover staff added to patrol Gambling room cages go on high alert Eight days after second robbery, authorities get their first break when a Bellagio dealer comes forward anonymously and tells them about a suspicious gambler who had been in the day before the robbery that she started talking to him about.

The chance to rob the Bellagio said I'd like to get my hands on some of these blueberries, the blueberries of course are worth 25,000. The shopkeeper listens patiently and makes the guy believe he can trust him, eventually getting the name of the guy. Anthony carleo, when investigators look into carleo's background, they find an unlikely robber. Carleo is the son of a Las Vegas judge, but grows up in Pueblo Colorado with his mother. After moving to Las Vegas in 2009, he enrolls at UNLV to pursue his childhood dream. After becoming a doctor, he has no criminal record, but in his first semester at university, Carleo gravitates toward casinos.

Foreign detectives review his bank records and discover no reportable income other than a UNLV grant check for four thousand dollars from an informant. They also learned that after a car accident earlier that year, Carleo was prescribed the narcotic pain reliever oxycodone. Anthony carleo certainly fits the profile of someone desperate enough to steal, but the police don't have enough evidence to arrest him, but if it's him, it means there's a player with a drug addiction and a gun looking to break even, He has an ace up his sleeve, the 25,000 chips, but cashing in would be risky chips that I ended up grabbing.

My intention was to seize the five thousand dollar chips and anything below that amount with so many high-end boats stolen on the street the Bellagio takes action and suspends the twenty five thousand dollar chips the Bellagio Pets the authority to withdraw and refuse to accept those denomination chips The Gaming Control Board will then conduct an investigation to determine whether or not a person who is submitting those chips actually won them the day after the withdrawal of twenty-five thousand dollar chips Carleo returns to the Bellagio this time without his gun to play poker and blackjack. The dealer who had reported him before is out of town during the holidays so, when Carleo uses the stolen lower denomination boats, he is not detected.

I had already been an extravagant player, but cashing in a five thousand dollar chip wasn't enough, it wouldn't have raised any red flags on New Year's Eve, carleo again. uses smaller denomination ships quickly loses seventy thousand dollars in mid-January has more than one hundred thousand dollars stolen at this point carleo has bet so much money that he is considered a high gambler a few days later he returns to the Bellagio and receives compensation for room and board when he collects more money than he earns. Bellagio security suspects that he is using the stolen boats. They notify the metropolitan police in Nevada.

They now have Carleo in their sights, but have yet to directly connect him to the robberies. watch and wait carleo's losing streak continues sooner or later i might make a play using one of the 25k dollar blueberries everyone is eyeing to avoid getting caught carleo tries to fence the hot ships online raised several messages in chat rooms of poker playing that was one of the crazy things he was doing, you know, these online poker sites try to figure out how to get rid of him, although the bold carleo's behavior lacks the sophistication of a career criminal, he even posted a photo of a couple of cranberry chips and called himself the biker bandit, he was more or less saying it's me, come get me alright, the biker ban wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, that's for sure, the police get a anonymous notice that anthony carleo calls himself the biker bandit. and he's trying to sell his 25,000 cranberry chips for ten thousand dollars in cash the police finally have what they need to set him up an undercover detective contacts carleo posing as the buyer of the stolen boats I guess I left myself vulnerable and trust him people should not have trusted the level at which it is difficult to waste ten thousand dollars for a piece of plastic in your pocket a few days later the trap is set carleo brought several chips the undercover policeman promised him one hundred thousand dollars and then when the Carlyle He left the fries, that was it for Mr.

Carlea the next day. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police announced Carleo's arrest to the media. We want to send a clear message to those who think they can come to Las Vegas, commit a robbery with a gun and escape. with this you are sadly wrong Anthony carleo pleads guilty to the casino robberies and is sentenced to serve between 8 and 27 years in prison and inmate at the Lovelock Correctional Facility of the Nevada Department of Corrections of the Lovelock prison in Nevada Anthony carleo, of 30 years old, reflects on his crimes I had a great life I was on the right path here I'm almost a decade into my life to reach 10 years in prison and I would say you're great, everything else is replaceable.

Foreign cheaters are not as shameless as Anthony Carleo. Instead, they make their mark by taking advantage of easy targets. Predator, he's a shark swimming through the anchovies, he's looking, he's trying to find that weak link that we have and then he'll come in and take advantage of it, and there's one leaf that makes it to the Hall of Fame for not knowing when to leave the Hard Rock Casino in abroad. A Pit Boss notices a player making big bets at a poker table. He contacts the surveillance service. That call came about because we have a high-cap player and the name was Clifton.

Burnham, when we logged into the system to look up Clifton Burnham's story, there was a notable pattern of wins and losses. He always won on a certain day of the week and the rest of the time it was obvious losses. His lucky day is Sunday. and June 15, 2000 turns out to be Sunday. They remember the last hours of the game. Burnham has had a winning streak in Pai GAO Pai GAO is an Asian poker game that is played against the dealer but, like all casino games, the dealers play for the cameras. As the surveillance team watches them being burned, they see a problem, but it's with their own dealer.

If I'm watching the game, the dealers have certain procedures they have to follow at certain times, when they break that procedure, that's a red flag, then we have to do it. look and see why they are violating the procedures and if they are violating the procedures with someperson, could that person be in cahoots with the dealer? The dealer has worked at the casino for five years. We really didn't have many problems. of him, but at one point we realized that he was doing a bad distribution of cards because there are many links in the protocol of the gal pie dealer is to deal the cards for the camera.

Here Burnham has lost the hand, but the dealer is doing what is called a quick spread, picking up the cards immediately, which makes it look high, so the player doesn't lose any money, so why does this dealer intentionally fold the game for Burnham's benefit? An hour later, they have a possible answer when security is passed an anonymous letter and what is this? Anonymous The letter said that he has a client and a dealer who are in cahoots with his game of Poker Pie Guy and the name this client uses is Clifton Burnham, but his real name is James Shahady and at that point I let out some expletives and ran up the stairs above. and by then James shahady's reputation was gone he's well known in Las Vegas Jimmy shahady was a criminal he's a racing Croc he's trash I came back pulled out the previous month's calendar to see if there was a correlation between his wins and the dealer that was in the game and, indeed, there is a connection. shahadi has been winning for four consecutive Sundays, as Clifton Burnham always won with this particular dealer, only the dealer, a long-time Hard Rock employee, had racked up large gambling debts with the dealer Inc in The Question I owed the guy money and couldn't pay him back.

That individual in question owed money to Jane Shahady. So what better way to return it than to hand it over to a faithless dealer? What a friend, right? Hey, I have a friend that the guy owes me. money that is being distributed in this joint you enter and he leaves you the game we are all happy since the dealer never collects losing bets from shahady shahadi can play for hours winning money on each hand he wins basically he can never lose In this game, every Handler who is going to lose will give you the signal that he is going to do the quick deal, he throws the cards in the discard and says that it was a push so that every time he wins, even when he doesn't win, yet.

He wins because he doesn't lose so they just take the money once the merchant pays his debt, he plans to stop

cheating

but Shahadi is not willing to let the scam go when you find something so good why would you hand it over? This guy won't just let you walk away, you just committed a serious crime. I just did something that's going to ruin your life and I own you for it. The dealer was very scared. Shahady was representing himself as a member of organized crime. He's telling the guy that unless you do what I want, bad things will happen to you.

The trafficker believed it and that is where it comes into play. On June 15, 2000, desperate and looking for a way out, the trafficker writes the anonymous letter to security before starting his shift. Two hours later, security finds the letter at the same time. Security sees an interruption. in the proceeding faced with evidence of

cheating

, Hard Rock calls the Nevada Gaming Control Board, they came out, watched the videotape and at that point we waited the next week for Mr. Shahidi to come and, in fact, he thanked the dealer on the actual security tape. begins his turn moments later james shahady sits down and the boss plays in front of the camera after shahadi loses his hand the dealer picks up the cards and makes another quick spread as if shahadi's hand has actually been pushed that's all that the authorities need to see the game at that time. and they just came down, arrested the dealer and arrested Shahidi from the casino group after they took him away in handcuffs.

The dealer confesses that he has been part of the scam for over a year. The dealer got in too deep. He owed the guy money. The next thing he did was he knows he's getting out of this game for seventy and eighty thousand dollars to testify against Shahadi. The dealer is fired. Shahadi is found guilty and sentenced to between 12 and 48 months. A year later, his luck runs out one Friday night. He dies in prison at the age of 60. The Hard Rock distributor's shameless shahidi strongman earns him a place in the Cheaters Hall of Fame, but there is one cheater, Schroeder, smarter and more successful than anyone who has come before or since he beat up Dennis Nick in Las Vegas during his career: he steals a huge amount. 16 million dollars Dennis Nick Rash was a genius and that was one of his strengths, he really knew what it took to trick a machine into doing different types of criminal acts so that it would stop stealing and die of boredom, it's a challenge to he has to do. doing it to show the public that he could do it and to show the Gaming Control Board that he could do it to show the industry that he could do it just a matter of ego.

I Think Nick's Hurdle into Infamy Starts in Chicago Dennis Nick Rash started out as a locksmith and discovered he was very skilled at picking locks and ended up having some friends who were in organized crime and tied to the Genovese crime family, but he started working with them. robbing cars, jewelry stores and businesses until he finally caught Dennis Nick Rash is serving a year in prison after his release in the 1970s. He sets his sights on Las Vegas using a tool called a slider that breaks into slot machines. He could slide the device through the crack in the door and activate the mechanism with the sliding device. payout as casinos lose money manufacturers redesign machines to make them harder to cheat, but Nick Rash is undeterred by the changes, he buys a machine and does the impossible, rigs the slot machine to create a jackpot when ordered, although his precise techniques remain a mystery the first battle is learning how to open a slot machine in a casino an accident without being detected is a thief is a locksmith to be able to open it without setting off the alarm the alarm is a warning alert programmed to ring five seconds after the door is opened, so Nick Rash must act quickly.

He manually adjusts each of the reels to a jackpot setting, then activates the jackpot. Bells closes the door and all you can hear is the cheerful jingle of another slot machine winner. Nick Rash has the system surpassed from 76 to 83. The cunning one gives him 10 million dollars. The interesting thing about this is that when we found out this was happening, we inspected known machines that we knew he had cheated and there was no indication that the machines had been cheated, but in 1986, the law finally catches up with him, he serves another five years once she got out of jail.

Back on the streets, things had changed dynamically because of electronics and surveillance coverage of cameras and the type of machines, video machines instead of real machines, computer chips and motherboards and all these things are there. Out now are all of Dennis' previous treatment devices, his antiques, they're basically useless, but Nick Rash is more than up to the challenge he sets himself to adapt his skills to the computer age when he returns to the Genovese crime family. and he connected with a computer expert and once Nick Rash gets his hands on an updated slot machine, he comes up with a way to beat the new technology.

He was redesigning the computer and the code and figuring out how to corrupt that code, how to rewrite it. the code and more importantly how to delete the code when the scam was done so it couldn't be discovered Dennis, oh Jim, it's all over mate, what's up mate? They created a small device that they could sneak into a casino. This laptop would have to be inserted into the circuit board placed on top of the ram where they would enter the winning combination. Dennis was able to override the computer by placing a computer chip on top of another computer chip inside the machine and set the jackpots.

There's just one last detail. to avoid getting caught and he usually had a group of people with him, they are called jammers and their job was to block the cameras and prevent the security guards from seeing what he was doing after deciding which slot machine and casino they would choose. Hit, they would install surveillance cameras in his garage at a similar angle and then he and his jammers would practice jamming the cameras and know exactly where they were supposed to be in the fall of 1996. Nick Rash and his team they hit In the casinos, then a snake rash would set his jammers upon entering the casino, use his locksmith skills to open the door, then insert his laptop and install the winning combination, once he completed that, which only took him a few seconds, then he walked out of the casino and the Collector sat down, pressed the button.

The wheels started rolling, the blockers moved away, and the cameras showed the winning combination rolling into place. It's modest for Nick, the rush of thirty thousand dollars, but it soon becomes bolder, eight months later, Nick. Rash and his team take Harris for $3.8 million, then cheat Rio and Luxor and other casinos out of

millions

more. The Tennessee accident usually took about 70 percent and divided 30 percent among all of his assistants, he stole, he stole, he stole, actually, something is going to happen. It just so happens that the camera will be here at two o'clock around the corner to keep the trick working.

Nick Rash regularly replaces his team. He had to get different people together because you can't have the same person win in a casino. a three million dollar jackpot and then two days later winning another jackpot at a different casino, so he had to have collectors that he could go around. The problem was having a large team of people working together. Is anyone going to be unhappy? Is anyone going to be unhappy? in a fight someone is going to tell on you 1898 Nick Rash is planning his biggest heist yet, the Megabucks jackpot valued at 17 million dollars. He has Las Vegas in the palm of his hand, but 300 miles away his plan begins to fall apart.

One of his accomplices got into trouble. The FBI in Phoenix, Arizona started talking about Dennis Nick Rash and how he cheated at slot machines. Working with the FBI. Nevada Gaming Control Board obtains search warrant for Nick Rash's home. Detectives find two slot machines along with dozens of cheating devices in his safe. deposit box laptop he uses to cheat slot machines discovered after two-decade crime spree that netted him $16 million King of Slot Cheats Reign Finally Ended Nick Rash Arrested for Last Time Dennis Nick Rash is convicted and offered a lighter sentence. Prosecutors offer him a lighter sentence in exchange for revealing how his scams work as a criminal.

Nick Rash is a consummate professional. He refuses. He later tells the interviewers. I have no desire to explain anything. Never listen to a fool. He is sentenced to seven and a half years. In prison he is released in 2004 and dies in 2010 and the secrets of his extraordinarily successful cheating die with him, but in Vegas Legends he is still alive and Dennis Nick Rash has secured his place in the Cheaters Hall of Fame. . Dennis Nick Rash is one of the greatest. cheaters that we have caught in Nevada history, there are a lot of cheaters out there and hopefully they are not as successful as Dennis. number operating as a team the man on the right of the screen is working with the man at the top of the screen in an effort to distract the dealer who is not involved in the scam the man on the right makes a late bet which is rejected With the dealer's focus elsewhere, the cheater at the top of the screen adds more chips to the winning number for a payout of 35 to 1.

Other tricks are quite complex here, a woman strategically uses her purse as an attempt to Lock the security cameras and then your partner. in the crime he enters to block with his body, the seated man is using a specially designed tool that is inserted into the mouth of the video poker machine, he is trying to trick the payment sensor into activating a jackpot no matter what they know or not. security cheaters always think they are smarter, rest assured casinos are watching 24/7 and if anything define security as the eye in the sky. I think there are more cameras in Las Vegas than in Washington DC, so here in Las Vegas big brother is watching.

It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of surveillance cameras covering almost every inch of every casino and when something happens, they will catch it on tape, the eyes are where we can't be, so it is a force multiplier, so to speak, for security and surveillance. Statistics Since their inception, casinos have followed the action on the floor for decades, surveillance was little more than burly men walking down theroom for obvious cheats, but when cheaters upped their game, casino gateways were the breakthrough, suddenly surveillance could monitor games invisibly. From above with the help of two-way mirrors in the center of Las Vegas, the Nevada Hotel opened its doors in 1907 and in 1955 it was renamed Golden Gate Casino.

It still preserves the remains of its walkway. The original Eye in the Sky operators climbed onto the catwalk through a secret entrance in the roof, so there you see, that's the cart they would sit us on as a base and then they push themselves up and down the track, exactly as if they were on his mind because this would be close so no one would know he was. There, while older hotels are renovated to keep up with cheaters, new casinos are designed with safety in mind. The Aria Resort and Casino was built from the ground up to be a cheap test.

Security chief Ted Whiting spent more than three years helping to engineer Arya's estate. state of the art surveillance system, anyone thinking about cheating in Las Vegas should think twice if we are getting better at this, especially specifically at Aria, we are getting really good at unprecedented access. We take an insider's look at one of the most sophisticated and restricted security setups ever built Arya is one of the most technologically advanced casinos. We have more than 1,100 cameras on the floor of our casino in the deepest corners of the hotel basement is the nerve center of surveillance from here they can monitor more than 150,000 square meters. feet of casino floor, including 145 gaming tables and nearly 2,000 slot machines, we have seven workstations, approximately 40 monitors, and of course we have access to the 3,500 cameras on this downtown campus.

Surveillance has come a long way, even I started in the mid 90's and Cameras were still pretty good in the old days, we used analog cameras, so an analog camera comes in two varieties, PTZ, which is zoom pan and tilt, which means our operators can move them, they can zoom in and out, back and forth, up and down. The other cameras we used were still cameras and those cameras are just a camera that sees a point and doesn't move, so they are good and we did surveillance forever for 30 years with those cameras and it worked well, we opened Arya.

Although we wanted to take the best of the old technology and combine it with the best of the new technology, which is HD cameras or high definition cameras, and what that allowed us to do is increase our resolution three times, now we have the luxury of review. In the video we can show that someone cheated and we can see it much better in this trick. The cameras captured what was almost too fast for the human eye. The cheater. Sitting on the left he is playing Blackjack and wins when the dealer busts. The dealer pays. The cheater is in his original bed, but the player withdraws the payment and then seamlessly replaces the stack, including a higher-value token placed at the bottom.

Here it is again in slow motion the movement and replacement. The cheater is outraged because the dealer didn't pay. correctly The Pit Boss is called, they review the tape, and ultimately the player is asked to leave the casino. Many times, when someone is doing something dishonest, they try so hard to act naturally, and in doing so, they become unnatural in their vigilance. war against cheating one of the newest weapons is the 360 ​​degree high definition camera similar to Google Earth's ability to see the details of city streets from outer space the 360 ​​system is like having dozens of cameras digitally combined as a single image this bird's eye view gives observers the advantage of going back in time and zooming in or out to see exactly what happened. 360 technology is not used as a live view tool, this is strictly a forensic tool that is used after the fact, this is where we would go back after an incident has occurred, so we can zoom in and see where the was the customer or where the theft occurred. took place and we don't miss anything on the casino floor, we can go back seven days and virtually drop into the picture and look around and watch a customer walk from one area of ​​the Casino to the other area for the surveillance experts, The key to catching thieves is being able to identify them.

Older Eye in the Sky systems have lower resolution cameras that make it difficult to see faces clearly. To solve the problem, the design and layout of the Aria was created with high-quality cameras that shot at eye level and compelled customers to go. Through the camera, heavy choke points, narrow passage in and out of the casino, surveillance is guaranteed for a clean face shot. In fact, we can capture people's faces and take great identification photos. We have about 50 throughout the casino, so at some point when you walk into the casino, we're going to get your 1100 face. I can't put some of those cameras in the choke points, which is the thin part of the casino, so now we use these cameras every day, if we hadn't placed these choke points we would never have a face photo.

Of them we have a list of more than 6,000 people who have done things they should not do in casinos even before arriving at the hotel. We filter them through our database of people who have been raided or arrested here, so how? Do we protect guests? We stop them before they even register. In this exclusive video provided by Aria we can see from the inside exactly how the coordinated effort of the 360-degree cameras works when combined with the hotel's choke points. The couple that is playing. slots walk away without realizing they have left a bag within minutes, realize the bag is gone and communicate safely.

Security will call and say, Hi, we have a woman whose purse is missing and if she was in line 100, we'll do it. Track that even though it happened five or six hours ago with our 360-degree cameras, so we'll track the thief to the point where he stole the bag. Using the 360-degree cameras, they can literally travel back in time and focus on the exact area. Around the slot machine where they left the purse shortly after the couple left, 360-degree cameras reveal a man wearing a black shirt and white jacket, looks around and then sits at the machine next to it. which the couple had been playing.

He takes the bag again and quickly hides it in his jacket, he leaves the slot area, but to leave the casino he must go through a specific path or choke point where Arya's cameras are focused on the close-up of him. them with a bottleneck camera now we take that photo of his face and we send it to our security network, our surveillance network, and then we capture them almost instantly, the man's face is uploaded to the Las Vegas casinos and in a couple of hours they arrest him. and booked for theft at the Aria, the high-tech security system is a definite plus, but the real insider secret to successful surveillance is having a team that can proactively identify cheaters before they strike, we can look at someone and tell him it's okay. or not, or that behavior doesn't make sense when you see people doing things they're not supposed to do, they behave differently, they give off signals like a poker player looks for towels, our surveillance people look for signals to cheat, classic.

The trick found in Las Vegas occurs when a player attempts to exchange or introduce cards from outside the game. Experts call it card mucking. Here Aria has a mucker in her sights and cardmarking is when a player puts in a card to make sure they win and then has to draw the bad card again, so what they will do is their hand will be flat on the table and the other hand will move and work and they will be drinking their drinks and picking their nose or scratching their head. and this hand works, this hand cannot work because there is a card underneath because each casino has its own proprietary card design for mucking to work, the cheater needs to acquire specific cards with the same design and logo, this is often done by hidden. taking them off one at a time or having an Insider working at a casino steal an entire deck from them, you can see the guys manipulating the cards in a strange way when he reaches into his jacket, although we start to think something might be wrong Now that we know. we see that the card has left our field of vision, we cannot see it, it is obscured by his hand now his hand is attached to the table, it is a perfect example of a flat hand, as a warning to another cheater that casinos observe Known as card marking.

We play our games face up when we can and the reason for this is game protection. If the cards are face up in the layout, players cannot touch them, therefore they cannot mark them correctly. That's not right because we Here I have a video of a guy whose marking cards are face up and he just made a mark. His bet loses. He comes out with a hundred dollars as he does so, although he makes a notch on the card. He had a piece of glass stuck to his thumbnail. He would hit the card every time he cashed a bet or made a new bet, then he would touch a card and mark it with that piece of glass.

We suspect that this person is stingy. We don't know he is, but we suspect he might be. when he walks on the craps table we think okay, this is, maybe we're going to catch something here and yes, he's making late bets on the field, which means he watches the dice fall, sees that it's a winner and then he throws his money at the funny one. The thing is, when he's doing this, we're looking at him and we're having security go and grab him, so there was no doubt that he was found guilty. It was that easy.

The video never lies once they catch the cheaters on the camera that the hotel security works with. Nevada Gaming to make the arrest we will take a break on the floor simply to send a message to both the clappers and those who may be involved with them that they are not going to get away with catching the cheater red-handed. is important, so speed is everything when it comes to arrest. Remember the man who was exchanging cards, we had security, he went to grab them, but they didn't grab them fast enough and he was able to free his arm.

He had reached for his jacket. the card in his mouth and ate it as for the card marker the glass was still in his thumb when they made the arrest and the previous sign once outnumbered fell silently the game they are playing is whether or not they will go to the jail and how long they will serve you, you know they will catch you, that's all, serve your time if you are a criminal in your trap, going to jail is part of your job description, there is another type of inside job. Las Vegas and it's one that has casinos worried, is when a dealer goes to the dark side, even the most sophisticated tools can't always stop the casino.

Insider who knows exactly how to cheat quickly and cheaply. About 30 percent of our arrests involve employees. In one way or another we have seen numerous tricks that involve

millions

of dollars with the dealer or other pit personnel. The story of one of Las Vegas' most infamous Cheats begins far from the bright lights of the Strip in 2002 with a dealer named Fontron who works at the small Cyclon Casino near San Diego, California, and was a gambler through and through. , dealt cards at Sequan for a while, but then got fired armed with the advantage of knowing how security works from the inside.

Tron hatches his plan to cheat the casino, but to do it. he needs help and he has it in all the right places. Van Tran's wife is also a distributor at Cyclon and his brother Tai Tran manages Asian board games. Taitran knew intimately how each game worked, so he can help develop their security protocols. What have you done? He also hired all the distributors, so that's where his knowledge came from. The Tran gang focuses on Minnie Baccarat, a table game in which two hands are dealt per round, one is for the player and the other is for the house or the bank.

Players can bet on either hand, the hand most close to nine victories. The rules allow players to openly track and record winning cards and hands. It's part of the game, so you can have a sheet of paper writing each one in the order of the cards that come out. That's how they came up with the idea of ​​tracking letters because you can do it. A member of the Tran organization traces the cards and then the dealer, who is also a member, uses his skill set to perform one of the oldest tricks in the world. reserve the false shuffle a false shuffle simply makes it look like you are mixing theletters, but in reality it is not like that.

This is Van Tran, so you can see that there are a lot of cars that are protected here and as we can see, he's going to be at the top of the deck, so he's still going to have a very thick stack of cards throughout the deck. shuffling process where it will protect her. Suppose he recorded the exact order of these cards when the dealer picked them up. scam and the dealer keeps the cards in order, so for this demonstration I am going to put these cards face up on the top of the discard rack in the next round.

The same would happen with the cards you pick up in order. Now comes the time of shuffling and the dealer would mark the spot and then shuffle to it. All of these decks will be fine without any drops. The decks are not a complete deck. Here is the group that was recorded. This is the only shuffle that will be fake and watch carefully. It looks like I'm shuffling the cards, in fact I'm not shuffling the cards after the dealer finishes the fake shuffling. Tran players at the table must wait for their tracker to tell them that the winning sequence of cards is in play because they know the exact sequence.

The order of these cards and who will win all bets increase dramatically. They just needed one person who just knew what the betting scheme was so that one person would make a bet and then everyone else who was with them at the table would make it that same day. Suddenly, the entire table wins to hone their skills. The Tran organization conducts a series of tests at the small, quiet Cyclon Casino. At first they remain discreet and keep profits to a few hundred dollars, but surveillance eventually detects that Van Tran is not following them. shuffling procedure they fire her, but by then they know their scam works and are ready for broader action.

In early 2003, the Tran organization has expanded to include about 15 family members and they soon take their trap on the road to the Cache Creek Casino near Sacramento, California. in a short time they are making a lot of money in just one month, they liquidated 158 thousand dollars, they want more, but to do it they will need more insiders who are willing to fix the situation because they went from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, they had to have different distributors cheating . in each jurisdiction they would go to different casinos and just have a friendly chat with the dealers they used to go to for people who might have already had a gambling problem, so they could identify their vulnerabilities if they were in any financial situation. or if they're just looking for a little excitement, if someone is on the fence about joining the organization, Tran's recruiters get creative, sometimes Van Tran would go to casinos and flirt with guys trying to make them better, maybe.

We could hang out a little if you want to try this trick with us. They would just play it off as a great lifestyle. You will be very happy to join our organization and all you have to do is learn how to shuffle. In 2003, the Tran organization is made up of several former dealers and card trackers; they all have insider knowledge on how to rig the mini baccarat game and hide it from anyone watching, they go around the country ripping off smaller casinos and win thousands of dollars every time they sit there for possibly two or three decks and then they'll leave and They will leave the city or the state.

The Tran gang is gone. By the time casino accountants notice something is wrong, they have it down to a science where they want to know how each table works. is doing it, that's where the first hint came that something was wrong because the table could lose eight percent a night and all of a sudden this specific table with the specific dealer is losing 15 to 20 a night, so they were to your video and I realized that it was all the same people playing, as many of these players who cheat use their players club cards to get the free benefits that come with it, so that the casinos have a record of exactly who was playing at the table. how much they charged how much they won at a gaming conference in 2003 Casino security directors begin comparing notes there was intelligence in the community that family members Tran and Fung Trung were up to something one of Cache's security operators Creek Casino on the outskirts of Sacramento had noticed that there was a certain group of people who were doing something wrong at their tables, they believe they are cheating, they don't know exactly what, the FBI begins to try to document the activities of the Tran organization, The gang runs their operation with military precision using cell phones and hand signals to communicate with each other.

In this video, gang member Willie Tran is tracking cards and calling them to a van where they are being recorded. He keeps his hair long to cover the cell phone receiver. he brings his girlfriend with him so his girlfriend can play and he can read the cards but to everyone around him it seems like he is just talking to his girlfriend after months of honing his skills they are confident and believe they are ready to cheat. Las Vegas knew that Las Vegas would have been a source of income for them if they could have figured out how to get through security.

The security in Las Vegas is world class and they knew it. In late 2004, the Tran gang arrives in Las Vegas, but his reputation precedes them. We knew that the Tran organization had been operating in California and thought there was a possibility that they would come to Las Vegas. We didn't know that Mr. Tran Here was going to appear but he was actually one of the ones who was running the operation here in Las Vegas in the video we see Fat recording the order of the cards as they are played after the fake Shuffle Tran wait patiently for the portion. from the deck that was never shuffled those are the cards they have the exact order because there are three members of the organization who are sitting around the table and the fat man is on the edge indicating to these guys that the cards that the fat man had recorded before begin to play is on the table this is how it rolls out fat trans signals to the table that it's time to bet the player in the center bets on the banker knowing he's the guaranteed winner shortly after, other members of Tran place Barger Wagers on the same bed from the banker, this is a case where they won eighteen thousand dollars between the three of them.

After the hit, Fat silently tears up his handwritten card order record and throws it into two trash cans in different areas of the casino. He doesn't know it, but wherever he goes. He's on camera, security picks up the trash and pastes the baccarat record back in. After three years of cheating across the country, authorities have what no one else could get, the hard evidence to arrest the gang. Fat Tran, they were on him like a hawk at that moment. in December before he was arrested for conspiracy to cheat and several of his members, including the Palace Station dealer, his greed of basically wanting more money and wanting more casinos to cheat at was his undoing, although it weakened after the bankruptcy of Las Vegas, the remaining members of the organization.

They won't give up the trick just yet, but they will once again need to find dirty dealers on the inside. They were definitely more visible and then as they were spreading out across the country trying to find these casinos, they were introducing a lot of new people. to this plan, who immediately went to his safety and his supervisor said that there is a group here and they want to trick the AI ​​also knows that the gang needs traffickers and is ready to help them find one. This is the actual FBI undercover recording. Sting when Insider Fontron is caught trying to recruit a dealer.

We have a confidential informant who was actually a former trafficker who was approached by the trans who caught him and now he is trying to solve the problem and he is introducing an undercover agent who is this. Another gentleman, the undercover agent is posing as someone who is a dealer, you know what we do? Surveillance can't see here. The mushrooms are also describing to your potential dealer that you really need to know what's going on in a casino and what's going on with security and what's going on with the protocol to get away with only stealing once a month, but Tron, like Most criminals can't seem to practice what they preach and, while talking about being discreet, they brag about the loot of their traps.

I didn't have seven cars on me, so it's really okay, he's like Parking everywhere in front of my garage, everyone knows me May 2007, armed with overwhelming video evidence, authorities close in on the rest of the Tran organization , Fontron and 46 other members of the gang are accused of extortion, money laundering and robbery. Fontron is sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to repay millions of dollars to the casinos and the IRS. Tai Tran is sentenced to 54 months in prison in January 2011. Van Tran pleads guilty to racketeering charges. and he is awaiting sentencing, prove that they achieved seven million dollars over the course of the plan.

We think they took more than that, but we should all try 7 million. Not all Insiders come from the casino in the world of betting, professional and university. In sports, all it takes is one athlete who crosses the line to become the best Insider. Sports betting is big business in Las Vegas in just one year. $2.4 billion was legally wagered in casino sportsbooks and where there is money there are cheaters. I would say that basketball is the sport that would be easiest to do business with because you have one or two key players and they play a bad game or they don't dress, that affects the game dramatically over the years that the sports houses sports betting have had to deal. fixed fights horse racing basketball baseball and football games sometimes at the hands of a corrupt player owner or referee, so the action in each of these games is closely monitored because an intentionally missed goal can cost millions Steven Smith from Dallas Texas been shooting hoops since I was six my mom said one time I saw it that was my sport and I just had to have a ball in my hand at 40 Smith looks like any other weekend warrior it's hard to imagine who was once the lead player in one of the most notorious college basketball betting scandals to ever occur in Las Vegas when you're in your early twenties and immature and all you think about is girls' money and stuff like that, you don't think about the consequences, thanks in 1994.

Stephen Smith, a senior, is captain of the Arizona State Sun Devils basketball team and a rising star. The Hundits are already considering number 44 as a lock for the NBA draft. We started talking about the NBA. NBA. I kept working hard. I just hope one day you know that. my dream will come true Smith wants the NBA and everything that comes with it, but living large costs money and Smith doesn't have any. A young, immature athlete goes to school on a full scholarship and only receives four and a half hundred dollars a month. He then meets a 22-year-old campus bookie.

Benny Silman, who introduces you to the world of sports betting, so I got the campus. He was always surrounded by basketball players, but unfortunately Smith is not as good at betting as he is at shooting hoops. Soon Smith is ten thousand dollars in debt to the place. bookie with no money is in trouble until bookie sillman offers him a way out to fix the game it's like just control you know the result so you can win the game just make sure you don't win by the points I tell you for A baby, that's right, what Sillman is talking about is called spot shaving and it's illegal at the time.

Smith had never heard of it, but he figured that as long as he didn't have to lose the game, there would be no harm, no foul, you know where I am. He says about you that you know how to bet, you talk about rolling dice, playing poker. I was not educated to shave points to understand. Shave the points. You have to understand sports betting, as strange as it may seem. Casinos don't care who wins or loses, they just want half the players to bet on one team and half on the other each game is not an even game one team is generally superior to the other so we assign points to balance betting the most common bet is based on the point difference between the two teams at the end of the game to form even teams for betting each game has disadvantages a point difference or betting line is used to level the playing field for that the loser can be equal to the favorite the point difference or the difference is determined by Vegas bet makers who are hired by the casinos to calculate how many points a team will favor so that bettors on both teams have the same chances of winning the bet .

Point reduction changes the odds when a player or group of players ensures that their team's margin of victory is less than the point margin determined by the racers.bets on Smith getting out of debt. Sillman will tell you how many points he can earn and no more for participating in the scam. Sillman agrees to wipe out Smith's debt and pay him twenty thousand dollars for every game he shaves, so I'm thinking I can win the game, oh, okay, cool, January 27, 1994 Silman and Smith launch their scam against Oregon State Las Vegas bettor placed Smith's ASU as a 14-point favorite sillman and gang bed heavily on Oregon State Smith fixes the game by loosening up the defense the Sun Devils win but only by six points as ASU doesn't cover the Las Vegas spread Stillman wins after the game Campus bookie Sillman hands over Smith's payment well twenty thousand dollars for a job done, I took the money Yeah, I was trying to live that fast life Sillman and Smith fixed two more games without generate no heat with success sillman lets a lot of people in on the secret sillman's friends from Chicago and New Jersey fly to Las Vegas for the next game March 5, 1994, Saturday morning Smith and his Sun Devils prepare to face the University of Washington at home.

There is nothing extraordinary about this game, however, in Las Vegas, college-aged gamblers flocked to the betting houses as soon as they opened, they were like a bull. a china shop, when they were making their bets, they kept coming repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly instead of every two hours, maybe showing up and making a play, even though the Sun Devils are 11-point favorites, somehow the entire salary circle is in Washington in response to imbalance The line in the Arizona State game opened at 11 and fell to three early and that kind of move in a college basketball game. It's unheard of.

The sports betting managers are concerned, they checked with the other casinos and discovered that the betting pattern only existed here in Las Vegas and was all over the city at the time, there was no knowledge that a crime was being committed, just We knew something strange was happening. It may happen that the betting action is out of the ordinary. Shady sports betting managers alert the NCAA and in a normal pac-10 game in a regular season, we might win eight ten thousand somewhere in that general area, but for this particular game we wrote down to the lowest level. six figures it was an incredible flurry of action in that game at the start of the game the betting line has dropped so dramatically ASU can only win by two points or less for Smith to successfully pitch the game the pressure is on at halftime the solution by Smith is working score Arizona State 25 Washington 23.

Sun Devils coach Bill Freeder is told that something is not right in the locker room, the coach confronts Smith, the team captain seems very yes. I can't say it on camera, but it's beep, beep, beep. beep, beep, he's still afraid to piss me off after Frieder tongue-lashed him at halftime. Smith abandons plan to shave stitches. My second half has already passed and he defeated him. Most observers reported that this game was a game of two halves. The first half. ASU was totally inept and the In the second half they were, you know, the quality final four team, the Sun Devils Crush Washington 73-55.

All those who bet on Washington are out of luck. Smith knows he has to face an angry Sillman who lost all of his bets since we lost the game. thinking you know that the same money he was giving me I had to give it to him. I'm going home. Benny is there, so I tell you not to worry. I have your money upstairs, so he was prepared to give her forty thousand dollars. He says. No, he's bigger than that, what the hell are you talking about? Scared and no one will lose and everyone will still be alive.

He left town at night. I didn't talk to anyone. My best friend. My mother. I didn't tell anyone in Las Vegas. Agents from the Nevada Gaming Control Board are closing in after weeks of forensic auditing of sports betting records. They discovered evidence of unusually high bets in the March 5 game and several other ASU games before that, if you are taking advantage of knowledge of the outcome of an event to then defraud a casino or sportsbook then you are guilty of fraud Three months later Smith wins Athlete of the Year award for the scam, rumors about points being deducted persist, but nothing comes of it and Smith believes it's behind him.

I thought he was going to beat him, then in June 1994, Smith's big moment arrives: the NBA draft. He can finally take advantage of his talent legally, but now the whispers of losing a game are no longer whispers. And the NBA doesn't want to play with Smith, he thought. They didn't touch me, but that wasn't the reality. Pac-10 team captain. The leading scorer in ASU history. Number 44. Steven Smith went undrafted. Smith spends the next three years playing minor league baseball everywhere from Paris, France, to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, trying to rebuild his reputation. It takes years, but in 1997 the Dallas Mavericks arrive and call abroad Smith's is not the only one whose fortunes have changed in Las Vegas After years of investigation, the Nevada Gaming Control Board and the FBI solve the point shaving case that they managed to resolve through people who had accused people who had given information to one of the players on the ASU team I didn't think it would explode like it did and it exploded huge what was the back please and the fears came to me and I figured out the numbers and more than $1.3 million was lost in the scary game.

Smith was in the NBA at the time he was charged, which cost him his professional basketball career in November 1999. Smith appears before a judge and receives one year. in prison and a new number that goes from Steven Smith to zero one zero four four seven four eight you know that was my federal prison number I mean if that's not real I don't know what the hell it really is Smith gets out of prison in 2000 .We are in a European Cup that they will never talk about, they will never talk about the fact that I had a 3.5 GPA and was a student at the end of the year.

I won, I feel mixed, who is one now? of the best golfers in the world they don't talk about it they don't talk about the records that I have still read to this day not only in the pac-10 but in the state of Arizona, only here Stephen Smith, which Porsche is something with which that I have to live for the rest of my life. You know, there are two types of insiders when it comes to cheating in Las Vegas: those who are cheaters and those who watch the cheaters. A cheater when he enters a casino is very different from a tourist.

He is looking for something, he is watching the dealers, he is watching what is happening, he doesn't see the lights, he doesn't see the flashing signs, he sees what we are doing and the money we are getting. going to remove and here are seven of the most common tricks demonstrated in detail by our own experts these scams are what surveillance professionals look for every day of all the ways there are to mark the cards in play the simplest is to double the cards I am going to show you an example of how the bad guys fold the cards in the game in a casino, you notice a high card Cardinal low and simply in the action of asking or hitting a card or putting the cards under the money, I simply folded the cards cards, you will notice that corner does not touch the surface of the table, which identifies it to the cheater as a high card.

You notice that this corner does touch the table and means it is a low card. I can now distinguish high cards from low cards in future rounds of play. then there's the Insider call trick hitting the paintings they call figure paintings because there's more ink on the card, it looks like I'm just making a bet when in reality I'm marking that little card with my knuckle and in the simple act. to give this chip to the dealer as a tip. I mark the card prompt as I touch that card and say here, dealer, this is for you.

I touched the face of the card to the chip and put a mark on the back. of the playing card that can be seen and identified in future rounds of play. If I see a bump on the back of a card, I know it's a high card, so I would know that anything without a bump is a low card and helps me win. know if I should hit if it's a small cart or place if it's a large card, but card games aren't the only ones that surveillance officers have to examine. Cheats can also tamper with dice games like craps.

This is an old school scam that was used to cheat in a trade called dice trading, in this example I brought my own dice from home, this will be indicated by the dice being red and the dice from home will be colored green. These tints don't have any, two threes, they only have four fives and sixes, I can't tell because when you put a die on the table, everyone can only see three different sides at a time. I'm looking at a four, five, six, you're looking at a four, five, six, the dealers look. In a four five six, the change occurs when the casino dice are passed through the cheater, he picks up the dice like this and then the crooked dice are dropped on the table at exactly the same time the casino dice were picked up on the table. hand. and then the crooked dice are rolled by the design so that these dice can only roll the numbers eight nine ten eleven twelve and can't lose the clock ten twelve which was great.

I would have made a lot of money with that roll of 11. That was a good one, so you can see, these dice are very dangerous, but not all dice tricks are based on fake dice, some are based on good old fashioned sleight of hand , one of the most common methods of cheating in crafts is known as a slide shot, this is where the cheater does not throw the dye, it is slipping in this case I just want to slide a six and then my partner or I have been big on the field, the field means that if a 9, 10, 11 or 12 comes up, I win, what would it guarantee?

For me, a six against one dice, the only numbers that could hurt me here are one and two. Any other number I win and if a six comes up, I win triple, so I pick up these dice, my thumb flips the dice and I put them in. In this position with a Throne die, the back die is legitimately rolled, but that six is ​​not rolled, it is drawn from the hand. This whipping action gives the illusion that the dice are being drawn when they are actually being rolled, so if I take that six when I throw it that six is ​​not thrown as if it is sliding along the layout this is definitely one of the best ways to take off a craps game for the simple reason that you are using the casino's own equipment against itself.

We are not going to bring anything from outside. Hand discarding is the art of changing cards in the game. I'm going to show you how that change can occur in the game of blackjack. In order to change cards, you must have one of the casino cards. you steal the card in advance or you corrupt someone to get you one of the cards and in this case I have one of the Aces from the casinos I add the ace to the game I steal the six and now I'm ready I have the Blackjack and if I want clean and then I'm going to sleeve, this next game will require some teamwork, what just happened now is that Jason and I have bets on the pass line as soon as I know the bet is going to win, Chase is going to take control and I'm going to distract the dealer by asking him a simple question at the right time Taylor, can I get change for 200?

Please thanks. At exactly the same moment that the dealer was distracted, I reached down and added money to my bet. from winning 200 now I win 700. What you are going to see now is a different form of past post than you have seen before, it was me pressing my bet. I had a bet and added more called pressing past post means that 'I'm actually going to make a bet after the dice have been rolled. I have a token in the palm of my hand, that is the token that I am going to pass on the post and that is the token that is invisible to the dealer, so the moment I see a field, the token that I am holding in my hand is what I'm going to ask for change, so when this chip drops at exactly the same time it's being slapped, it's being dropped, guaranteeing me a short winner, these are the changes to the game that cheaters have been around since that gambling began.

In the United States, in the old west, you had to see the trick to catch it and Justice was swift. Today, thousands of cameras monitor every moment of every game, meaning cheaters have to be smarter than ever. Technology seems to have no end and the biggest challenge. For us it's keeping up with that technology, it's a high-tech game of cat and mouse, but every once in a while a criminal comes along who is able to go completely unnoticed and in the process changes the game forever. justify that you know that stealing in all sorts of ways, the casino industry is dishonest or some other nonsense and that would convince themselves to go along with the theft.

Keeping track of the city's most notorious cheaters is the job of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, their version of the FBI. The most wanted list called the Black Book was created in 1960 and originally included six people and all of them are organized crime figures and these people were notallowed entry into any casino, but as the old gangsters died, a new generation of tech experts emerged. the cheaters took over and added to the list, you have to be a threat to the casino industry and there are about 37 or 38 in the black book right now, most of them are professional criminals who cheated the casinos for years before getting caught every time you make an arrest.

For someone from a law enforcement standpoint, it's a success, so that's how I look at putting someone on the board. Once you're in the book, you have the right to dispute it, but no one has worked their way through or litigated their way out. From this, the only way out of the black book is to die and then they take you out. One of the most notorious cheaters to ever make the book target the city's hardware. It is an ongoing war in the industry between manufacturers on one side. and cheaters on the other enter the largest source of money in the city in Las Vegas there are 120,000 slot machines in operation, one for every five residents they are called one-armed bandits because they are responsible for more than 75 percent of the casino's profits And yet the money found in casino slot machines is and always has been shining beacons for cheaters looking for a quick payout since the early days.

Cheaters have attempted to trick the machines with slugs or coins attached to strings that could then be removed, but as the machines became more sophisticated, so did the tricks. One of the most successful slot cheats of all time is a former television repairman named Tommy Carmichael for over two decades. Carmichael designed tools that allowed him and other cheaters to scam millions of slot machines and all of the slot machines in Las Vegas. You see, today was designed with Tommy Carmichael in mind. The devices that Tommy Carmichael could create would allow a very surreptitious entry into a machine and a very surreptitious violation of the security features of the machine which were successful and I worked on a large population of slot machine makes and models at the time, this en Carmichael, 62, agreed to sit down for this exclusive interview to reveal how he took Las Vegas for a ride, it was like a giant ATM, uh, wherever you wanted to go on vacation.

I also went to retire. The story begins in Carmichael's television repair shop. A friend of his stopped by with a uh, what he told him was a cheating device, the cheese slot machines and it was called an upper and lower joint. This is how the top and bottom joint works. By 1980, slot machines had come a long way from the first machines. Originally, slotted discs were attached to the ends of three spinning reels inside to win a jackpot. All slot machines had to line up perfectly and that's how slot machines got their name, but on newer ones.

The levers of the machines are attached to the spinning reels. These levers have metal contacts on the ends that rest against a fixed board that is also covered in contacts. The contacts are connected to a circuit board and when a jackpot is won, a circuit is completed and the motor starts. the hopper that dispenses the money cheating device you brought to Carmichael's store that day hot wires the hopper motor activates a payment device the top and bottom joint comes in two parts the bottom tool is made from a short piece of guitar string there is a small wire the winner in the lower left corner of the uh of the machine and it hit the circuit board that was there, the wire draws current from the circuit board and sends a low power of electricity through of the slot machine and then the top tool in one piece.

A piece of metal in the shape of the number nine is inserted into the coin slot, completing an electrical circuit powerful enough to activate the hopper that dispenses money and coins stream out. Carmichael's friend is making money hand over fist in Las Vegas, while Carmichael is barely scraping by. Tulsa wants in on the action, so he flies to Nevada to try his luck with his friend's device. In 1980, security cameras did not exist to capture his activities; in fact, they would not be installed in all casinos for more than nine years. Carmichael sits in a slot machine the top and bottom joints are inserted and suddenly Tommy Carmichael has a new career cheating Vegas Carmichael starts traveling to Sin City to perform his scam, the machines were around 75 dollars back then, in On a good day working all day you could make two thousand dollars a day, which was good money.

Carmichael's daily income is the equivalent of more than five thousand dollars today. I would stay there and let someone else run the store. I would be there a couple of months at a time but when I came back it seems like the store never made any money so I finally closed the store completely and moved there and started from that point actually Carmichael starts living large he makes and buy new friends, you know, you have Las Vegas and it's designed. to separate you from your money, which he's very good at, so even though you're making more money, you're also spending more money, we're going to the show, we had some pretty good dinners for me, eighteen hundred dollars a meal, it's pretty good for Four or five people found a way to make money faster and he didn't care and probably enjoyed being a criminal, so he decided it was worth the risk to beat the machines, it was never the problem, it was the people who They surrounded you without attracting attention. you need to get this money out of the machine without being noticed, heard or appearing to be doing something that was the trickiest part of the whole thing to avoid suspicion.

Carmichael never stays in one place for long over five years. he hits casinos all over Las Vegas and then in 1985 the casinos catch some criminals using the top and bottom device in response. Slot machine manufacturers develop a way to recognize the surge of electricity the device creates. They were putting in slow blow fuses and machines now if you tried to do it. tricking it with the wire would blow this fuse and it closed soon. These improved slot machines are everywhere and for Carmichael it seems like the end of his easy money, obviously winning two or three 400 a day if you're lucky because everything was coming down to nothing to keep cheating he has to find the old machines to take advantage of they hit several slot machines in a casino at once and emptied them um and this raised suspicions on July 4, 1985 Tommy Carmichael is caught cheating while playing a slot machine near the strip Gaming Control Board agents Nevada they arrested him.

He had the tools with me and when they searched me they asked me what this is. Not so good. I think you know and that was it. Carmichael is serious. Trouble cheating, especially using the sheet device, is a felony punishable by up to six years in prison for the first offense. Carmichael is sentenced to five years, but while most people find their careers on hold during a prison stay, Tommy Carmichael uses it as a breeding ground for His next big prison scam is a situation where you choose your own friends and there were slot players there so we all hung out together.

One of these slot machines is a man named Michael Balsamo Balsamo who has been in and out of prison since 1980. Michael Balsamo is a career criminal, that was his life, that was his lifestyle and he had practically dedicated himself to cheating to the casino industry. Carmichael and Balsamo realize that they have a lot in common, they were a kind of flexible partnership in the sense that they helped the other one go out and vice versa, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours and they began to devise a plan to get together when they went out. from prison in 1987 Tommy Carmichael is the first to be released his parole stipulated that he had to return to Tulsa and stay out of Las Vegas Carmichael has no intention of complying, but since his television business is long gone, he needs a cover, makes a deal with a local contractor, he had a construction site and I was supposed to be a salesman for the construction site, so he was writing me a check and giving it as my salary, but I was actually living in Las Vegas and every time I had to appear from parole, I would actually fly from Las Vegas to Tulsa here and make my appearance and then I go back to play, I come home to Las Vegas while waiting for Michael Balsamo to get out of jail.

Carmichael takes the cases out of the casinos because his old tools no longer work. Carmichael needs a new one that will outsmart the latest generation of slot machines he develops. The most audacious scam yet posing as a casino owner, you would go to the actual manufacturers, walk in and make yourself sound like you were some kind of person in the market to buy some new slot machines and the sales staff would open the doors. doors, I would take things apart, prove it. For him, he would talk to engineers at trade shows who would show Carmichael the innards of the machine.

Two things are now clear: one, hot wiring the hopper will not be an option and two for him to even figure out how to beat. this machine you will have to buy one the Nevada regulatory system allows the sale of slot machines there are stores where you can go to buy a slot machine anyone can buy a slot machine the problem is that the machine costs a thousand dollars and Carmichael is broke and so is Michael Balsamo , who also just obtained parole. They decide to raise the money together by doing what they know. They travel all over Nevada looking for the last of the old machines they can still fool.

We actually went and played the top and bottom joint. the old tool we have history in, we actually play nickels to get enough money to buy a new machine once we have it. Carmichael gets to work Tommy Carmichael had the ability to take apart a slot machine, interrogate its security features and develop techniques to bypass them Carmichael soon realizes that the new machine has a weak point: the counter that regulates the number of coins that They will be paid. He discovers that the counter can be overshot by activating a small microswitch deep in the machine with the counter.

Out of commission, the machine continues to spit out money, but Carmichael must create a tool that can access this switch - no easy task. It took him about six months to create something really good and it was called the slider it was made of. a concrete trowel and was approximately 11 and a half inches long and made of thin metal. He passed through an air hole in the machine, once inside the slider has to slide under a secondary safety gate and then rotate 10 degrees to activate the microswitch. But if Carmichael builds the tool with a fixed curve, it will get caught in the hundreds of wires inside before reaching the door.

This is a problem, but Carmichael has a stroke of inspiration: he threads a piano wire through the tip of the tool so that it can be adjusted after passing under the door, it works and it slides into the microswitch and stops counting every time. Once the machine always pays you, but you never know how much you are paying because you can actually prevent it from counting with the slider. Carmichael and balsamo are back in business, they split up balsamo takes a slider and starts visiting casinos all over the country Carmichael stays to work in Las Vegas the slider was making about a thousand dollars an hour because that's the speed at which the machine spit out quarters with the new device Carmichael is making money 10 times faster than ever and for the next two years he enjoys all the benefits of his trade, but then in 1989 the casinos find a new tool and advances in Security camera technology means that cameras can now be installed anywhere and in Las Vegas, this means that everywhere can now closely monitor all aspects of gambling, including slot machines for Carmichael and Balsamo, prevent cameras becomes the number one priority they would consider and state that they would look for obstructions with cameras due to marketing. department, they would hang signs, they would beautify the place, they would put up flowers, suddenly, you know, some of the best cameras for a particular area were masked, well, the Tommys and Carmichaels of the world would walk into a casino and that's what they were looking for to Carmichael and gets away with it for a year, but then in 1990, surveillance officers notice him acting suspiciously at a machine.

Nevada Gaming Control Board Agents are called and follow Carmichael to hishouse and watch their apartment building. They were sitting in the parking lot. a lot and he was going to try to catch me at the casino, but Carmichael has a stroke of luck and for some reason that night they took me out to do something else and when they came back the next day I was gone, I had moved into a house. and of course we were getting everything under different names and everything, so when they came back, I was gone, it's close. Carmichael will have to be more careful in the future, months later casinos will introduce the latest slot machines designed to protect the money counter overnight.

Carmichael's slider becomes obsolete in the cheating versus casino game, the casinos are back on top, but once again Carmichael is not willing to give up the fight. I was once asked if I would always feel guilty about taking money from myself and the casinos. In fact, I've asked myself that. I said, you know, you try to reason these things out and I'm thinking, well, honestly, I do and I felt like no, I don't know. The gaming industry is so deceptive with cards or live games happening in front of you. and you have quite a chance when it comes to slots, you don't have any chance in 1990.

Carmichael is ready to cheat again, but there is a problem, his cheating device is minor. Mechanical slot machine counters have been replaced by state-of-the-art devices. State-of-the-art optical sensors, this optics with a small beam of light and what it did had a transmitter and it transmitted a beam to the receiver and the coin passed through this light and that was how we could count the money once the machine had Once the allocated payment has been counted, it stops the flow of coins, so I came up with a tool that actually sat there with a small light and supplied the beam equally to the receiver so that when the coin passed through, the machine would never know while the The light was on, the machine was not counting the coins when they came out of the machine, so they got a lot of coins that they were not entitled to.

Carmichael calls his new cheating device the Lightstick and with it the game has changed again this time in his favor. Carmichael also realizes that he can make more money outside of the casino by selling glow sticks to his clients, fellow cheaters and con artists. Making one will probably cost you two or three dollars; He would sell them for ten or twelve thousand dollars, a fairly high margin compared to the illegal price. glow stick sales plus his own slot machine by cheating Carmichael is making more money than ever oh, it was fun, it was a lot of fun, it was nothing more than Disneyland, more or less, it was just a big party most of the time The operation Tommy Carmichael was a big threat to the casino industry because he had many cheaters involved using devices he had created and they were stealing thousands and thousands of dollars a day, but Carmichael doesn't just cheat in Las Vegas, he and his fellow scammers they take the light. those who were on the road traveled all over the United States and we drove to Reno just to do something or Lake Tahoe or Atlantic City or Biloxi he was with a gang of drug dealers they partied a lot remember deep down they are all common, so it's not like if they were friends, as you know, it wasn't like they were a Seal team where everyone trusted everyone, they were waiting for the knife in the back, but with so many people using Carmichael's glow sticks, there's more room.

Light wines mistakenly get stuck in the machines and are abandoned only to be found by casino workers who turn them over to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Here is the actual device: The black shrink tube and the black electrical tape are there because we had to repair the device that had broken a moment ago Julie is going to demonstrate how it is inserted through the corn return and placed correctly inside the game and you will notice that the credit meter stays at six credits, go ahead and remove gaming agents create a video to show slot machine manufacturers how their machines work have been compromised, I thought about the six credits that the game thinks paid out, these are the quarters, obviously, significantly more than six when they realized what was happening, the slot machine industry introduced a delay, so if you heard a payout and where the coins follow, about every six or seven seconds there would be a slight delay, the delay was how smart the light beam was, so the light beam would stay on and the delay would say oops, there should be no light, so the machine would turn off , the good ones are ahead.

Again, but not for long, Carmichael modifies the light wand so that the cheater can quickly turn off the device during the timeout. you just had an on/off switch. It was probably the simplest electrical circuit. The problem was solved. It was back to normal, but. Then in 1996, alert surveillance officers finally caught Carmichael in the act, noticed the money coming out and the machine's counting of foreigners stopped and here we go again, here comes security. Carmichael responds quickly, pulling the glow wand out of the machine and me. I would throw the tool and the tool goes through the casino, well, security I'll go there and they're looking everywhere for this tool.

I can't find the tool. I told. I told him there is no tool, but. the light wand is finally found, it looks like Carmichael's luck has finally run out or he has it but they didn't have a case because where did that tool come from? I mean, is it mine or is it someone else's who already had one or I had one? Very good lawyer, the prosecutor did not feel there was enough evidence, the surveillance cameras were not on the machines enough to show that he was actually using the device on the machine and the authorities cannot arrest him for being in Las Vegas illegally since His probation expired. four years earlier, so the charges against him were dropped.

Carmichael has eluded justice, but he is once again high on the radar of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and his next misstep could easily be his last. Carmichael maintains his covert operation in 1999, his fellow prisoner Michael Balsamo re-enters the picture, he has done well with Carmichael's trapping devices in the past and is eager to take advantage of Carmichael's latest technology. I think Tommy Carmichael would tell you that his fatal mistake was involving Michael Balsamo in his trap group because Balsamo was nice. He is out of control and doesn't really care what he did or how he did it.

Balsamo has big plans. Weapons with light. He is leaving for fresh Casino territory across the United States. Three months later, Balsamos is arrested and the glow wand is confiscated and returned. FBI investigation begins when agents pull Balsamo's phone records Las Vegas number keeps showing up Tommy Carmichaels Nevada Gaming Control Board joins FBI agents to tap Carmichael's phone Yes, I have incredible news, Cheating days in Las Vegas are coming to an end, but instead of attacking immediately, the agents listen through the coin slot. Carmichael, who has no idea the authorities are following him, is hard at work on a new cheating device because once again slot machine manufacturers have caught up with his game. -change devices, they just introduced machines called ticket in ticket out the ticket and ticket out is when you win money instead of making money you get a ticket and then you go and collect the ticket on Carmichael's glow stick it's useless because the new slot machines it has no coin release to manipulate so you buy a ticket on the slot machine like older slot machines the machine still accepts bills and coins so Carmichael devises a tool to cheat the slot machine.

He calls it a tongue, it was like a tongue depressor and I actually went in where the coins came in and what he was doing is taking control of the coin acceptor with a uh with this device. Carmichael's tool takes advantage of a flaw in the design of the machine's optical counting system after a coin is placed and dropped. passes directly by a series of three lights, but Carmichael discovers that he can trick the counter by moving his tool back and forth in front of the center light by flashing the center light, even if the other two were off, it wouldn't matter, he would think that the coins went down that path stuck together in less than a second Carmichael's tongue tool activates the machine to give him hundreds of dollars in game credits it's the same as putting in money and now you collect it it's his problem it's a new device and I just created Carmichael asked several of his fellow cheaters to test the device and help him solve the Kinks, they're called tongue.

We would follow them to these places and watch them steal money. It's a long overdue surveillance package. but we're doing it for a reason: we were building a bigger case, the tipping point, the reason we dropped the hammer on them is that they had perfected and successfully tested a quarter device and were upgrading it to a five dollar coin. The device, the five dollar machine, can lose a lot of money in a very short period of time. It had the potential to generate losses worth millions of dollars. We were going to shoot it, making a couple million dollars a piece, and then just retire it. works completely different everything else went up Carmichael still has no idea the feds are following him, he's moving fast so now the FBI has to act.

Carmichael flies to Atlantic City to get some easy money. The agents are waiting for you. He is caught red-handed and arrested in 2000. The cheater who changed the security game by defeating every piece of technology he found pleads guilty to running an illegal gambling company always looking for a good angle Carmichael receives a sentence milder by agreeing to show the authorities how all his tools work, it was fun, I mean 20 years, it was 20 years of this, the wheels fell off you know, but there are still dozens of other cheaters using the tools that Carmichael created and one of the most daring is Michael Balsamo, who has now taught his entire family to steal. on Michael Balsamo and got a lot of people in trouble in Las Vegas.

Balsamo's wife, Stephanie, and his mother-in-law, Levana, soon mastered the art of cheating at slot machines. They used the glow wand to take advantage of older casinos that haven't upgraded to ticket machines, but surveillance footage shows the family in action. Stephanie was the one who primarily did the work. She was the one who stole by inserting the device. trap collecting the money her mother's role was to sit next to her and have a very A large purse placed in a strategic position where she was a blocking agent so that the cameras couldn't see exactly what was going on, but it was all orchestrated to divert attention from the activity they were doing, which was cheating.

Stephanie Balsamo is extremely knowledgeable. when using the glow wand it's literally less than a second maneuver to get it out of her bag without you just seeing her hand go into her bag, it usually comes out of her bag and into the hopper, if you watch it in real time you never do you will do. look at it she's that good and that fast when the video slows down you can barely make out the edge of the light wands she handles the way it's designed it fits in the palm of her hand and follows the curve of her finger So you can I don't see him for at least a year The Balsamo family wins the battle of cheats versus casinos but the game is far from over April 28, 2006 Balsamo's wife Stephanie and her mother arouse the suspicions of security officers throughout southern Nevada in less than an hour they had reached three separate casinos 10 miles apart and had never lost at least Stephanie and everything, if she sat down at a machine, she walked away with buckets of coins after checking hours of video game surveillance.

Officials finally have enough evidence to bust. They June 5, 2006 Michael Balsamo his wife Stephanie and his mother-in-law Levana are arrested and charged with several counts of manufacturing and possession of a trapping device in 2008 they all go to trial Balsamo's mother-in-law is convicted but given bail Balsamo's wife Stephanie is found guilty and sentenced to 16 to 32 years in prison, as Michael Balsamo never came to trial while he was out on bail, he disappears. Michael Balsamo fled to Argentina. We received reports from his family that he passed away. There are some doubts. who has in fact died because he is a scammer, so to this day he is still listed as living in Las Vegas, at least the balm is out of the picture and Carmichael is back in Oklahoma and banned from ever entering a casino in Nevada, as slot machines continue to evolve to become safer slot machines are computerized today they are computersand therefore, to cheat a slot machine today, you have to be a computer expert, a hacker, and without a doubt, there is someone like Tommy.

Carmichael trying to find a way to beat them Tommy Carmichael and Michael Balsamo spent the better part of two decades fooling Las Vegas. There's no way to know for sure exactly how much was stolen, but experts believe it was in the millions, and in an ironic twist of fate Tommy Carmichael, the slot machine cheating mastermind now banished to Tulsa, isn't done with Las Vegas yet, has one more success Carmichael develops and patents an anti-cheating device that he intends to market in casinos that have been approved by Gaming and had all the licenses and everything done as soon as they discovered that I was its inventor.

I said that now the gaming industry that had lost millions thanks to Carmichael and his inventions wants nothing more to do with him. Game over, Tommy Carmichael. He is a very brilliant person who if he had used his intelligence for good he would probably have been a much richer man than he is today, but it is not just about technically savvy cheaters, casinos have to be on the lookout for other criminals and they changed gambling using pure The heart of every casino is the cage, a highly secure area where money is counted and chips and tokens can be exchanged for cash.

The cage is managed much like a bank, but honestly, it's safer than any bank. This is where all the money is so we take our security here more seriously than anywhere else for years the cages were considered rock solid fortresses even though a few casino guards disarmed a couple of cameras and A dark reputation was their only protection. It was perceived that organized crime had a lot of influence in Las Vegas and that they were owners or co-owners involved in casinos. The popular consensus was that anyone who robbed the casino would end up dead the next day buried somewhere in the desert, but in the 1990s corporations began building and purchasing casino cages.

He had millions on hand but security had not changed and without the mafia's mythical layer of protection the once impenetrable Fortress became vulnerable. No one knew it, but a violent external force was about to change the cage security game forever. Tourists at the Aladdin Casino work the slots. players crowd around the gaming tables at 9 p.m. m. black and white surveillance cameras capture a suspicious group entering the casino they have masks they have weapons they start screaming hitting people knocking people down they head for the cage small enough to dive under the 15 inch clearance below the bars of the cage, open all the drawers and grab all the money they can as fast as they can while ransacking the cage.

The casino staff offers no resistance. They're not supposed to fight. These guys just leave it. They take it from him. There is no amount of money worth a life. The thugs Inside the Cage jump up and run to the door in less than two minutes. The thief's purse. 47 thousand dollars in cash. This was the first time something like this happened in a flat. Casino cage area control The Casino's cameras see everything, but after reviewing the grainy black and white footage, they still don't know the identities of the Masked Bandits, they were able to see enough skin color under their masks to know that they were black, but no one.

We weren't going to be able to identify, we didn't have any real leads to follow, there's really no physical evidence that would lead us to anyone, two days later the LAPD was serving 28 search warrants related to a gang homicide that police racked up in one of these places and the bad stuff flies out and lands practically at your feet look in the bag and there's a bunch of Aladdin Casino money wrappers there corsets our first clue that the guys who robbed the casino had a connection to Los Angeles, but no one's sure Exactly what the connection is, the LAPD immediately calls the Las Vegas police and since the investigation has crossed state lines, the FBI gets involved.

The three agencies focus their attention on a possible connection with La Gang, but nothing comes of it and the investigation cools down two months later, the flamenco another. The casino with easy access to the cage is hit. Four guys come running with guns, all masked outside the counter, they grabbed the money and they all left it. They took a stolen van in less than two minutes and left with 150,000. Once again, the thieves leave no clues, little evidence and no suspect desperate to prevent a mass exodus of customers. Las Vegas increases camera coverage and adds security on casino floors.

The reason why everyone was so worried about this series of robberies was that they didn't want it to affect tourism. They didn't want anyone to feel safe in a hotel in Las Vegas and that's what this gang was making people feel unsafe they weren't safe no one wants to go to a hotel that you know looks like you're in Baghdad but there's no stopping them. the bandits two days later they beat Harris only this time they intensified the attack four young men ran in they took a whip to a lady they hit another guy on the head two of them ball on the counter they grabbed another guy by the hair they pointed a gun at him a gun to the head, the pipe behind the counter, the rifle, the drawers jump back on the counter, everyone runs out with a little over ninety-seven thousand dollars, crashes through a door and enters the Harris parking lot, where they change to another.

The police officer in the vehicle sees this van leaving with the lights off at three in the morning, he begins to follow it, the van drives away, the chase begins, they get on the helicopter, the patrol cars converge and there is a high speed chase of 20 minutes through Las Vegas. The subjects rammed a police car that set up a roadblock, lost control, hit a fire hydra and crashed into a telephone pole, and scattered police K-9 units pursued them on foot. A heartbreaking 30 minutes later, all four robbers and the getaway driver were arrested, unmasked authorities discovered that the terrifying Casino Cage attackers are just Los Angeles gang teenagers hoping to boost their street cred.

Gangs will use children for many things, they will use them as lookouts, they will use them as messengers, they will use them to pass messages. sometimes they make deliveries or carry money because they know that even if they get caught, the kid won't have any incentive to talk because he won't be watching for as long, he's younger, and besides, the younger they were, the sillier they had to deal with. This kind of risk means one thing to the authorities: we didn't have the guys who had been setting this up and were responsible for robbery after robbery, so that's what we were trying to find out, the cops put pressure on the strike team who was interrogating them. . hours searching for the ringleaders, but whoever is running this dangerous scam has been careful, the teens don't even know the names of the guys they're working with.

A year goes by, it took so long that time worked in our favor because these gang members were continually getting in trouble with the law and when they got stuck enough they looked for a way out, they thought, well, you know, I know a little about this one. casino robbery, so we got a lot of information from a lot of people and put it all together. Authorities uncover not one but two ringleaders behind the violent cage raids. Melvin Foster and Chet Govan are unlikely. Members of rival Los Angeles gangs. Really, loyalty to the gang. you lose when it comes to making money Melvin Foster was a member of the Los Angeles Bloods gang.

He came up with the idea for the robberies after he traveled to Las Vegas and recognized a serious defect in the casino cages. Elephant Foster was well aware that most casinos didn't have bars or anything like that, they looked more like a bank counter, but there was a lot more money behind the counter than you would find in the typical bank. Foster had made a plan and started by choosing casinos with cages near the exits. and with the least amount of cameras and security guards, Foster was ready, but he wanted to increase his chances of success, for that he needed a partner, someone street smart, someone like him, but who he could trust, family, he turned to his cousin Dion Chappelle.

Chappelle suggested a partnership with her boyfriend from the Rival Crips gang. His name was Chet Govan and his name was Foreign Short Dog 1994 Los Angeles. On a normal day these two gang members would kill each other before speaking. Boys are supposed to be Rivals. trying to rip each other's heads off, but then you know they steal that kind of activity together. Foster had the mind and Govan had the medal, they needed each other, even if no one could understand the partnership on the street Foster and Govan used young gang members from the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles to rob casino cages in Los Angeles.

Unopposed, Las Vegas found young men on the streets who were willing to get involved, especially if they thought they could make some quick money. It was really easy because they know they're willing to go out and do something crazy. After the heist, the gang used two Escape cars, the first was to escape from the casino, the second car was waiting in a parking lot, then they switched to that car with the money and headed to Los Angeles, the masterminds waited near Czech Grove. Anna Melton Foster. They would not be near the casino during the Rivalry when they learned that the robbery had been carried out by Govan and Foster returned to South Central Los Angeles in their own car this way they would never be connected to either the robbers or the physical evidence. of the robbery or even the money, incredibly Foster and Govan didn't give a dime to the young Brazen gang members who carried out the heists, the guys they work for don't plan on sharing it with them.

I'm going to use them. until they can't use them anymore you know they move on to the next young man who wants to do something stupid for them once Foster and Govan are arrested the two rivals quickly fight each other the authorities now have enough to lock them up Foster gets 18 years and means of prison. Govan is sentenced to 22. The five men we caught after the Harris robbery all pleaded guilty and received between 10 and 18 years each for Las Vegas. The robberies changed the rules of the game when it comes to cages in In today's modern casino, the cages are deliberately placed in the back, away from the exits, making a quick escape virtually impossible.

They are also being watched from all angles. I have more cameras per square foot in this area than anywhere else in the casino. I have 60 cameras. In this small area I have cameras embedded in the bars, but other than that we are more vigilant in front of this cage than we were before, we have security that is set up here 24/7, not just one officer, but that the inside of the cage has also been renovated, which makes the money less accessible because those people were able to slip right into the cage we had. to look at that and say it didn't really work, it was a very glaring weakness that no one had really thought about, but when they showed it to us at the time, all the bars were lowered lower, so that someone couldn't do that anymore.

The lowered bars are just the first new layer of protection. The initial door you enter through to enter the cage takes you to the chip bank area where they will make transactions, bring chips to the table, and bring back the chips that have been redeemed. From a game today, the cage is no longer an open area, it's a multi-room maze beyond that door that will have a cage going to the main cage, but next to it there will be another door, so you enter through a door , that door. it will be closed and locked behind you, both doors cannot be opened at the same time and then to get actual entry into the cage you have to go through another door and then usually behind it we will have our counting areas for We will go through three or four doors to get to the counting area where we will count the money.