Ex-Casino Cheat Reveals How Casino Scams Actually Work

[00:00] I scammed casinos out of $25 million. This is how crime works. about the underbelly of Las Vegas

[00:17] There's all kinds of other stuff going on. there's stealing, there's heists. it is a very dangerous thing to do.

[00:31] so please do not do it. were based on basically

[00:47] One of them was to increase drastically the size of a bet, to making it $1,000

[01:01] to making it $10,000 and claiming the dealer made a mistake. by hiding a $5,000 chip underneath a $5 chip

[01:18] and the dealer would only see the $5 chip on top. just a few millimeters

[01:30] where you couldn't really see the denomination. So the dealers naturally assumed it was just two $5 chips. If the bet loses, right, before the dealer can take it,

[01:48] I would go out and grab the bet and take it away. You would think it's a flagrant move. but the dealer only ended up seeing it

[02:01] The cheating move occurred when we lost the bet. It was the opposite to what we were doing before that. it was a $10,000 payout that the dealer didn't see.

[02:15] They had to call the supervisor over, to play back the video, right, And of course it always was.

[02:28] And when the bet lost, what did I put back? I put back $10. What did the dealer think was there the whole time? $10.

[02:40] to a maximum of a $20,000 payoff I had a few incidents where I got caught, Andy Anderson was chasing me around Las Vegas

[02:57] a private-detective agency that worked for the casinos He would always grab me up and take me to the back room He was a constant pain in the neck.

[03:11] and we met for the first time outside of a casino back room where I keynoted the conference, he told me that they were going around to places

[03:26] looking for digital equipment back in the '90s, in casinos to cheat then, right? Was I controlling somehow how the ball landed?

[03:42] when I heard this because the move was so simple. If I lost, I took it back, and that was it. I train casinos now, and I train them specifically

[03:55] which entails a very simple movement. instead of just standing there casing the layout out of the box to the left and look,

[04:12] high-denomination chips out there before they spin the ball. it was the end of the mob era.

[04:29] and there was no amusement parks, no volcanoes. It was just pure action, pure gambling. named Joe Classon.

[04:43] in downtown Las Vegas. "How about you and I, So I agreed to meet him across the street at the Horseshoe.

[04:58] in that casino not stealing chips from the rack?" I could see the other dealers were all stealing, like, And I just wasn't interested in that.

[05:14] and I'm looking to recruit somebody for my team. Two weeks later, I quit my job to go with them. I knew nothing about the type of cheating that they did,

[05:29] So I had to get trained. The first move that he trained me at

[05:42] was to actually bet $15, and then after the dealer pays, to switch in so that's $1,005,

[05:58] "Hey, you paid me wrong. What is this crap? Pay me right." is a whole bunch of hidden $500 chips that are exposed now.

[06:10] that I'm a $500 player. That social engineering is all based on psychology.

[06:22] that bets $10,000 a hand in a casino, which I did. He trained me how to be a claimer.

[06:35] regardless of who actually switched the chips. about sleight of hand. and then I do a switch on chips that way.

[06:50] You do it right under their nose. For the first 13 years, we had three other members and me.

[07:05] and security for our own team. He protected us. I was the person who took the money off the table. His job was to manipulate the chips.

[07:22] And then we had Jerry, and his job was to carry through betting patterns that would give Duke, the mechanic, that I could claim.

[07:36] The second half of my career, I worked with two other guys. and he would throw $5,000 or $10,000

[07:48] And my second partner was Pat. and I became the mechanic for that team. for the second dozen years of my career.

[08:03] make sure it's right. In all cases, there was a high-denomination chip involved. Then we had to get our positions around the table.

[08:17] So that was fairly easy. So we needed one person to be standing behind the other, which is the most sophisticated —

[08:35] So we have to have four people on the game, three of them actually sitting and one of them standing, When I used to go through casinos,

[08:49] because I recognized the betting patterns. to be perfectly centered in the betting circle, they want it perfectly straight up on the number,

[09:03] to have to touch the chips The language that they use, because casino cheating teams, They use sign language. You know, hands touching the face,

[09:19] Rubbing your chin means everything is OK. they're not skilled in that. They don't train for that.

[09:31] But for them it all ends up with the video cameras today. is always New Year's Eve. and it's the most people in the casino, or in Vegas.

[09:45] A big championship fight night or a huge concert. That's what we wanted. But the negative part of that Sometimes you can't get a seat, so you might have to wait

[09:59] You might have to wait an hour or two hours So, when you're doing a sophisticated roulette move, to an hour and a half of doing the move.

[10:13] you're looking at, total, provided that you have you're looking at just a few minutes.

[10:27] was Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Total take from casinos in my career, And the other big, you know, we would call them

[10:43] since $5,000 chips were chocolate-colored in most casinos, because not all casinos can handle $5,000 cheat moves, Any casinos that had the $5,000 chips in play

[11:00] because they ask all kinds of questions. So what we did is we actually had a side operation for cash-outs.

[11:13] a day or two after they were gotten, and then we would go to the tables and we'd break them down. where we turn those chips into cash.

[11:28] Not only was I the main claimer, but in any kind of criminal operation,

[11:40] just like you do in the regular business world. because your freedom is always at stake So we always split the money equally

[11:57] How did we spend most of this money? I like to bet sports, And I like to go to restaurants and stuff.

[12:11] I didn't really make any wise investments. that wasn't Italian was me.

[12:26] they saw the movie "Casino" where De Niro tells the guy because he was cheating. The Italian mob, their main thing in casinos

[12:45] Again, it was in the movie "Casino." Joe Pesci and some other guys, you saw them walking out that were never going to get reported

[12:58] But also there was a mafioso named Tony Spilotro, and he was the head of the infamous Hole in the Wall gang. where these rich people were staying,

[13:12] or seeing a show, go in, and rob the place. Sometimes you see scenes like in the movie "21,"

[13:25] and it's about the MIT blackjack card-counting team. I first started out in the early '70s. And they had no evidence against me, but they didn't like me

[13:39] Two security guards took me up in an elevator They had the key, and they walked me through the suite, right to the balcony overlooking Las Vegas Boulevard.

[13:53] And they said to me, "Kid, the next time we see you here, And then they turned around, And I had a few of those type of threats,

[14:07] But nothing ever happened to me. "Just keep your mouth shut. You're not going to help yourself

[14:21] So I was always confident and stayed confident, and that drove me through it.

[14:35] In Asia, it's baccarat. The most difficult place to cheat casinos is London. They have so much faith in their people on the floor.

[14:50] And on every roulette game they had but they had a guy in a high chair

[15:02] and never take his eyes off the layout. that he saw everything that happened. they got one supervisor for every two,

[15:16] And in London, they have audio surveillance But in the United States, they don't have any audio, OK? So they try to avoid things like

[15:31] especially if it's card counting. That means standing there, counting the deck down, to the player so they could give the player a signal

[15:45] because it's to the player advantage. is avoiding surveillance when they were going to be called

[15:57] Surveillance never catches on to sophisticated professional cheats by themselves.

[16:09] or else they get nowhere with that. where today watching the games and protecting the assets

[16:23] Back then it was all they did, was protect the games. Active shooters, terrorism, human trafficking,

[16:35] They're constantly training. They got so much stuff going on as much as they need to be watched.

[16:56] The really best casino cheats were the Italians, casino cheating teams in the world.

[17:08] at the same time that are really One day we go up to Lake Tahoe, which involves past posting $100 chips

[17:23] straight up on a roulette bet for a $3,500 payoff. and it happened that the person's hand who went out was the Italian mechanic for the Italian team.

[17:40] And now we had a little bit of a problem here because, There was only four casinos, right? So we decided, "Oh, OK, you guys take these two casinos

[17:55] and we'll take these two casinos, Now, as the years went on, I never really got to see what move they were doing,

[18:09] I would try to sneak around And then I saw their move, and their move was great. $1 roulette chips, on four different areas of the wheel.

[18:26] The dealer was going to put the dolly Their mechanic — or, they were all mechanics, would just go in there and swish.

[18:39] that stack of chips, to the winning number and put the dolly on top of it. to just move it that fast without any of them falling down.

[18:52] And when I saw that, I said to myself, And that haunted me.

[19:04] One day at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas, The dealer tells the pit boss, and then he disappears.

[19:17] because they wanted to sweat me out and see if I would run. cash them out, and then the dealers and this went on for two or three hours.

[19:31] So finally another guy comes into the pit, He says, "Mr. Marcus, my name is such and such.

[19:44] We're not paying you." He said, "We're not paying you." you take it up with the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

[19:57] That's how it ended in Las Vegas. That's how it ended. In Nevada, if you cheat in a casino

[20:12] you are getting arrested and charged with a felony. you could actually do a year in prison. If all jurisdictions had really harsh penalties,

[20:28] deciding to become advantage players and making less money, When it comes to, you know, what could the casinos really do to reduce the cheating?

[20:43] Train your personnel to understand cheating, to make initiatives to stop it. Every casino should have a game-protection trainer

[20:58] and make sure that it filters all the way down the system are your first line of defense against all casino cheating. So I think it really comes down to training their staffs

[21:11] Now, a lot of casinos actually have a unit of the state police Law enforcement has more direct access

[21:26] A casino who suspects somebody might be a cheater they could get more information from law enforcement that this person might be a casino cheater

[21:40] in some other crime of another nature. they're just variations and improvements

[21:56] The Savannah is actually a variant of another scam that was done with cash instead of chips. than it ever has been because of the introduction

[22:13] What you see more and more of a trend now There's a term called reverse engineering, based on a slot machine's recent activity,

[22:30] but by taking actual photographs with the machine's activity in recent times or a Chinese laboratory somewhere,

[22:45] and then the information comes back to them on the property So we're seeing a lot more from what used to be digital equipment scams.

[23:01] AI is the most overrated piece of technology The only part of that that's somewhat effective Because if you have a database with my picture in it

[23:20] and I walk in and you have good FR equipment, But the AI itself you know, no AI equipment's going to tap you on the shoulder

[23:34] on blackjack table No. 14." you're going to have higher-value cheat moves. But the percentage of the total casino bankroll

[23:49] will more or less remain the same in all casinos. It'll be a certain percentage of what the casino win is, a certain percentage of the profits

[24:04] So, when you take casino cheating as a whole, that cheats take out of casinos across the world? Definitely. Is it going to put the casinos out of business?

[24:19] Well, it could only really put a casino out of business if it affects the integrity of that particular casino. a particular casino hear that a lot of cheating scams

[24:33] are going on, that's where the casino could really be hurt. get involved in it, and usually the employees They're not cheating the players.

[24:46] where they're cheating the house, and these are the scams Do casinos actually cheat the players? What they do is they manipulate the rules

[25:01] to make it more and more difficult for them to win, Two good examples of that, in England and France, And zero is a number where if you bet everything else,

[25:17] and double zero, you lose. Then the United States, they made it two zeros, Now there's actually roulette tables in the United States

[25:31] their original house advantage. It used to be in all casinos, blackjack, you got paid three to two.

[25:46] they are now only paying six to five. So, is cheating casinos a victimless crime? "You know what, I cheated casinos for 25 years,

[26:02] sure, some people would argue with me, Are they arguing out of definition, But as far as just taking the money, I don't know,

[26:17] or airlines when they get ripped off either. So that's my opinion.

[26:30] when I was doing the Savannah at the Golden Nugget I mean, that effectively not only ended my career,

[26:43] The Gaming Control Board was following me. on the law-enforcement side, They just started putting more people in jail

[26:59] And I knew my last day was going to be New Year's Eve, I wrote the book "American Roulette." My career ended in 2000. I never got caught.

[27:14] That's the statute of limitations. Three years, it's over. But in Canada, when I was called to make some comments I told the journalist on the phone that,

[27:29] I cheated the casinos in Canada." there is no statute of limitations in Canada. in Canada, but I was lucky

[27:44] because they didn't have any video evidence. One thing I must say is that for anyone to try and cheat a casino.

[27:58] So, what I'm doing now is I am a game-protection trainer and consultant. I go around the world and I train casino staffs

[28:11] What casinos need to do, And I also, since 2022, with 50 speakers.

[28:25] That's basically what I'm doing now.

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