The Fraudster Who Exposed a Slot Machine Loophole and Made Millions

[00:00] In the year 1980, a man discovered a loophole inside the gambling machines that were widespread in America. These machines were impossible to tamper with, but the man whom we will talk about in our story was a strange person

[00:13] in the truest sense of the word. He invented a method that made the gambling halls talk about their situation and beg him to explain it to them, and because of the loophole that he discovered, he would turn from... A humble TV repairman to one

[00:25] of the wealthy people of Las Vegas. If you want to know the details of the story, then stay tuned and stay tuned to the video and

[00:38] enjoy watching. Peace be upon you, I am Omar and Nortu, the home of Las Vegas. It is one of the cities belonging to the American state of Nevada, and it is the most famous city in the whole world for gambling, which are the stories. May God

[00:50] keep us away. It keeps you away from it, and for this reason, there are people whose goal is to make easy money by tampering with these machines. I mean, for example, at the beginning of the machines, some people were trying to implement methods of deception by tying coins to a string,

[01:05] and when the machine reads that it is the coin, they return and crawl out, but of course it is the machines. It happened a long time ago when the ability of machines was simple, but with time it became more and more developed. What is strange is that despite this development that was taking place, a man appeared who had nothing

[01:22] to do with these machines and decided that he would become the most famous slot machine fraudster in all of America. This man’s name is Tommy Carr Michael. He was born in the 1950s, and in 1980 he had

[01:34] a television repair shop in the city of Tusla, Oklahoma. At that time, this man did not have enough work to meet his needs, and even though he was neither married nor had children, one day one of his friends came to his workshop and told him: He found a way

[01:51] to cheat with slot machines, and he was very happy and he started explaining to him the method, and he was fascinated by the details that the machines told him. You must have seen them in movies or games, for example, or in reality, these are gambling machines, and the way to play them is that the person puts

[02:08] metal money in the machine and presses a button. It starts with balls next to each other and stops after a certain period, and the player gets the reward according to the symbols that appear for him, or he loses all his money.

[02:20] The important thing is that after that, Tommy’s friend explained to him the method of cheating, which was that he was using a piece of metal called the upper-lower joint, and the old slot machines of the seventies were

[02:33] somewhat primitive in design. On the left, the three rollers were rotating, and on their right, they were connected to three slotted discs. When the wheels rotate together and stop, they must line up perfectly, and

[02:45] the three metal pieces that you see are inserted into these slots to stabilize the wheels, and this is how the person wins the grand prize, but in the 1980s, with the events of our story, the machines were the latest version. The slotted wheels were connected to the three pulleys that had drawings on them

[03:01] and the metal pieces that held the pulleys together. They worked via electronic circuits. When the gambler won the jackpot, an order was sent to the metal pot and the money was dropped to him. Why did I explain to you? This is the point because using the piece that Tommy’s friend made, the upper and lower joints

[03:17] were He deceives slot machines with all ease. The method is as follows. The piece he made is made up of two parts. The lower instrument is a small piece of guitar string connected to

[03:29] an electric lacquer. The piece is inserted into the machine at the bottom and sends a low electrical force. Then it inserts the upper instrument, which is a metal piece in the shape of the number nine into the coin slot.

[03:41] The coin means that there is a slot in the machine where the gambler puts the money until he starts gambling. It is the piece that Tommy’s friend made. It was in the shape of the number nine because from above it was

[03:53] circular in shape like coins. When the gambler inserts it into the machine, here the machine reads that he is the gambler. There is a coin in it, so it starts activating. She is the money dispenser and she pays the coins, and what helps her in this process is the electrical wire that entered from the bottom of the machine

[04:09] and which sent an electrical force. It seems that the machines at that time did not have the feature of gambling with paper money, or that gambling with paper money was done with different machines. The important thing is after

[04:21] what Tommy’s friend explained about This is the whole process. He decided that he would travel from the state of Oklahoma to Las Vegas in order to try his luck. The reason was that this friend of his lived in Las Vegas, and he actually boarded the plane

[04:34] and traveled to his destination. When he arrived, he began wandering around the gambling halls and exploring the situation until he got to know the nature of the places at that time in the eighties. What were the surveillance cameras? It is widespread in gambling halls in order to uncover such fraudsters. When Tommy entered, he would choose

[04:50] a corner isolated from the eyes of employees and other gambling people. When he found the right place, he entered the two coins he had made and the machine was given to him. Indeed, his first experiment was successful,

[05:02] and here Tommy was astonished by this process and decided that his new profession would become theft. Gambling machines and it is not a lie. It is news that people came out and stole gambling machines every day, and from one machine he was

[05:15] getting approximately 75 dollars. I mean, imagine that in one day he was getting from 3,000 to 5,000 dollars. Of course, this story was in the eighties. Today, this amount is more than doubled, taking into account

[05:27] inflation, when Tommy saw that She is a reformer who brings him money that he never dreamed of getting from his previous work He decided to leave the maintenance shop and settle in Las Vegas, and now, after he started making huge amounts of money,

[05:39] he started living the life he wanted to live. He bought a car and met friends, and they started going out to the most luxurious restaurants and hotels. He started spending his money foolishly. Anything that came to his mind, he would go and buy it directly. The only obstacle that was in front of him was Tommy was the person who

[05:55] surrounded him in the halls. He was afraid that when he was stealing the machines, he would expose someone because he would immediately be imprisoned. Therefore, he would not stay in one place for a long period of time, and he would move to more than one hall. Imagine that from the year 1980 to 1985, he visited all the gambling halls in the city

[06:14] and this happened. Among them was a huge fortune, in the truest sense of the word. I mean, what he earned during those five years was between five and one million dollars, and this was a huge amount at the time, but the sweetness did not last forever, because in the year

[06:27] 1985, the gambling halls arrested some people who were using the same tool that Tommy’s friend had made, which was the upper joint. And the bottom line is that the thing that Tommy did not calculate is that this is actually the method. Some people knew it and were applying it.

[06:43] For this reason, the gambling machines in the halls were developed and they planted a malicious method in them to avoid such scammers. Imagine that they arrived inside the new machines, small machines whose mission is to stop

[06:55] if someone tries to connect a wire. From the bottom, he was shocked by it, and in fact, these machines spread throughout most of the gambling halls, and in this case it was clear that Tommy lost the way he used to get

[07:07] easy money, but in order to continue with my work, he would go to the halls that had the old machines and continue to steal them, and he remained in this situation, stealing with complete secrecy, but on the 4th/ 7

[07:19] 19985 He was arrested for the first time while he was trying to steal a gambling machine. The thing that Tommy did not take into account was that there was an employee who was suspicious of him from the first time he entered the hall and kept

[07:31] watching him the entire time. The thing that he did not reconcile with was that the tools were present with him if he had... He was able to hide it in some way. He was able to avoid them, but after the search they found it with him

[07:43] . In such cases, the fraudsters were sentenced to imprisonment for a period of up to approximately six years. They actually sentenced him to five years in prison, but imprisonment in many cases is not a deterrent

[07:55] to the fraudsters, because when he was inside the prison, he was an uncle. He was thinking about how he wanted to develop the operation after his release. Inside the prison, he met a prisoner named Michael Balsamo. This man was a professional criminal in the field of scamming gambling halls. When these two people got to know each other better, they felt that

[08:11] they had things in common, and among them was a sense of friendship, and they decided that after their release from prison They returned stronger to their old work, and in 1987 the first one of them, who was Tommy, left.

[08:24] They gave him a conditional release on the condition that he return to the city or state of Oklahoma and that he leave Las Vegas for five years, but of course he violated this condition because, as I told

[08:36] you at the beginning of the story, Las Vegas is It is the most famous city for the shrine in the whole world, so the opportunities he could get there were much more than any other place. The thing that Tommy did was that he was settled in Las Vegas, and when he was asked to go to the police station in the city of Tusla, he would travel and come back a

[08:53] second time because he was not being monitored by the police at that time, but if he knew Is it possible that this person violated the condition and is still stable in Las Vegas? Maybe they will return him to his city or imprison him a second time. When he visited the gambling establishments after his release from prison, he was shocked that the machines

[09:09] had changed completely after the previous vulnerabilities were revealed. The machines had been developed to be difficult to hack, and Tommy knew that He had to develop his capabilities and invent a new trick that would enable him to continue with the fraud operations, but first he had to see what had changed inside the machine and what was installed

[09:27] in order to know how to invent a new method. So imagine that with all his boldness he impersonated the owner of a gambling hall and visited one of the machine sales exhibitions and presented himself as he was. A good owner asked the seller to remove the doors and covers for him so that he could explain to him how

[09:43] the machine worked and the safety features it contained. In fact, the seller had every intention of removing the covers for him and explaining to him all the things he asked him about, but of course he was not able to see inside the machine because the seller would know that it was him. The man is suspicious, but here Tommy discovered two points. The first is that

[10:00] the previous method cannot work for them a second time. The second point is that if he needs to know what has changed with the machine and be able to devise a method of deception, he must buy a new unit and disassemble it completely.

[10:12] These machines are available for sale to anyone, meaning there are no conditions or conditions. There are certain restrictions and there are exhibitions in every city that sell them. In fact, he was able to buy one of the machines. Fortunately,

[10:24] at that time, his friend whom he met in prison, Michael Balsamo, was granted conditional release . So they pulled a small warehouse and put the machine in it, and Tommy began disassembling it until he tried to find a loophole that would enable them to cheat. Always among them, this Tommy was by nature a calm and

[10:41] very intelligent person, and his old experience with electronics and repair matters, things that helped him understand the system of the machines, and after examining the machine that he had with him for six months, he realized that there was a weak point

[10:53] in the meter that regulates the amount of coins that would rush in, and he discovered that he was in for a scam. When it does it, it will stop the meter from working, and the machine will continue to take out money without stopping. This means that with one operation, he can disperse all the money inside the machine. The trick is

[11:09] as follows: Underneath the machine there was a hole that reached a small key. If this key was turned on, it would give an order to the machine to take out all the money. Whoever is inside it after gambling, he made a piece of metal that bends like the one you see and tied a piano wire to it so that he could

[11:26] bend the piece and not cut the rest of the wires inside. Then he inserted the metal piece from the bottom of the machine when he gambled and turned on the switch inside the machine. In this case, the money would be paid out as usual. But you don't know the amount you are paying, and after

[11:42] this crazy discovery happened, he and his partner Michael returned to their old job, which was robbing gambling halls. Imagine that this time, using the new trick, they were getting more than $1,000 in one hour

[11:54] , meaning their profits were almost double the previous operation, and they continued on. This was the case for two full years without anyone paying attention to them or facing any problem, but in the year 1989 something happened that would make it

[12:10] extremely difficult for them to succeed in their operation. This thing is the surveillance cameras. At the beginning of the nineties, cameras began to spread in gambling halls due to the cases of fraud that were occurring and this thing. It will be difficult for Tommy and Michael to succeed in their operation. In this case, they must be aware of the people surrounding them

[12:26] in the halls, and at the same time they must be aware of the installed surveillance cameras. The cameras were not just installed surveillance cameras, so that if something suspicious happened, they would go back and monitor the recordings. Rather, they were live recordings monitored by people whose job it was. They monitor the movements

[12:42] of customers. One time in the year 1990, Tommy was stealing a slot machine in one of the halls , and at that time, one of the auditors in the hall noticed him. He just said that this person was behaving

[12:55] suspiciously, but he was not sure because the recordings were not clear to him, so they asked the surveillance agents of the hall to... They go and follow his movements and find out if this person is a fraud and is stealing the slot machines in the hall or not. This does not mean that these halls are affiliated with

[13:11] surveillance agents. Their job is to monitor the people they suspect, and if the charges are proven against them, they hand the case over to the police. Fortunately for Tommy, when they were being monitored, he took a break from this work. He stayed at home for two days, then the supervisors decided that this person was clean and that he was not

[13:27] a fraud, but they were only suspicious of him, but they were not lucky that it was also the scam that I hate. They knew about the gambling hall and immediately closed the loophole, and what changed it was that they replaced

[13:39] the mechanical counters that sell money with optical sensors. His speech means that he will explain to you more about the section that follows the money that will be poured

[13:58] into the gambling machines without stopping. When this beam is stopped automatically, it will stop the machine from throwing money. Here, Tommy also invented a magic piece that will enable him to empty all the money inside the machines. The piece is like what you see and it is very simple. A piece made of plastic

[14:15] molded onto a metal piece, with batteries at the bottom connected to a wire extending to the head of the piece and a small bulb installed. The piece is what he will extend into the slot machine, and when he starts turning on the light

[14:28] inside the machine, it will inevitably throw money without stopping, as if the red beam is still on. This means it is true that it is the piece. Simple, but it was a crazy and strange plan, in the truest sense of the word,

[14:41] and to explain it as if he was going back to the job he loved, which was stealing slot machines, and in fact, he started stealing the machines and getting crazy amounts of money. I mean, every day

[14:53] at least, he started getting $5,000. In addition to that, imagine that he started making a quantity of what he was using. He would sell it to the crooks outside the gambling halls. He would show them the coin and they would be amazed at the intelligence of this man. The single coin cost two or

[15:10] three dollars, and he would sell it for 10 or 12,000 dollars. I mean, the man turned the operation from stealing slot machines into a business in the truest sense of the word, since he had conquered Las Vegas. Vegas was not devoid

[15:23] of a gambling hall, so he decided to move between neighboring cities, and every time he entered a city, he finished all the gambling halls in it, but he was wary of the officials in the halls and the surveillance cameras as well, and the situation continued like this with him without any problems, but after a while, when it spread, this is the piece that

[15:40] he made. In every place, it became a big problem, which is that one of the people who were using it got stuck inside the machine with him, so he was forced to leave it and flee the place. After a while,

[15:52] the hall monitors noticed it and handed it over to the officials. When they realized how the piece was being used and that through it, the fraudsters were emptying the machines completely, they were shocked by it. Its idea is very simple, but it is genius, and you and others lost millions of dollars. So they made a video of how

[16:10] it works and sent it to the main manufacturers of these machines. When Tommy found out about this problem, he modified the piece and began using it on his own without selling it to other scammers, and he continued like this without any problems, but this is the situation. It will last, because it is one day in a year

[16:27] 1996: There was one of the observers in one of the halls in Las Vegas, and he was stealing one of the machines. It was clear that this man was doing something contrary to the camera, which was not directed directly at him, but it was clear that this man was tampering with something, so he did not give an order

[16:45] to the officials in the lobby to arrest him. And then Tommy felt that he had exposed himself, so he went and got rid of the piece without anyone noticing it, and he acted on the basis that he had never done anything, but the officials arrested him and began searching for the piece everywhere in the hall

[17:01] until they found it. Tommy, meanwhile, knew that they had exposed him, but After his arrest, a brilliant lawyer was appointed who claimed that Tommy was not a fraud, and although they had conclusive proof, they

[17:13] confronted him and he claimed that the piece they obtained could have belonged to someone else, meaning it was not necessary that it be his. In fact, the public prosecutor felt that there was not enough evidence against him and the surveillance cameras, for example. We did not

[17:25] talk about what was directed directly at him, and even his presence in Las Vegas was not prohibited because they prevented him from entering the city for five years, and the researcher of our story said that we were in the year

[17:37] 1996. This means that he was allowed to stay in the city legally for four years, so they were forced to release him, but he was monitored the entire time by The FBI party means that in this case he was not

[17:49] able to carry out thefts, so he was forced to hide, and his complete reliance was on his partner Michael. At the same time, they were eavesdropping on his calls and they knew that his partner Michael had returned to

[18:01] fraudulent operations like before. After three months, they caught him red-handed while stealing a machine and he had the piece with him. The light bulb that Tommy made and he was sentenced to prison for a period of years, meaning he will

[18:13] be released from prison in the year 2006. Well, is this how our story ends? Of course not, Tommy. It is impossible for him to still have the writing on his hands, even if he was hiding. But the thing that made the matter difficult for him is that the gambling hall returned

[18:26] and the machines were updated after that. I knew the trick he was using. The thing that changed in the machines was that they were no longer used for gambling.

[18:58] He started experimenting with them, so he created a piece that he called the “lissan.” After the gambler put the money into the machine, three laser sensors would be working to read the money that entered. It was the piece of

[19:10] “lissan” that Tommy inserted into the machine and he kept moving it up and down and so on. The machine continued to count on the basis that the gambler was still putting money into it. The method was very effective,

[19:23] so Tommy began communicating with his other fraudulent friends and showing them the piece and asked them to test it so that he would know whether it would work for them in the desired way or not, and the next thing was not. He knew that the FBI was eavesdropping on his calls all the time,

[19:38] and they knew the identity of the people he was communicating with. They tracked them down one by one and arrested them red-handed. Then in the year 2000, when they discovered the fraud he had invented, they caught him red-handed as well. After interrogating Tommy, he confessed. He was guilty of

[19:54] the crime of fraud on gambling machines, which is when he was supposed to receive a heavy sentence, but he was able to negotiate with them at this point and received a reduced sentence of 11 months in prison, on the condition that he explains

[20:08] to them all the tools he was making, how he was inventing them, and all the loopholes that could be closed to prevent fraud. In the future, and of course, Michael here helped them with all the things

[20:20] they asked of him without any hesitation. In 2006, his partner Michael came out of prison, and he was also under surveillance at the time. Without knowing it, they discovered that he was the teacher of his family, all of them in the fraudulent methods that Tommy was devising. Tommy was his wife’s teacher, his mother-in-law’s teacher, and a teacher. His family's

[20:37] colleges and they were targeting old gambling machines that could be stolen using tools. The previous night we talked about it, and then when they watched him in the gambling halls, it was clear that they were stealing the machines. I mean, for example, look at this shot of Michael's wife, how she takes the

[20:52] metal piece out of the bag and inserts it inside the machine. It is clear that it is a scam. In Paris 2006, they arrested Michael, who knows how many times, and his wife and mother-in-law red-handed.

[21:05] His mother-in-law was sentenced to prison for only a few years, and his wife was sentenced to imprisonment for a period ranging between 16 and 32 years. As for Michael, he never went to court, and the reason was that he

[21:18] was able to get out of prison after paying bail and then He traveled to Argentina, and after several years, news reached officials from Michael's family that he had died, but most likely this news was false. As for

[21:30] his wife and mother-in-law, I don't know why they didn't pay bail and left. I don't know what the details of the ruling were that were given to them, but this thing that happened is important. Let us return to the beloved. Tommy, after completing his sentence, which was 11 months in prison, was banned from entering gambling halls permanently

[21:47] due to the crime-filled past in these halls. Basically, the gambling machines continued to develop more and more and became programmed on an electronic system, meaning the fraud operations that could happen would be through hackers and fraudsters. He must be a computer expert, so here Tommy

[22:04] has no job in this story, and here you may be wondering how much the total amount Tommy and Michael earned from the operations. To be honest, there is no clear amount, but what is certain is that each one of them earned.

[22:16] At least 20 million dollars during those 20 years. Those who worked in this field started in 1980, as we mentioned, and they were arrested around the beginning of the 2000s. After several years, Tommy developed

[22:29] devices and things related to machines and even obtained patents for inventions, but when they knew the management of the halls that these were inventions. Tommy, who discovered it, completely refused to cooperate with him because they certainly would not accept the help of the person who defrauded them and lost millions during those

[22:44] years. They said that Tommy was a very smart man. If he had used his intelligence for good, he could have been a much richer man. What do you think? Is this true? Or is it all idle talk

[22:56] , and this is how we have reached the end of Suna. If you like it, do not forget to like and subscribe so that this country grows, God willing. If you would like to see another story, I will tell you the story of the Colombian young man who impersonated a Saudi prince and defrauded hotels and wealthy people. He is a

[23:12] crazy person in every sense of the word. I will see you in the next video. Hello