Poker Cheat Jailed

A card-marking poker player has been jailed for four months this week in London after being convicted of ‘cheating at gambling’ at an exclusive London Casino.

57-year old Russian Valeriy Mikhaylets cheated almost £60,000 from other players at the Palm Beach Casino in London’s Mayfair district back in 2014, but fled the country after being released on bail, later being arrested when he traveled from Moscow to Finland.

The cheating was discovered after suspicions were raised about his play in several NLHE events at the Genting-operated casino. According to the prosecutors:

His winnings were placed on deposit with the casino, but when Mikhaylets returned to the casino on January 26th 2015 he was arrested for fraud and subsequently charged with one count of cheating at gambling, contrary to Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005.

When arrested he was found to be in possession of two Genting Casino memberships cards, only one of which was in his name, and £2000 in cash. He was also discovered to have playing cards, dice and sandpaper on him, the latter he claimed to be for smoothing out rough edges on the cards.

Sandpaper, however, can be used to mark playing cards so that they are easily identifiable to the person cheating. Card marking is a well-known cheating method and to be effective, marks must be visible on the observer's sides of the cards to help the cheater identify what other players at the table are holding.

After his initial arrest and bail release, Mikhaylets fled to Moscow and was only re-arrested after a European Arrest Warrant was served when he crossed into Finland on April 9th resulting in his subsequent deportation to the UK.

Appearing at Southwark Crown Court for sentencing, Mikhaylets - who had pled guilty to the single offence – was jailed for four months. He was also fined £86,000, ordered to pay £57,025 in compensation and £893.75 in costs and handed a deprivation order amounting to £50,000.

Detective Constable Mat Wake, from the Met's Serious and Organised Crime Command, said:

Mikhaylets is not a complete unknown on the poker scene, and although Hendon Mob do not show any tournament winnings for the cheat, he did take part in the London EPT in 2014 – held one month prior to the offence he was eventually charged and convicted of.

PokerTube previously covered a very similar incident from 2014, when unemployed 61-year old Mihai Lacatos, was able to cheat numerous casinos across the UK by leaving dents on the cards. The Romanian national was also responsible for entering casinos that he was been banned from by using fake ID cards and driver licenses.

As Ines Slatinac reported:

He cheated the Playboy Club in Mayfair, London out of more than £40,000 in just one week. When his card marking was noticed at the Playboy Club by the casino staff, parent company Caesars Entertainment contacted the MPS Gaming Unit which immediately circulated his image around all UK casinos.

On March 31st, 2014 he was recognized at the Rubicon Casino where police arrested Lacatos and seized £1,485 from him He was released on bail and, while awaiting trial he decided to do the same as Mihaylets.

When he failed to appear at court in May 2014 detectives tracked him down, catching the cheat at Luton Airport’s departure lounge as he tried to flee. Lacatos admitted 14 fraud charges and was also charged with possessing false documents and in March 2015 he was jailed for 18 months.

There are numerous cases in the history of casinos where people have tried to trick the staff and other players in order to win money. One of the famous scams worth of mentioning is Richard Marcus’s scam. Marcus had a job as a blackjack and baccarat dealer in a Las Vegas casino, but spent his free time cheating at other casinos.

His scam was pretty simple; using a basic sleight of a hand to replace the chips with smaller denominations when he would lose his bet. His cheating technique worked for years until he got arrested and banned from the casinos. This didn't stop him either, as he continued to serve as a mentor to other cheats.