Poker Player Scams £24,000 Out of Grosvenor Casino Birmingham

A British university student has been sentenced to a 12-month community service order after getting caught scamming £24,000 at Grosvenor Casino Birmingham.

Samuel Bob-Emmanuel, 22, sneakily watched a casino supervisor enter a PIN code into the internal IT system and memorised it to transfer money to himself later on.

The next day, Bob-Emmanuel returned to the casino where he was a regular and transferred the £24,000 to his current account.

Birmingham Crown Court heard that he was able to access the computer after wandering into the poker room which was empty, after which he left the property, seemingly having got away with it.

It looks like the lack of planning and any sophistication was Bob-Emmanuel’s saving grace, otherwise he could have been looking at a custodial sentence.

Mohammed Naser, defending, told the court:

"He has not sought to prevaricate or delay matters. He has not sought to conceal or dispose of evidence. Of course the unsophisticated nature of the offence means it was always going to come back to him."

Recorder George Kelly did comment that the scam wasn’t purely without planning, however:

"It wasn't entirely opportunistic because if it was you wouldn't have taken note of the supervisor's pin and wouldn't have kept that with you when you went to the casino the following day.

"This was unsophisticated because without a doubt the casino would have been able to ascertain exactly where the money went because, of course, everything in a casino is subject to CCTV and the footage would have immediately identified you as the perpetrator."

This was never going to work as everyone knows that every inch of a casino is covered by CCTV.

Surprisingly, though, it was Bob-Emmanuel’s bank that first identified the fraud. The court heard that the bank’s fraud team froze the money and soon returned it to the casino.

Bob-Emmanuel will have to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work and 25 days of rehabilitation activity as part of his 12-month community service order.