Ultimate Casino Cheats: PART 2

In part 1 of our look at the grifters of the gambling world we dealt with poker and roulette, but lest we give you the impression that only France can produce casino scammers par excellence, let’s switch to the good ole US of A for our blackjack story – the country home to the almost mythical MIT card-counting team, which in various incarnations conducted a successful two-decades long run on the house. Also, there are casino slots – millions of them covering every spare inch of floor-space in gambling houses worldwide and providing about 80% of their revenue, much as the best online slot sites do in online gambling – but it’s also a profitable profession for cheaters.

Blackjack – Operation Tran Wreck

However, rather than rehash old ground – the MIT maths geniuses not actually breaking the law, despite casino’s around the country despising their cleverness – instead we’re going to look at a Vietnamese variation on the theme, with the infamous Tran organisation taking almost $7million from more than 28 casinos.

Another mostly family affair, the Tran’s and close associates devised a technology-driven way to cheat the blackjack tables, using hidden microphones and earpieces to communicate, coupled with computer programs working out the likelihood of the winning cards appearing.

“Without question this was one of the largest casino frauds in the history of the United States,” is how Keith Slotter, FBI Special Agent in Charge, described it after the Feds launched Operation Tran Wreck to dismantle the $multi-million scam, the details of the blackjack cheating caught on camera…

The several-years long investigation ended in 2007, when the brains behind the skullduggery, Phuong Truong, and 46 of his partners in crime were indicted for racketeering, theft and money laundering – Truong jailed for almost 6 years for his part.

Craps – Branco’s Bellagio Bust

The iconic Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas may have been the scene for one of the movie world’s most amazing heists in the 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven, but it’s also had its fair share of real-life trouble with thieves and gangsters, former craps dealer Mark Branco among them.

Distraction and mumbled bets ‘on the hop’ were the old-school techniques used by Branco and his cohorts to take a cool $1.5million from the casinos craps tables – in a series of wins calculated as being 452 billion to 1 to have happened by ‘chance’.

Working the same table while an accomplice distracted whichever casino security or floorperson happened to be hovering nearby, the scam was simple - as a shooter tossed the dice, the players in on the scam would mumble what that sounded like a hop bet, Branco or another dealer in his employ paying out regardless of whichever number appeared.

From 2012 to 2014 the gamblers ought to have lost over $700,000, but instead were somehow $1million ahead, an MGM statistician explained in court once the casino-scamming crew were arrested and brought to trial.

Variously jailed for between three years and a decade – Branco receiving the harshest sentence - the case prosecutor claimed:

“This is not about sending a message. It’s about punishing appropriately, and it’s about preventing anarchy.”

Slots – Nikrasch and the Tech-savvy hood

Our final chapter centres on that most ubiquitous of machines, the casino slots – millions of them covering every spare inch of floor-space in gambling houses worldwide and providing about 80% of their revenue, much as the best online slot sites do in online gambling – but it’s also a profitable profession for the likes of Dennis Nikrasch, who stole over $15 million from them!

Armed with a magnet and some locksmith tools back in the 1980s, Nikrasch had 8 years of untroubled access to the slots – using a homemade key and strong magnets to trigger jackpots – but a 5 year jail term when he was finally caught seemed to put an end to his career.

A move to Vegas and a rekindling of his ties to the Genesee crime family, in particular Eugene Bulgarino, a wealthy and tech-savvy man, saw the pair enlist a team to help in busting the latest and most-advanced machines of the nineties, buying and dismantling two machines to replicate the computer chip which ran them.

The first night of their thievery brought in $3.7 million dollars, and were it not for Nikrasch’s greed it might have gone on endlessly – but a disgruntled member of the hack team went to the FBI and the end was nigh, a phone tap eventually giving away their secrets.

An 8-year sentence was the end result for Nikrasch, who passed away in 2010 but will go down in history for his slot machine grift.