How Cheaters Win Millions In Las Vegas Casinos | Cheating Vegas Compilation | Wonder

[Music] Vegas is a world built on fantasy but there's a dark reality just beneath the surface where good and bad guys battle every day it's cat and mouse just what we're doing all the time usually the good guys win but there are cheaters who are so accomplished at what they do they get away with Millions these are their exclusive stories told by the guys who took Vegas for a ride and landed themselves into the cheater Hall of Fame [Applause] on gaming tables in Las Vegas casinos there are colored chips of all denominations only a handful of companies make them and Manufacturing processes are kept top secret so when two devious cheats successfully counterfeited ships they catapulted them right into the cheater Hall of Fame chips are cash and casinos and would be similar to dollar bills or 20 bills Henderson Nevada just 13 miles from Las Vegas Agents from The Gaming Control Board bust a counterfeiting ring operating out of a garage the bust itself was a first of its kind not just in Las Vegas but Gaming Control agents say the first of its kind in the country they had never really seen an operation like this before in a makeshift Workshop agents find ships that are in the process of being converted from low denominations to high denominations these are all four Queen one hundred dollar inserts that is what sticks in the middle of a one dollar chip with a little paint and you've got a hundred dollar chip now you have one dollar investment and a 99 profit I mean it literally took some paint some glitter and a blow dryer and a good idea behind the scam is an unlikely pair two former construction workers The Mastermind is 40 year old Eric morakawa in an exclusive interview murakawa reveals how he created ships that looked so real they fooled the experts it wasn't that easy um but once it came to us and we figured out a way uh it came fast The Story begins in the late 1990s Vegas construction is booming new casinos are going up all over town and older casinos renovate extensively to stay competitive in 2000 Small Time contractor Eric morakawa of Southern California moves to Las Vegas to find work soon murakawa has more work than he can handle he hires additional help including 20 year old Jeremy Lewis Jeremy I met at a bar shooting pool and uh he was out of work and um I gave him a job but morikawa's new employee has a checkered past Jeremy Lewis was the known bad guy he had some drug and forgery warrants outstanding in California and he had also had multiple arrests here in the Las Vegas area still Jeremy's a good worker for a few years business is good then in 2004 the economy crashes the construction industry took a dive and and work wasn't really there anymore we were all in the same situation the money started to deplete and we needed to take care of our families murakawa and his crew start doing jobs farther and farther away but on one of their return trips murakawa spots something on the side of the road that gets him thinking eyesight ship on the billboard and asked them how hard would it be to make the Chip And we all agreed it wouldn't be that difficult in that moment murakawa and his crew decide to do what no one else has successfully done counterfeit the currency of Vegas casino chips we went up to Vegas and we would get the chip from the table we took it back to my garage and we broke it down we broke it in half um tried to see what was contained inside the Chip Casino chips are made out of clay sand and other Earthen metals that are heated to extreme temperatures and pressed into shape morakawa and the crew start trying to replicate them we were trying to make our own chips from scratch from different Clays injecting metals and trying to get it out of weight it was hard it was really hard in order to pass the fake chips must have the same weight feel and the hollow sound that real chips make when they're dropped the team do their own sound tests this is the real Chip and this is the Imposter the chips that we made from scratch it would be like a heavy thud and uh so we knew it was going to work what are we doing what are we doing weeks go by the team still hasn't created a chip that will work discouraged several crew members bail now it's just murakawa and Lewis but they're not ready to give up together they spend hours studying the chips from the Green Valley Ranch Casino each denomination has its own colors the hundred dollar chip is black and gray and the one dollar chip is gray and teal murakawa suddenly realizes it would be easier to modify a chip than to create one from scratch it's a huge breakthrough so I grabbed a Sharpie pen and I just was like well we just need to paint black it looks like they can take one dollar chips and convert them into 100 chips with a little effort first they must remove the one dollar inlay from the center we tried heating it up to pull it off heating it up would bend the chip so we would put it in a boiling water and it would penetrate the inlay the 212 degree water leaves the ship unharmed but softens the inlay allowing them to easily pull it off Next Step duplicating the black and gray shades of the 100 chip we would get our pants from in our supply store we would sit there and just mix the colors you know blend them in and then put it on the real Chip and then wait for it to dry and and we both look at it under light outside you know different types of light and then make sure the color matched to it to a tee it was very very very close then it's on to the painting they start with the gray color of the accent Stripes known as Pips using an airbrush they cover the entire chip it had to be a light spray which an airbrush spray is really light once the paint dries they block out the Pips with painters tape then airbrush everything else black when the tape is removed the colors on the counterfeit ship mirror the authentic one Eric murakawa and Jeremy Lewis really did a good job at matching the colors and that's not easy to do because the the colors are always very unique you can't do it perfectly they didn't do it perfectly but they got them very close [Music] once the color's in place the next step is creating the phony 100 graphic inlay they scan a real one into a computer then print it on clear plastic to give it a glossy look then the plastic is glued onto a white backing made of bumper sticker paper you'd run the inlays through kind of like a pasta roller the new Inlet would fit perfectly inside the chip the chip is ready except for one crucial detail if you were to run this chip underneath the black light you'll see a glowing top hat in a cane and that's one of their security features I went out and got the same color ink in a pen form and we would color the top hat and cane in there and we had a black light set up so we'd check you know position they're random so we just put it on there and laws just showed something underneath the black light it would pass after a month of work they finally have three 100 counterfeit chips murakawa and Lewis had 10 minutes off the Vegas Strip to the Green Valley Ranch Casino in Henderson Nevada to see if they can fool the casino I don't lie very well so I can't walk into casino and keep a straight face and go to the um the cashier cage and cast the chips I I feel guilty Jeremy Lewis takes the lead I'm sitting in the parking lot while he's in the trying to catch these chips and casino I'm hoping you know everything's going okay nothing's going to happen moments later Lewis reappears right up to the truck and hopped in and said you know drive and we drove I thought security was chasing them and looking over our shoulders but no one's behind them and when morakawa looks over Lewis has three 100 bills in his hand the counterfeit ships work we were pretty excited we ran back to the house and made some more they could come down into the garage and within five minutes you could have a brand new chip it was just that stunningly simple morikawa and Lewis are able to counterfeit 20 ships a day they plan to work their scam all over town to match the various chips they stock up on supplies there's different colors on the chips a lot of it had like glitter so we would take the glitter pens and dab the glitter in there and give it that metallic look they passed fraudulent ships at eight different Casino properties including Caesar's Palace and Mandalay Bay these guys were all over town they are well on their way to the cheater Hall of Fame but they realize that sooner or later cashing in chips without ever playing a single casino game is bound to arouse suspicion to avoid getting caught they need to change their game we had to find a way where it was kind of foolproof where they wouldn't be able to immediately catch on to make the scam look legitimate they start playing at the gaming tables buying real chips from dealers we'd lay two thousand dollars on the table they give us the chips and the camera overhead sees that so we use that to our advantage and then we would exchange them either in the bathroom or parking lot and and get the counterfeit ones and we'd have the real ones if you went up to a cage and cash them out and they caught it you could always refer back to hey that table gave them to me later on taking back the real ones they wouldn't question it because they were real [Music] murakawa and Lewis begin spending more and more time at the casinos at the time we graduated from the 100 chips to the 500 even the thousand dollar chips and the money was coming in the lifestyle was changing uh we were doing a lot of eating out at nice restaurants and and being on the Strip Maura Cala keeps the source of his Newfound wealth a secret from everyone including his wife at first she asked but then she was just like I don't want to know and uh she was getting new purses clothes at one point I counted 100 pairs of shoes in boxes in a closet so yeah she was benefiting from it too for three months Eric and his wife enjoy their extravagant new lifestyle but partner Jeremy Lewis heads down a much different path I found him at a like a 800 night suite at the Riviera the place was bigger than my whole house and he was there with a bunch of girls he hadn't had any sleep he was wired Lewis's lifestyle soon becomes a liability one day he was talking to one of the girls on the phone and and I could overhear him because it was it was loud so I told him hey hand me the phone I want to talk to her so he gave me the phone and she said I know everything that you guys do and I looked down I was like why would you tell I mean my wife doesn't even know why would you tell a stranger all this you know and you know now she wants money now we have to pay her for a few days they pay her hush money but then she started want more and then she was telling us that hey my my man's in jail we need to get him out I need money and I want it now she threatens to reveal their scam to police in a bid to get her boyfriend's sentence reduced so they pay her off again a few days later it seems like everything has blown over a cow's wife leaves the country to visit her mother as soon as she's gone morikawa and Lewis start planning a trip to Atlantic City to hit their casinos I get knocked out a door there's a guy at the door and says hey my son threw a ball and and in your backyard can you go get it as I was turning around to get the ball out of the backyard he grabs me throw it on the ground throws me on the ground but two other agents jump out of the bushes they're fully armed and they're rushing into the house over me they are enforcement agents from the Nevada Gaming Control Board Lewis's blackmailer has apparently turned them in after all enough information was developed to obtain a search warrant and when the home was searched every piece of evidence we were looking for was there the whole setup was found the chips are of such quality that they that some of those that have been passed in the in the recent past may not have been detected yet stunned Las Vegas authorities must now deal with the fact that two construction workers have compromised the security of casino chips murakawa and Lewis are in jail three days later the pair are brought before a judge they were given five million dollars bail not for murdering someone not for raping someone for counterfeiting casino chips our state takes this stuff really seriously since neither can make bail murakawa and Lewis are taken back to the maximum security jail the Hefty bail makes morikawa a celebrity among the inmates when I came in there a bunch of the people were like oh wow your bail's five million they called another guy over and was like Hey you know he has a higher Bill than you and he was a Russian guy and not just any guy the man has ties to a Russian gang met him and sat down and talked with him and told him my story and he was interested he's all about business and he was like you know what we do need to talk once you get out if you get out you know a few days later morikawa's attorney gets him a new bail hearing and it lowered my bail from 5 million to I think was like 12 000. so uh I could bail out after ripping off the casinos for tens of thousands of dollars morakawa ends up serving just 10 days Jeremy Lewis his partner in crime is not so lucky his outstanding drug and forgery arrest warrants keep him behind bars murakawa is free but deeply in debt I made the house payments I paid majority of the bills by doing what I was doing and now I have a case and I need to pay my attorneys desperate he calls the Russian who's also just been released from jail the Russian wants more akawa to teach him how to make counterfeit ships I was very concerned because I knew that if I got caught again I would not get out [Music] once again faced with overwhelming debts morakawa looks to counterfeiting as a way out but this time he won't get his hands dirty for 25 percent of the profits he agrees to train the Russians I would take roads out of the way to meet with them I would constantly watch for people in my mirrors and and see if anyone was following once the Russians are trained they begin passing the phony chips at casinos in Las Vegas an alert casino employee spots a few of them they looked a little different in the rack than the other chips and turned out to be counterfeit then we had to do some backtracking and try to find these people the investigation leads to the only two people who've ever made ships that can pass for the real thing Jeremy Lewis and Eric morakawa with Jeremy Lewis still in prison that leaves murakawa and agents are closing in one day um I was training the Russian guys and and there's a knock at the door the police we have all the chips and Equipment laying around I'm looking at the ceiling and trying to figure out a way to get out and there's no way so as soon as they came in I dropped to my knees and put my hands behind my head and I knew I was arrested I'm sitting in jail and I didn't think I was going to get out until we went to court Eric morakawa hires a shrewd Vegas defense attorney it's a move that pays off in Spades in 2006 murakawa makes a deal and pleads guilty to six felony counts he walks with five years probation and community service the most time spent in jail was a week and a half when I first got arrested the second arrest I was only in there a couple days before I bailed out still murakawa must make restitution for all the fraudulent ships he passed restitution is at 36 000 is what they could only find in the chips I think we did over a million and they claim that their price Stone circulation they can't even find them I would not see Vegas again it's easy money and it's fast but it's not worth it it's not worth giving up your livelihood and your family and embarrassing your family now morikawa's counterfeit scam is a wake-up call for Vegas today many casinos protect their ships using a high-tech device called RFID short for radio frequency identification it has a small electronic chip embedded in the chip somewhere and they can keep track of what the chip is and and how many of them are on the table it's an identifier they use RFID scanners at both the gaming tables and the cage making it impossible for a low denomination ship to be mistaken for a high one no matter what the face of the chip reads foreign new technology keeps chips safe from manipulation easy money is always a target for the world-class Vegas cheater one in particular stands out both for the Simplicity and sheer Audacity Of His crime Anthony carleo [Music] one of the things about Anthony carleo was that he seemed to have this need to be a larger than life figure we had this sense of invincibility about him he's not somebody that lived the life of a criminal I think he just kind of had this downward spiral at this the sudden snapping in an exclusive phone interview carleo tells us in his own words how he became one of Vegas's most notorious criminals I don't know if you've ever been on a Catholic dance with those losses mounting carleo is desperate he concocts a bold plan to capture a cash jackpot your heart's beating or you're short of breath of adrenaline on his motorcycle carleo cuts through Vegas traffic with ease pulls into the Suncoast Casino Suncoast is the West Las Vegas Hotel Casino that's usually frequented by the local neighborhood people leaving the engine running carleo walks directly to the cage dressed entirely in black with a motorbike helmet he pulls a pistol from his waistband knew there was going to be a lot of money there and me I know it would be easy to get in and out at the end of the day 45 steps to the casino I'm saying 45 steps out the door told the cashier to resent to the drawer grab stacks of cash put it into a bag no security guards try to stop him to let people have the money that's that funds are a liability so in the end we'll just call the police let them handle it that's their job that's what they do in just minutes it's over carleo heads into the neon night with almost twenty thousand dollars [Music] you're sitting there looking at 20 grand and it's like oh wow that wasn't that bad carleo hit so hard and fast Vegas is caught off guard and since his bike helmet and visor make him unidentifiable the police are left with no clues just five days later once again carleo gets on his bike and rolls down the heart of the Vegas Strip this time he pulls into the opulent Bellagio Hotel and Casino I literally parked my motorcycle facing the street a wave in a security guard carleo jogs into the casino but the cage is too far away to reach quickly so he heads to the high-end gaming tables literally just walked up to the back of the table I told everybody to move I started grabbing the chips showing them in my bag went straight for the high dollar casino chips which were the cranberry colored ones valued at twenty five thousand dollars he also grabbed several white ones which were valued at five thousand dollars had there been more of the presence of security there and I probably would not have had the guts to walk in there I was also aware of the fact they did not carry firearms it shouldn't have been that easy but unfortunately it was this time carleo takes off with more than a million dollars worth of chips although the chips are embedded with RFID identification devices they can only be tracked inside the casino outside the tracking devices stop working yeah I was actually pursued by a police officer for a period of time they chased me in a very short rib because I was on a motorcycle I was probably going 115 to 125 miles an hour carlio disappears into the night in response to the robberies casinos across town add undercover Personnel to patrol gaming floors cages go on high alert eight days after the second robbery authorities get their first break when a dealer from the Bellagio comes forward anonymously he tells them about a suspicious player who'd been in the day before the heist he started talking to him about the possibility of robbing the Bellagio he said I'd like to get my hands on some of these cranberries cranberries of course are worth 25 000. the dealer patiently listens and has the guy believing that he can trust him eventually he gets the guy's name it's Anthony carleo when investigators look into carleo's background they find an unlikely stick up guy carleo is the son of a Las Vegas judge but he grows up in Pueblo Colorado with his mother after moving to Las Vegas in 2009 he enrolls at UNLV to pursue his childhood dream of becoming a physician he has no criminal record but in his first semester at College carleo gravitates to the casinos foreign [Music] detectives check his bank records they discover no reportable income other than a grant check from UNLV for four thousand dollars from an informant they also learned that after a car wreck earlier that year carleo had been prescribed the narcotic painkiller oxycodone Anthony carleo certainly fits a profile of someone desperate enough to steal but police don't have enough evidence to arrest him but if it is him it means there's a gambler with a drug habit and a gun looking to break even he has an Ace in the Hole the 25 000 chips but cashing them in would be risky chips that I ended up grabbing my intent was to grab the five thousand dollar chips and anything under that amount with so many stolen high-end ships on the street the Bellagio takes action and discontinues the twenty five thousand dollar chips the Bellagio Pets the authority to withdraw and refuse to accept those denomination chips The Gaming Control Board then will be conducting an investigation to determine whether or not a person who is presenting those chips actually won them the day after the twenty five thousand dollar chip recall carleo returns to the Bellagio this time without his gun to play poker and blackjack the dealer who'd reported him earlier is out of town for the holidays so when carleo uses the lower denomination stolen ships he goes undetected I had already been a player that's an extravagant but it wasn't enough to there be cashing in a five thousand dollar chip would not have raised any red flags on New Year's Eve carleo again uses the lower denomination ships he quickly loses seventy thousand dollars by the middle of January he's down more than a hundred thousand stolen dollars at this point carleo has bet so much money he is considered a high roller a few days later he returns to the Bellagio and gets comp to room and meals when he cashes out more money than he wins Bellagio's security staff suspects he's using the stolen ships they notify Metro Police in Nevada gaming now they have carleo in their sights but they still have to connect him directly to the robberies they watch and wait carleo's losing streak continues sooner or later he might make a play using one of the 25 thousand dollar cranberries that everyone is watching for me to avoid being caught carleo attempts to fence the hot ships online he posed several messages in poker playing chat rooms that was one of the crazy things he was going you know these online poker sites trying to figure out how to get rid of him though audacious carleo's Behavior lacks the sophistication of a professional felon he even posted a photo of a couple of the cranberry chips and he called himself the biker Bandit he was pretty much saying it's me come and get me well the biker ban it wasn't the sharpest tool in the in the box that's for sure [Music] police get an anonymous tip that Anthony carleo is calling himself the biker Bandit and he's trying to sell his 25 000 cranberry chips for ten thousand dollars cash police finally have what they need to set him up an undercover detective contacts carleo posing as a buyer for the stolen ships I let myself be vulnerable I guess and I I trust the people I shouldn't have trusted level it's hard to turn ten thousand dollars away for a piece of plastic in your pocket just a few days later the Trap is set carleo brought in several chips the undercover cop promised him a hundred thousand dollars and then when the Carlyle left the chips that was it for Mr carlea the next day Vegas Metro Police announced carleo's arrest to the news media we want to send a clear message to those who think that they can come to Las Vegas commit a robbery using a weapon and get away with it is sadly mistaken Anthony carleo pleads guilty to the casino robberies and is sentenced to serve between 8 and 27 years in prison and inmate at Nevada Department of Corrections Lovelock Correctional Center from Lovelock prison in Nevada 30-year-old Anthony carleo reflects on his crimes I had an excellent life I was on the right track here I am nearly a decade of my life to come to 10 years in prison and I would say you're great everything else is replaceable foreign [Music] cheaters aren't as Brazen as Anthony carleo instead they make their Mark by taking advantage of easy targets [Music] Predator he's a shark swimming among the anchovies out there he's looking he's trying to find that weak link that we have and then he's going to go in and take advantage of it and there's one sheet who makes it into the Hall of Fame for not knowing when to quit foreign [Music] the Hard Rock Casino a Pit Boss notices a player placing large bets at a poker table he contacts surveillance that call came up as we have a high limit player and the name was Clifton Burnham when we went into the system to look up the history of Clifton Burnham there was a noticeable pattern of wins and losses he always won on a certain day of the week and all the rest of the time it was obvious losses his lucky day is Sunday and June 15 2000 happens to be a Sunday they look back over the past few hours of play Burnham has been on a winning streak at Pai GAO Pai GAO is an Asian poker game played against the dealer but like all casino games dealers play for the cameras as the surveillance team watches burn them they see a problem but it's with their own dealer if I'm watching the game the dealers have certain procedures that they have to do at certain times when they break that procedure that's a red flag then we have to look and see why are they breaking procedures and if they're breaking the procedures with a certain person could that person be in collusion with the dealer the dealer has worked at the casino for five years we really didn't have a lot of problems out of him but um at one point we noticed that he was doing a poor card spread because there are so many ties in pie gal dealer protocol is to spread the cards for the camera here Burnham has lost the hand but the dealer is doing what's called a quick spread picking up the cards immediately making it look like it's high so the player loses no money so why is this dealer intentionally dumping the game for Burnham's benefit one hour later they have a possible answer when security is slipped an anonymous letter and what this Anonymous letter stated was you have a customer and a dealer who are in collusion on your poker pie Guy game and the name this customer is using is Clifton Burnham but his real name is James shahady and at that point I let out a few expletives ran back upstairs and by then he was gone James shahady's reputation is well known in Las Vegas Jimmy shahady was a criminal he's a career Croc he's a dirtbag I went back pulled the schedule for the previous month to see if there was a correlation between his wins and the dealer that was on the game and sure enough there is a connection shahadi has been winning for four straight Sundays as Clifton Burnham he always won with this particular dealer only the dealer a longtime employee of the Hard Rock had racked up steep gambling debts the dealer Inc in question owed money to from the guy and couldn't pay it back that individual in question owed money to Jane shahady So how better to pay it back than to give him a cheating dealer what a friend right hey I got a friend he guy owes me money he's dealing over at this joint you go in he dumps the game to you we're all happy since the dealer never collects on shahady's losing bets shahadi is able to play for hours making money on every hand he does win basically he can never lose on this game so every Handler he's going to lose he's going to give him the signal he's going to do the quick spread throw the cards in the discard and say it was a push so every time he wins even when he doesn't win he still wins because he doesn't lose so they just take the money every time once the dealer repays his debt he plans to stop cheating but shahadi isn't willing to let the scam go when you find something that good why would you give it up this guy he's not going to let you just walk away you just committed a felony you just did something that's going to ruin your life and I own you for it the dealer was very scared uh shahady was representing himself as a member of organized crime he's telling the guy unless you do what I want bad things are going to happen to you and the dealer believed it and that's where June 15 2000 comes into play desperate and looking for a way out the dealer writes the anonymous letter to security before starting his shift two hours later security finds the letter at the same time surveillance sees a break in procedure faced with evidence of a cheat the Hard Rock calls the Nevada Gaming Control Board they came out looked at the videotape and at that point we waited for the following week for Mr Shahidi to come in and indeed he did thank you on the actual security tape the dealer begins his shift moments later James shahady sits down and the chief plays out on camera after shahadi loses the hand the dealer picks up the cards and does another quick spread as if shahadi's hand was actually pushed that's all authorities need to see at that point the game and they just came down arrested the dealer and arrested Shahidi from the casino pool after he's dragged away in handcuffs the dealer confesses he's been part of the scam for more than a year the dealer got himself in too deep he owed the guy money next thing he knows he's dumping this game for seventy eighty thousand dollars for testifying against shahadi the dealer is let go [Music] shahadi is convicted and is sentenced to 12 to 48 months a year later his luck runs out on a Friday night he dies in prison at the age of 60. shahidi's Shameless strong arming of the Hard Rock dealer earns him a place in the cheater Hall of Fame but there's one cheat Schroeder smarter and more successful than any who have come before or since he hit Vegas Dennis Nick rash during his career he steals a whopping 16 million dollars Dennis Nick rash was a genius and that was one of his strengths he really knew what was needed to cheat a machine to perform different types of criminal acts for him to stop stealing and die of boredom it's a challenge to him he has to do it to show the public that he could do it and show The Gaming Control Board he could do it to show the industry he could do it just an ego thing I believe Nick rashes road to infamy begins in Chicago Dennis Nick rash started off as a locksmith and he found that he was very proficient at breaking in the locks and he ended up having some friends who were organized crime and tied to the Genovese crime family but he started working with them breaking into cars and jewelry stores and businesses until he eventually got caught Dennis Nick rash serves a year in prison after his release in the 1970s he sets his sights on Vegas using a tool called the slider he breaks into slot machines he could slide the device through the door crack and activate the mechanism with the sliding device and payout as casinos lose money manufacturers redesign the machines so they are more difficult to cheat but Nick rash is undaunted by the changes he buys a machine and does the impossible manipulates the slot machine itself to create a winning jackpot on command although his precise techniques remain a mystery the first battle is learning how to open up a slot machine in a casino undetected crash is a burglar he's a locksmith so he could open it without setting off the alarm the alarm is a warning alert programmed to go off five seconds after the door is opened so Nick rash must act quickly he manually adjusts each of the reels to a jackpot setting then he triggers the jackpot Bells closes the door and all anyone hears is the cheerful dinging of another slots winner Nick rash has the system beat from 76 to 83 his cunning Nets him 10 million dollars the interesting part of this is that when we found out about it that this was going on we inspected known machines machines that we knew he had cheated and there was no indication that the machines had been cheated but in 1986 the law finally catches up to him he serves another five years once she got out of jail back on the streets things had changed dynamically because of the electronics and the camera surveillance coverage and the type of Machines video machines rather than real machines computer chips and motherboards and all this stuff is out there now it's all Dennis's previous treating devices their antiques they're basically useless but Nick rash is more than up for the challenge he sets out to adapt his skills to the computer age when he went back to the Genovese crime family and was hooked up with a computer expert and once Nick rash gets his hands on an updated slot machine he comes up with a way to beat the new technology he was re-engineering computer and code and finding out how to corrupt that code how to rewrite the code and more importantly how to erase the code when the scam was done so that he he couldn't be discovered Dennis oh Jim it's all buddy what's up buddy they create a small device they could sneak into a casino this handheld computer would have to be inserted into the circuit board placed on top of the ram where they would input the winning combination Dennis was able to override the computer by piggybacking one computer chip on top of another computer chip inside the machine and set up the jackpots there's Just One Last Detail to address not getting caught [Music] and he would usually have a group of people with him they're called blockers and their jobs were to block the cameras and block security guards from seeing what he was doing after they decided Which slot machine and which casino they would hit they would set up cameras surveillance cameras in his garage at a similar angle and then he and his blockers would practice how to block the cameras and they would know exactly where they were supposed to stand in the fall of 1996 Nick rash and his team hit the casinos then a snake rash would set up his blockers enter the casino he would use his locksmith skills to open the door then he would insert his handheld computer and install the winning combination once he completed that which only took a matter of seconds then he would leave the casino and The Collector would sit down hit the button Wheels would start rolling the blockers would move away and the cameras would show the winning combination rolling into place it is modest for Nick rash thirty thousand dollars but he soon grows Bolder eight months later Nick rash and his team take Harris for 3.8 million dollars then they cheat the Rio and Luxor and other casinos for Millions more Tennessee crash usually took about 70 percent and split 30 percent among all of his assistants the uh stole and stole and stole actually something's going to happen the camera is going to be right here on two o'clock up around the corner for the cheat to keep working Nick rash regularly replaces his team she had to have different people collect because you can't have the same person at one Casino win a three million dollar jackpot and then two days later win another jackpot at a different Casino so he had to have collectors that he could uh cycle through the problem was having a large team of people working together is somebody's going to get unhappy somebody's going to get in a fight somebody's going to rat you out 1898 Nick rash is plotting his biggest Heist yet the Megabucks Jackpot worth 17 million dollars he has Vegas in the palm of his hand but 300 miles away his plan starts unraveling one of his accomplices got in trouble with the FBI in Phoenix Arizona started talking about Dennis Nick rash and how he was cheating at slot machines [Music] working with the FBI the Nevada Gaming Control Board gets a search warrant for Nick rash's home detectives find two slot machines along with dozens of cheating devices in his safe deposit box they discover the handheld computer he uses to cheat the slots after a two-decade crime spree that Nets 16 million dollars the king of slot cheats Reign is finally over Nick rash is arrested for the last time Dennis Nick rash is convicted and offered a deal by prosecutors a lighter sentence in exchange for revealing how his scams work as a criminal Nick rash is a consummate professional he refuses he later tells interviewers I have no desire to explain anything never smarten up a chump he is sentenced to seven and a half years in prison he is released in 2004 and dies in 2010 and the secrets to his extraordinarily successful cheats die with him but in Vegas Legends live on and Dennis Nick rash has secured his place in the cheater Hall of Fame Dennis Nick rash is one of the greatest cheaters we've ever caught in the history of Nevada there's a lot of cheaters out there and hopefully they're not as successful as Dennis net fresh was foreign sheets caught on tape are fairly simple past posting is making a bed after you know the winning number operating as a team the man at the right of the screen is working with the man at the top of the screen in an effort to distract the dealer who is not in on the scam the man on the right places a late bet that is rejected with the Dealer's focus elsewhere the cheater at the top of the screen adds more chips onto the winning number for a payout of 35 to 1. other cheats are fairly complex here a woman strategically uses her purse as an attempt to block security cameras then her partner in crime comes in to block with his body the man seated is using a specially designed tool that's inserted into the mouth of the video poker machine he's attempting to trick the payout sensor into triggering a jackpot no matter what they know or don't know about security cheaters always think they're smarter rest assured the casinos are watching 24 7 and if anything Define security it's the eye in the sky [Music] I do believe there are more cameras in Las Vegas than Washington DC so here in Las Vegas big brother is watching [Music] it's estimated that there are tens of thousands of surveillance cameras blanketing nearly every inch of every casino and when something goes down they will have it on tape it's eyes where we can't be so it's a force multiplier if you will for the security and the surveillance stats since their earliest days casinos have tracked the action on the floor for decades surveillance was little more than beefy Men Walking the Floor looking for obvious cheats but when cheaters up their game so did casinos catwalks were the big breakthrough suddenly surveillance could invisibly monitor the games from above with the help of two-way mirrors in downtown Vegas the hotel Nevada opened its doors in 1907 renamed the Golden Gate Casino in 1955. it still has the remnants of their catwalk the original Eye in the Sky operators got into the catwalk through a secret entrance on the roof so there you see it that's the cart that they would lay down base for us on and then they push themselves up and down the track be exactly like being in their mind because this would be close so that nobody knew he was in there while older hotels are renovated to keep up with cheaters the new casinos are designed with security in mind the Aria Resort and Casino was constructed from the ground up to be cheap proof security Chief Ted Whiting spent more than three years helping to design arya's state-of-the-art surveillance system anyone who's thinking of cheating Vegas should think twice if we're getting better at this especially specifically at Aria we're getting really good at it with unprecedented access we take an Insider's view of one of the most sophisticated and restricted security setups ever built Arya is one of the most technologically advanced casinos we've got over 1100 cameras on our casino floor in the deepest recesses of the hotel's basement is the surveillance nerve center from here they can oversee more than 150 000 square feet of casino floor including 145 gaming tables and almost 2 000 slot machines we have seven workstations about 40 monitors and of course we have access to all 3500 cameras on this city center campus surveillance has come a long way even I started in the mid 90s and the cameras were still pretty good back in the old days we used analog cameras so an analog camera they come in two varieties PTZ which is pan tilt zoom and that means that our operators can move them they can zoom in and out back and forward up and down the other cameras that we use were fixed cameras and those cameras are just a camera that sees one spot and doesn't move so those are good and we did surveillance for forever for 30 years with those cameras and it worked out fine we opened Arya though we wanted to take the best of the old technology and blend that with the best of the new technology which is HD cameras or high def cameras and what that allowed us to do is increase our resolution by three times now we have the luxury of reviewing the video we can prove that somebody cheated and we can see it a lot better in this cheat the cameras caught what was almost too fast for the human eye the cheater Seated on the left is playing Blackjack and wins when the dealer busts the dealer pays the cheater on his original bed but the player flicks back the payout and then seamlessly replaces the stack including a higher value chip placed on the bottom here it is again in slow motion the flick and replacement the cheater is indignant that the dealer didn't pay out properly The Pit Boss is called over they review the tape and ultimately the player is asked to leave the casino a lot of times when somebody's doing something dishonest they're trying so hard to act natural and in doing so they're becoming unnatural the surveillance war on cheating one of the newest weapons is the 360 degree high definition camera [Music] similar to Google Earth's ability to see City street details from outer space the 360 system is like having dozens of cameras digitally combined as one image this bird's eye view gives observers the advantage of going back in time and zooming in or out to see exactly what happened 360 technology is not used as a live viewing tool this is strictly a forensics tool that's used after the fact this is where we would go back after an incident has happened so that way we can zoom into the picture and see where the patron is gone or the theft has taken place and we do not miss anything on the casino floor we can go back to seven days and virtually drop into the image and look around and watch a patron walk from one area Casino all the way across the other area for surveillance insiders the key to catching thieves is being able to identify them older Eye in the Sky systems have lower resolution cameras that make it difficult to see faces clearly to solve that the Aria's design and layout was created with high quality cameras shooting at eye level and by forcing patrons to go through camera heavy choke points narrow pass in and out of the casino surveillance is guaranteed a clean face shot we can actually grab individuals faces and grab great ID shots we have about 50 throughout the casino so at some point with you walking to the casino we're going to get your face [Music] 1100 can't put some of those cameras on choke points which is the skinny part of the casino so now we use these cameras every day had we not put in these choke points we'd never have a face shot of them we have a list of over 6 000 people that have done things that they shouldn't do in casinos before they even arrive in the hotel we put them through a filter in our database of people who have been trespassed or arrested here so how do we protect the guests we stop them before they even check in [Music] in this exclusive footage provided by the Aria we can see from the inside exactly how the coordinated effort of the 360 degree cameras work when combined with the hotel's choke points the couple who are playing the slots walk away without realizing they've left a purse behind within minutes they realize the purse is gone and contact security security will call and say hey we've got a woman who whose purse is missing and if she was on row 100 we will track that back even though it happened five or six hours ago with our 360 cameras so we'll track the thief back to the point where they stole the purse using the 360 degree cameras they can literally travel back in time and focus on the exact area around the slot machine where the purse was left behind soon after the couple leaves the 360 degree cameras reveal a man in a black shirt carrying a white jacket he looks around then settles at the machine next to the one where the couple had been playing he looks around again picks up the purse and quickly conceals it in his jacket he makes his way out of the slot area but to leave the casino he must pass through a specific path or choke point where the arya's cameras are focused for his close-up we catch them with a choke point camera now we take that picture of their face and send it out to our security network our surveillance Network and then we catch them almost instantaneously the man's face is uploaded to casinos throughout Vegas and in a couple of hours he is arrested and booked for theft [Music] at the Aria the high-tech security system is a definite Advantage but the real inside secret to successful surveillance is having a team who can proactively ID cheaters before they strike we can look at somebody and tell okay they're all right or no or that behavior doesn't make sense when you see people um doing things that they're not supposed to do they behave differently they give off tells just like a poker player is looking for towels our surveillance people look for tells for cheats classic cheat found in Vegas happens when a player tries to swap or introduce cards from outside the game insiders call it card mucking here the Aria has a mucker in its crosshairs and cardmarking is when a player brings a card in to make sure that he wins and then he's got to get the bad card out again so what they'll do is their hand will be flat on the table so the other hand moves around and works and they're drinking their drinks and they're picking their nose or scratching their head and this hand works this hand can't work though because there's a card under it because each Casino has its own proprietary card design for the mucking to work the cheater needs to acquire specific cards with the same design and Logo this is often done by sneaking them off one at a time or having an Insider who works at a casino steal an entire deck for them you can see the guys manipulating the cards in a strange way when he reaches into his jacket though we start to think something might be wrong now we see that the card has left our field of view we can't see it it's obscured by his hand now his hand is attached to the table it's a perfect example of a flat hand as a tell [Music] another cheat casinos watch for is known as card marking we do our games face up when we can and the reason for that is game protection if the cards are face up on the layout the players aren't allowed to touch them therefore they can't mark them right well that's not right because we've got video of a guy right here whose marking cards face up and he just made a mark his bet loses he comes out with a hundred dollars while he does it though he notches the card he had a piece of glass attached to his thumbnail and he was hitting the card every time he collected a bet or he put out a new bet so he touches a card and marks it with that piece of glass [Music] we suspect this person is cheap we don't know he is but we suspect he might be so when he walks over the craps table we think okay this is it maybe we're gonna catch something here and yep he's making late bets in the field which means he watches the dice land he sees it's a winner then he throws his money down the funny thing is when he's doing this we're watching and we're getting security stage to go grab him so it was no question he was found guilty it was this was easy the video never lies once they catch the cheaters on camera hotel security works with Nevada gaming to make the arrest we'll make a rest on the floor simply to send a message to both the cheers and to those who may be involved with them that they're not going to get away with this catching the cheater red-handed is important so speed is everything when it comes to the arrest remember the man who was swapping cards we had security go grab them they didn't grab them quick enough though and he was able to get his arm free he'd reached his jacket popped the card in his mouth and ate it as for the card marker the glass was still on his thumb when they made the arrest and the past poster once outnumbered he went down quietly the gambling that they are doing is that whether or not they're going to go to jail and how much time they're going to do you know you get caught that's that's it do your time if you're a criminal in your cheat going to jail is part of your job description [Music] there is another kind of Insider working Las Vegas and it's one that has casinos worried it's when a dealer crosses over to the dark side even the most sophisticated tools can't always stop the casino Insider who knows exactly how to cheat fast and cheap big about 30 percent of our arrests involve employees one way or another we have seen numerous cheats involving millions of dollars with the dealer or other pit Personnel the story of one of Vegas's most inFamous Cheats begins far from the bright lights of the strip in 2002 with a dealer named fontron who works at the small cyclon casino near San Diego California he was a gambler through and through he dealt cards at sequan for a while but then he got fired armed with an advantage of knowing how security works from the inside Tron hatches his plan to cheat the casino but to do it he needs help and he's got it in all the right places his wife van Tran is also a dealer at cyclon and her brother Tai Tran just happens to manage the Asian table games taitran knew intimately how each game worked so he can help develop their Protocols of dealing for security what have you he also hired all the dealers so that's where his knowledge came in the Tran gang focuses on Minnie baccarat a table game where two hands are dealt per round one is for the player and the other is for the house or the bank players can bet on either hand the hand closest to a nine wins rules allow players to openly track and record cards and winning hands it's part of the game so you can have a sheet of paper writing each of the order of the cards that coming out which is kind of how they got the idea of tracking cards because you're allowed to do it a member of the Tran organization tracks the cards then the dealer who's also a member uses his skill set to pull off one of the oldest tricks in the book the false shuffle a false Shuffle is simply making it appear that you're mixing the cards but you're really not [Music] this is Van Tran so you can see there's a large chunk of cars that are protected right here and as we can see it's going to be on the top of the deck so she continues to have a very thick stack of cards throughout the whole shuffling process where she's protecting it let's suppose that you recorded the exact order of these cards as the dealer picked them up the dealers in the scam and the dealer keeps the cards in order so for this demonstration I'm going to put these cards face up on the top of the discard rack on the next round same thing would happen cards you get picked up in order now comes time for the shuffle and the dealer would Mark the Spot and then Shuffle to it all of these shuffles will be fine no fall Shuffles not a full Shuffle now here's the group that was recorded this is the only Shuffle that will be false and watch carefully it looks as though I'm Shuffling the cards in fact I'm not mixing the cards [Music] after the dealer finishes the false Shuffle the Tran players at the table must wait for their tracker to Signal them that the winning sequence of cards are in play because they know the exact order of these cards and who's going to win all bets are dramatically increased they only needed one person who only knew what the betting scheme was so that one person will make a bet and then everyone else that's with them at the table will make that same day all of a sudden the entire table wins to perfect their skills the Tran organization does a number of test runs at the small quiet cyclon Casino at first they stay low-key keeping winnings down to a few hundred dollars but eventually surveillance spots van tran not following shuffling procedure she is fired but by then they know their scam works and they're ready for larger action by early 2003 the Tran organization has expanded to include about 15 family members soon they take their cheat on the road to Cache Creek Casino near Sacramento California before long they are making big money in just one month they clear 158 thousand dollars they want more but to do it they'll need more insiders who are willing to fix the deck because they went from jurisdiction to jurisdiction they had to have different dealers cheating in every jurisdiction they would go into different casinos and they would just have a friendly chat up with the dealers they tended to go for the people that might already have had a gambling problem so they would pick out their vulnerabilities if they might have some financial situation or if they're just looking for a little bit of excitement if someone is on the fence about joining the organization the Tran recruiters get creative sometimes van Tran would go into the casinos and kind of flirt with the guys trying to get them to well maybe we could date a little bit if you want to try doing this cheat with us they would just play up that it's a great lifestyle you're gonna be so happy that you join our organization and all you have to do is learn how to do the shuffle [Music] by 2003 the Tran organization consists of several former dealers and card trackers they all have inside knowledge of how to fix the game of mini baccarat and conceal it from anybody watching they crisscross the country scamming smaller casinos winning thousands every time they will sit there for two or three decks possibly and then they will leave and they'll leave the city or the state [Applause] [Music] the Tran gang is long gone by the time Casino accountants notice something is wrong they have it down to a science where they want to know how each table is doing so that's where the first inkling that something was wrong came from because the table might lose eight percent a night um and all of a sudden this specific table with the specific dealer is losing 15 to 20 a night so they went to their video and realized it was all the same people playing since a lot of these gamblers that are cheating they're all using their player clubs cards to get the free perks that go along with it so the casinos have a record of exactly who was playing at the table how much they cashed in for how much they won at a gaming conference in 2003 Casino security directors start to compare notes there had been intelligence in the community that members of the Tran family and Fung Trung were up to something one of the security operators at Cache Creek Casino outside Sacramento had noticed that there was a certain group of people that were doing doing something wrong at their tables they think they're cheating they don't know exactly what the FBI begins trying to document the Tran organization's activities the gang runs their operation with military Precision using cell phones and hand signals to communicate with each other in this video gang member Willie Tran is tracking cards and calling them back to a van where they are being recorded he keeps his hair long to cover the cell phone earpiece he would bring his girlfriend with him so that his girlfriend would be playing and he could be reading off the cards but to anyone around them it looks like he's just talking to his girlfriend after months of honing their skills they are confident and believe they are ready to cheat Vegas they knew that Las Vegas would have been a cash cow for them if they could figure out how to get through their security the security in Vegas is world class and they knew it in late 2004 the Tran gang pulls into Vegas but their reputation precedes them we were aware of the Tran organization that they had been operating in California and we thought that they were the possibility they would come to Las Vegas we were not aware that Mr Tran here was going to show up but in fact he was one of the ones that was running the operation here in Las Vegas in the video we see fat recording the order of the cards as they are played after the false Shuffle Tran Waits patiently for the portion of the deck that was never shuffled those are the cards they have the exact order for there are three members of the organization that are sitting around the table and fat is on the edge signaling to these guys the cards that fat had recorded earlier start to play it on the table here's how it unfolds fat trans signals to the table that it's time to bet the player in the center bets on the banker knowing it is the guaranteed winner soon thereafter other Tran insiders put down Barger Wagers on the same Banker bed this is an instance where they won eighteen thousand dollars between the three of them after the hit fat quietly rips up his handwritten log of the card order and disposes it in two trash cans in different areas of the casino he doesn't know it but everywhere he goes he's on camera security collects the trash and pastes the baccarat log back together after three years of cheating across the country authorities have what no one else could get the hard evidence to bust the gang Insider fat Tran they were on him like a hawk at that point in December before they arrested him for conspiracy to cheat and several of his members including the dealer at Palace Station their greed basically of wanting more money and wanting more casinos to cheat at was their downfall although weakened after the Vegas bust the remaining members of the organization still won't give up the cheat but once again they'll need to find dirty dealers on the inside there were definitely more visible and then since they were spreading out across the country trying to find these casinos they were introducing a lot of new people to this scheme who went immediately to their security and their supervisor saying there's this group out here and they're wanting to cheat the AI also knows the gang needs dealers and are ready to help them find one this is the actual undercover footage from the FBI sting as they catch Insider fontron trying to recruit a dealer we have a confidential informant who actually was a former dealer that was approached by the trans he got caught and now he's trying to work his off the beef and he's introducing an undercover agent who is this other gentleman the undercover agent is posing as someone that's a dealer you know what do we do surveillance cannot see here fungi is describing to his prospective dealer too that you really need to know what's happening in a casino and what's happening to security and what happens with the protocol to get away with things you only steal like once a month but Tron like most Crooks can't seem to practice what he preaches and in the same breath that he talks about being low-key he brags about The Spoils of his cheating he didn't have seven cars in myself so for real okay he's like Park everywhere in front of my garage everybody know me in May 2007 armed with overwhelming video evidence the authorities move in on the rest of the Tran organization fontron and 46 other members of the gang are indicted for racketeering money laundering and Theft fontron is sentenced to 70 months in prison and ordered to pay back millions of dollars to the casinos and the IRS Tai Tran is sentenced to 54 months in prison in January 2011 van Tran pleads guilty to racketeering charges and is awaiting sentencing prove that they achieved seven million dollars over the course of the scheme we do believe that they took more than that but we are all to prove 7 million not every Insider comes from the casino in the world of betting on professional and college sports all it takes is an athlete who crosses the line to become the ultimate Insider sports betting is big business in Las Vegas in just one year 2.4 billion dollars was legally wagered at casino sportsbooks and where there is money there are cheaters I would say basketball would be the sport that would be easiest to do some business with because you get one or two key players and they play a bad game or or they don't suit up that affects the game dramatically Through The Years Vegas sports books have had to deal with fixed fights horse races basketball baseball and football games sometimes at the hand of a crooked player owner or referee so the action on each of these games is closely monitored because an intentionally missed goal can cost Millions [Music] Steven Smith of Dallas Texas has been shooting Hoops since he was six years old my mother said once I laid eyes on it that was my Sport and I just I had to have a ball in my hand at 40 Smith seems like any other weekend warrior it's hard to imagine he was once the main player in one of the most notorious college basketball betting scandals to ever hit Las Vegas when you're in your early twenties and you're immature and all you think about is girls money and stuff like that you don't think about the consequences thank you in 1994 senior Stephen Smith is captain of the Arizona State Sun Devils basketball team and a rising star hundits are already considering number 44 a lock for the NBA draft we started talking about NBA NBA I just kept working hard I'm just hoping you know one day that my dream will come true Smith wants the NBA and everything that goes with it but living large costs money and Smith has none a young immature athlete is going to school full scholarship only getting four five hundred dollars a month then he meets 22 year old campus bookie Benny Silman who introduces him to the world of sports betting so I got the campus he was always around the basketball players but unfortunately Smith is not nearly as good at gambling as he is at shooting hoops soon Smith is ten thousand dollars in debt to the local bookie with no money he's in trouble until bookie sillman offers him a way out to fix the game it's like just control you know the outcome so you can win the game you just make sure you don't win by however the points I tell you by one baby that's right what sillman is talking about is called Point shaving and it's illegal at the time Smith had never heard of it but he figured as long as he didn't have to lose the game no harm no foul you know where I'm from you say you know gambling you talk about shooting dies playing poker I wasn't educated to point shaving to understand Point shaving you have to understand sports betting as strange as it sounds casinos don't care who wins or loses they just want half of the gamblers to bet on one team and half on the other every game is not an even game one team is usually superior to the other so we attach points to it so it balances the betting out the most common bet is based on the point difference between the two teams at the end of the game to make teams even for betting every game is handicapped a point spread or betting line is used to level the playing field so the underdog can be equal to the favorite the point differential or spread is determined by Vegas oddsmakers who are hired by the casinos to figure out how many points a team will be favored by so that Bettors on both teams have an equal opportunity to win the bet Point shaving changes the odds when a player or group of players makes sure that their team's margin of Victory is less than the point spread determined by The Bookies in order for Smith to get out of debt sillman will tell him how many points he can win by and no more for taking part in the scam sillman agrees to wipe out Smith's debt and pay him twenty thousand dollars for each game he shaves so I'm thinking I can win the game oh okay cool [Applause] [Music] on January 27 1994 Silman and Smith kick-start Their scam against Oregon State Las Vegas oddsman set Smith's ASU as 14 point favorites sillman and gang bed heavily on Oregon State Smith fixes the game by slacking on defense the Sun Devils win but only by six points since ASU doesn't cover the Vegas spread Stillman wins [Applause] [Music] after the game campus bookie sillman delivers Smith's payout twenty thousand dollars for a job well done did I accept the money yes I was trying to live that fast life sillman and Smith fixed two more games without drawing any heat flush with success sillman lets a lot of people in on the secret sillman's friends from Chicago and New Jersey fly to Vegas for the next game March 5th 1994 Saturday morning Smith and his Sun Devils prepare to face the University of Washington at home there's nothing extraordinary about this game yet in Las Vegas College age gamblers hit the sports books as soon as they opened they were like a bull in a china shop when they were making their bets they just kept coming repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly instead of like every couple hours maybe popping in and making a play although the Sun Devils are 11 Point favorites somehow all the wage ring is on Washington in response to the lopsided bedding the point spread which is also called the line keeps dropping as oddsmakers desperately try to even out the action the line on the Arizona State game opened at 11 and it dropped to three by tip-off and that type of movement on a college basketball game is unheard of Sportsbook managers are concerned they check with the other casinos they found that pattern of betting was only here in Las Vegas and was all over town at that time there was no knowledge that a crime was being committed we just knew that something odd was happening the betting action is way out of the ordinary suspicious sports book managers alert the NCAA and a normal pac-10 game a regular season we we might ride eight ten thousand somewhere in that general area but for this particular game we wrote well into the low six figures it was an unbelievable flurry of action on that game at tip-off the betting line has dropped so dramatically ASU can only win by two points or less for Smith to successfully throw the game the pressure is on at halftime Smith's fix is working the score Arizona State 25 Washington 23. [Applause] [Music] Sun Devils coach Bill freeder is given the heads up that something is not right in the locker room the coach confronts Smith the team's captain seems very yeah I can't say it on camera but it's a bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep going on be afraid to get angry after frieder's halftime tongue lashing Smith abandons the point shaving scheme [Applause] it was over my second half and blow him out [Applause] most observers reported this game as a game of two halves the first half ASU was totally inept and the second half they were you know final four quality team the Sun Devils Crush Washington 73-55 everyone who bet on Washington is out of luck Smith knows he has to face an angry sillman who lost all of his bets since we lost the game I'm thinking you know the same money he was giving me I had to give to him I go home Benny's there so I'm saying don't worry about it man I got your money upstairs so I was prepared to give him forty thousand dollars he's like nah he's bigger than that what the hell you talking about scared and nobody's just gonna lose and everybody be still alive he left town at night I didn't talk to nobody my best friend my mother I didn't tell nobody in Las Vegas Agents from the Nevada Gaming Control Board are closing in after weeks of forensic auditing of the sports book records They uncover evidence of unusually high betting on the March 5th game and several more ASU games before that if you're taking advantage of the knowledge of the outcome of an event to then defraud a casino or a sports book then you're guilty of fraud three months later Smith wins athlete of the year [Music] as for the scam rumors of the point-shaving persist but nothing comes of it and Smith thinks it's behind him I thought I was gonna beat it then in June 1994 Smith's big moment arrives the NBA draft he can finally cash in on his talents legally but now the Whispers of throwing a game are no longer Whispers And the NBA doesn't want to play with Smith thought I was untouched but that wasn't reality all pac-10 team captain highest scorer in ASU history number 44 Steven Smith goes undrafted Smith spends the next three years playing minor league ball everywhere from Paris France to Sioux Falls South Dakota trying to rebuild his reputation it takes years but in 1997 the Dallas Mavericks come calling foreign Smith's not the only one whose luck has changed in Las Vegas after years of investigating the Nevada Gaming Control Board and the FBI crack the point-shaving case they managed to work back through people that they had indicted people that had given them information to one of the players on the ASU team I didn't think it would blow up like like it did and it blew up huge what was it the back please and the fears came to me and I found out the numbers and it was over 1.3 million dollars lost on the game that was scary Smith was in the NBA at the time that he was indicted so it cost him his professional basketball career in November 1999 Smith goes before a judge and gets a year in prison and a new number going from Steven Smith to zero one zero four four seven four eight you know that was my Federal Prison number I mean if that ain't real I don't know what the hell is really Smith is released from prison in 2000. we're on a European Cup they'll never talk about that they'll never talk about the fact I had a 3.5 GPA and I was a male student at the end of the year I beat I feel mix who's now one of the top golfers in the world they don't talk about that they don't talk about the records I still have read to this day not only in the pac-10 but at Arizona State you just only here Stephen Smith the one who Porsche it's just something I got to live with for the rest of my life you know [Music] there are two kinds of insiders when it comes to cheating Vegas those who are cheaters and those who are watching cheaters a cheat when he comes into a casino is very different than a tourist he's looking for something he's observing the dealers he's watching what's happening he doesn't see the lights he doesn't see the flashing signs he sees what we're doing and the money he's going to take from us and here are seven of the most common cheats demonstrated in detail by our own insiders these scams are what the surveillance professionals are looking for every day [Music] of all the ways there are to Mark playing cards in play the simplest thing is to bend the playing cards I'm going to show you an example of how the bad guys Bend cards in play in a casino you notice a high Cardinal low card and simply in the action of either hitting or asking for a card or tucking the cards under the money I just bent the playing cards you'll notice that one corner does not touch the surface of the table that identifies it to the cheater as a high card you notice that this corner does touch the table and means it's a low card now I can tell High cards from low cards in future rounds of play then there's the trick Insider's call banging the paints they call face cards paints because there's more ink on the card it looks as though I'm just placing a bet when in fact I'm marking that little card with my knuckle and in the simple act of giving this chip to the dealer as a tip I Mark the playing card notice as I touch that card and say here dealer this is for you I've tapped the face of the face card with the Chip And I put a mark on the back of the playing card that can be seen and identified in future rounds of Play If I see a bump on the back of a card I know it's a high card I would therefore know that anything without a bump is a low card it helps me win by knowing whether I should hit if it's a small cart or stand if it's a big card but card games aren't the only ones surveillance officers have to scrutinize cheats can also tamper with dice games like craps this is an old school scam that was used to cheating a craft called dice switching in this example I brought my own dice from home this is going to be signified by the red colored Dice and the house dice will be the green color these dyes do not have any one two threes on them they only have four fives and sixes the I can't tell because when you put a die on the table everybody can only see three different sides at one time I'm looking at a four five six you're looking at a four five six the dealers look at a four five six the switch takes place when the casino dices pass through the cheater he would pick up the dice like this and then the Crooked dice are dropped to the table at the exact same time the casino dice I picked up it to the hand and then the Crooked dice are thrown down the layout so these dice can only roll the numbers eight nine ten eleven twelve and cannot lose watch ten twelve that was a great one I would have won a lot of money on that roll 11. that was a good one so you can see these dice are very dangerous but not all dice cheats rely on bogus dice some rely on good old-fashioned sleight of hand one of the most common methods of cheating at crafts is known as a slide shot this is where the cheater doesn't throw the dye it's being slid in this case I just want to slide a six and then my partner or myself we've been big on the field the field means if a 9 10 11 or 12 roll I win what would guarantee me a six on one die the only numbers that could hurt me here are the one and the two any other number I win and if the six rolls I win triple so I pick up these dice my thumb flips over the die and I get them in this position with a dice of Throne the back die is thrown legitimately but that six isn't being thrown it's being whipped out of the hand this whipping action gives the illusion that the dice is being drawn when in reality it's being spun so if I take that six when I throw it that six isn't being thrown as being slid along the layout this is definitely one of the better ways to take off a crap game for the simple reason is you're using the casino's own equipment against itself you're not bringing in anything from the outside hand mucking is the art of switching cards in play I'm going to show you how that switch might happen in the game of blackjack in order to switch cards you have to have one of the casino's cards so you steal the card in advance or corrupt someone to get you one of the cards and in this case I have one of the casinos Aces I add the ace to the game steal the six away and now voila I have the Blackjack and if I want to clean up then I go to the sleeve this next game is going to require a little teamwork what just happened right now is me and Jason both have bets down on the pass line as soon as I know that bet is going to win Chase is going to take over and I'm going to distract the dealer by asking a simple question at the right moment Taylor can I get change for 200 please thank you at the exact same time when the dealer was distracted I reached down and added money to my bet instead of winning 200 now I win 700. what you're going to see right now was a different form of past posting which you've seen before was me pressing my bet I had a bet and I added more called pressing past posting means I'm actually going to make a bet after the dice have been rolled I have one chip Palm to my hand that's the chip I'm gonna pass post and that's the chip that's invisible to the dealer so the moment I see a field one the chip that I hold to my hand is what I'm going to ask for change so as this chip comes down at the exact same time that's getting slapped that's getting dropped guaranteeing myself a short winner these are the game changers cheaters have been around since gambling began in the United States in the old west you had to see the cheat to catch it and Justice was Swift [Applause] Today thousands of cameras police every moment of every game that means cheaters have to be slicker than ever technology just seems to be never ending and the biggest challenge for us is to keep up with that technology it's a high-tech game of cat and mouse but every once in a while a criminal comes along who's able to fly completely under the radar and in the process changes the game forever these men and women would justify you know stealing in all sorts of ways the casino industry is dishonest or some other nonsense and that would talk themselves into being okay with stealing keeping track of the city's most notorious cheats is the job of the Nevada Gaming Control Board their version of the FBI's most wanted list called the black book was created in 1960 had six people that were originally put in it and they are all organized crime figures and these people were not allowed to enter any casino [Music] but as the old Mobsters died off a new generation of tech savvy cheats took over and they were added to the list you have to be a threat to the casino industry and there's about 37 or 38 in the black book right now most are career criminals who cheated the casinos for years before being caught whenever you make an arrest on someone from a law enforcement standpoint it's a success so that's kind of how I view putting someone in the Blackboard once you're in the book you have the right to dispute it but no one has ever won their way or or litigated their way out of it the only way you get out of the black book is to die then they take you out one of the most notorious cheats to ever make the book targets the city's Hardware it is an ongoing war in the industry between the manufacturers on the one side and the cheats on the other enter the city's biggest money makers in Vegas there are 120 000 working slot machines one for every five residents they're called one-armed Bandits because they're responsible for more than 75 percent of Casino profits and with all that money sitting on the casino floor slots are and always have been glittering beacons for cheats looking for a quick payout from the earliest days cheats have tried fooling the machines with slugs or coins attached to Strings that could then be pulled back out but as the machines became more sophisticated so did the cheats one of the most successful slot cheats of all time is a former TV repairman named Tommy Carmichael for more than two decades Carmichael designed tools that enabled him and other cheats to scam Millions from slot machines and every Vegas slot machine you see today was engineered with Tommy Carmichael in mind the devices that Tommy Carmichael could create would allow a very surreptitious entry of a machine and a very surreptitious breaching of the security features of the machine that were successful and I worked in a large population of the makes and models of slot machines out at that time this is 62 year old Carmichael he agreed to sit down for this exclusive interview to reveal how he took Vegas for a ride it was like a giant ATM uh just wherever you wanted to go for vacation you went to withdraw also The Story begins in Carmichael's TV repair shop a friend of his dropped by with a uh what he told him was a cheating device the cheese slot machines and it was called a top and bottom joint here's how the top and bottom joint works in 1980 slots had come a long way from the earliest machines originally slotted discs were attached to the ends of three spinning reels inside to hit a jackpot all of the slots had to line up perfectly and that's how slot machines got their name but on the newer machines levers are attached to the spinning reels these levers have metal contacts on the ends which rest against a fixed board that's also covered with contacts the contacts are wired to a circuit board and when a jackpot is won a circuit completes and turns on the motor of the hopper which dispenses the money cheating device brought into Carmichael's shop that day hot wires the Hopper's motor triggering a payout [Music] [Applause] device the top and bottom joint comes in two parts the bottom tool is made from a short piece of guitar string there's a small wire the winner in the bottom left corner of the uh of the machine and it went up against the circuit board that was in there the wire draws the current from the circuit board and sends a low wattage of electricity running through the slot machine then the top tool a piece of metal shaped like the number nine is inserted into the coin slot this completes an electrical circuit powerful enough to activate the hopper that dispenses money and the coins come flooding out Carmichael's friend is making money hand over fist in Vegas while Carmichael is barely scraping by in Tulsa he wants in on the action so he flies to Nevada to try his luck with his friend's device in 1980 security cameras aren't around to capture his activities in fact they won't be installed throughout casinos for more than nine years Carmichael sits down at a slot machine inserts the top and bottom joint and suddenly Tommy Carmichael has a new career cheating Vegas [Music] Carmichael begins commuting to Sin City to run his scam the machines held about 75 dollars back then on a good day by working all day long you might make two thousand dollars a day which was good money Carmichael's daily take is the equivalent of more than five thousand dollars today I'd stay out there and let somebody else run the shop I'd be out there a couple months at a time but when I'd come back seems like the shop never made any money so I finally just shut the shop down completely and and moved out there and started from that point actually Carmichael begins living large he makes and buys new friends you know you got Vegas and it's designed to separate you from your money which it's very good at so even though you're making larger money uh you're also spending larger money we go to the show we had some pretty good dinners for me fifteen eighteen hundred dollars for a meal is pretty good for four or five people found a way to make money faster and he didn't mind and probably enjoyed being a criminal and so he decided it was worth the risk beating the machines were never the problem it was the people around you without drawing attention you need to get this money out of the machine without them noticing it or hearing it or appearing that you're doing anything that was the more complicated part of the whole whole thing to avoid suspicion Carmichael never stays in one place too long for five years he hits casinos all over Vegas then in 1985 the casinos catch some Crooks using the top and bottom device in response slot machine manufacturers develop a way to recognize the surge of electricity the device creates they were putting Slow blow fuses and machines now if you tried to cheat it with the wire in it would blow this fuse and and it was shut down soon these upgraded slots are everywhere and for Carmichael it looks like the end for his easy money obviously making two or three 400 a day if you're lucky because everything was shrinking down to nothing to continue cheating he has to find the old machines to prey on he would hit several slot machines in one casino at a time and empty them um and this brought suspicion on him on July 4th 1985 Tommy Carmichael gets caught cheating while playing a slot machine near the strip enforcement agents from the Nevada Gaming Control Board arrest him I had the tools on me and when they searched me they asked me what's this not so well I believe you know and that was pretty much it Carmichael is in serious trouble cheating especially using the device sheet is a felony punishable by up to six years in prison for your first offense Carmichael is sentenced to five years but while most people find their careers on hold during a prison stay Tommy Carmichael uses it as a breeding ground for his next big scam prison is a situation you pick your own friends and there were slot players there and so we all kind of hung out together one of these slot sheets is a man named Michael balsamo balsamo has been in and out of prison since 1980. Michael balsamo is a career criminal that was his life that was his lifestyle and he had pretty much dedicated himself to cheating the casino industry Carmichael and balsamo realize they have a lot in common they were kind of a loose Association in the sense that one helped the other out and vice versa you scratch my back I'll scratch yours and they started devising a plan of getting together when they got out of prison in 1987 Tommy Carmichael is the first to be released his parole stipulated that he had to return to Tulsa and stay out of Vegas Carmichael has no intention of complying but since his TV business is long gone he needs a cover he makes a deal with a local contractor he had a construction site and I was supposed to be in a Salesman for the construction site so he was writing me a check and I would turn it in as my salary but I was actually was living in Las Vegas and every time I had to make a appearance from probation I would actually fly from Vegas to Tulsa here and uh make my appearance and then I get back on playing go back home to Vegas [Music] while he waits for Michael balsamo to get out of jail Carmichael cases out the casinos since his old tools no longer work Carmichael needs a new one that will fool the latest generation of slot machines he develops his boldest con yet impersonating a casino owner he would go to the actual manufacturers walk in make himself sound like he was some sort of a person in the market to buy some new slot machines and the sales people would open up the doors take things apart show it to him he would talk to engineers at trade shows they'd show on the guts of the machine for Carmichael two things are now clear one hot wiring the hopper will not be an option and two in order for him to even figure out how to beat this machine he'll need to buy one the Nevada regulatory system allows for the sales of slot machines there are stores where you can go buy a slot machine anybody can buy a slot machine the problem is the machine costs a thousand bucks and Carmichael is broke and so is Michael balsamo who also just got paroled they decide to raise the cash together by doing what they know they travel all over Nevada looking for the last of the old machines that they can still cheat we actually went and played the top and bottom joint the old tool that we've history on we've actually played nickels in order to get enough money to buy a new machine once he has it Carmichael gets to work Tommy Carmichael had the ability to take apart a slot machine interrogate its security features and develop techniques to sidestep them Carmichael soon realizes that the new machine has a weak point the counter that regulates the amount of coins that will be paid out he discovers that the counter can be overrun by tripping a tiny micro switch deep in the machine with the counter out of commission the machine just keeps spitting out money but Carmichael must create a tool that can access this switch no easy feat it took about six months to really come up with something really good on it and it was called a slider it was made out of a concrete trowel and it was about 11 and a half inches long and it was it was thin metal it went through an air hole in the machine once inside the slider has to slip underneath a secondary security door then turn 10 degrees to engage the micro switch but if Carmichael builds the tool with a fixed curve it will get hung up on the hundreds of wires inside before ever reaching the door this is a problem but Carmichael has a stroke of inspiration he threads piano wire through the nose of the tool so it can be adjusted after it passes beneath the door it works and it would slide into the micro switch and stop the count whenever so the machine is always paying you but it never knew how much it was paying because you could actually keep it from Counting with the slider Carmichael and balsamo are back in business they split up balsamo takes a slider and begins hitting casinos all over the country Carmichael stays to work Vegas the slider was making about a thousand dollars an hour because that's the speed that the machine would spit quarters out with the new device Carmichael is making money 10 times faster than he ever has before and for the next two years he enjoys all the spoils of his craft but then in 1989 the casinos find a new tool as well advancements in security camera technology mean the cameras can now be installed anywhere and in Vegas this means everywhere [Music] those are now able to closely monitor all aspects of gaming including slot machines for Carmichael and balsamo avoiding the cameras becomes the number one priority they would case and establishment they would look for obstructions with cameras because the marketing department they would hang signs they would make the place beautiful they would put up flowers all of a sudden you know some of the best cameras for a particular area were masked well the Tommy and Carmichaels of the world would come into a casino and that's what they were looking for Carmichael gets away with it for a year but then in 1990 surveillance officers notice him acting suspiciously at a machine they call in Agents from the Nevada Gaming Control Board who follow Carmichael home and stake out his apartment building they were sitting in the parking lot and was going to try to catch me in the casino but Carmichael gets a lucky break and for some reason that night they pulled off me to go do something else and when they came back the next day I was gone I had moved into a house and of course we were getting everything under different names and everything so when they came back I had disappeared on them it's a close call Carmichael will have to be more careful in the future months later casinos unveil the latest slots designed to protect the money counter overnight Carmichael slider becomes obsolete in the game of cheats versus casinos the casinos are back on top but once again Carmichael isn't willing to give up the fight I was asked one time did I forever feel guilty about about taking the money from the casinos and I have actually asked myself I said you know you try to reason these things out and I'm thinking well [Music] honestly do I and I I felt no I don't the gaming industry is so misleading with cards or live type gaming it's happening in front of you and you've got some kind of fair chance when it comes to slots you have no chance in 1990 Carmichael is ready to cheat again but there's a problem his cheating device is less the slots mechanical counters have been replaced by state-of-the-art optic sensors this optic with a little light beam and what it did had a transmitter and it would transmit a beam across to the receiver and the coin would pass through this light and that was how we could count the money once the machine has counted the allotted payout it stops the flow of coins so I came up with a tool that actually went up in there with a little light on it and Supply the beam alike to the receiver so that when the coin passed the machine never knew it as long as the light was lit the machine was not counting coins as they came out of the machine so they got a lot of coins that they weren't entitled to Carmichael dubs his new cheating device the light one and with it the game has changed again this time in his favor Carmichael also realizes that he can make more money outside the casino by selling light wands his customers fellow cheats and Hustlers to make one probably cost you two or three dollars he would sell them for ten or twelve thousand dollars quite a markup [Laughter] with the illicit sales of light wands plus his own slot cheating Carmichael is making more money than ever before oh it was fun it was a lot of fun it was nothing but uh Disneyland more or less it was just a great big party most of the time Tommy Carmichael's operation was a huge threat to the casino industry because he had so many cheaters involved using devices that he had created they were stealing thousands and thousands of dollars a day but Carmichael doesn't restrict himself to just cheating Vegas he and his fellow scammers take the light ones on the road they went all over the United States and we'd drive up to Reno just for something to do or Lake Tahoe or Atlantic City or Biloxi he hung out with a drug crowd they partied a lot remember at their core they're all common so it's not like they were buddy buddy like you know it wasn't like they were a Seal Team where everybody trusted everybody they were waiting for the knife in the back back but with so many people using Carmichael's light wands there is more room for error light wines get stuck in machines and abandoned only to be found by Casino workers who hand them over to the Nevada Gaming Control Board here's the actual device the black shrink tubing and black electrical tape are on there because we had to repair the device that had become broken just now Julie's going to demonstrate how it's inserted through the corn return and positioned properly inside the game and notice that the credit meter remains at six credits go ahead and cash out gaming agents create a video to show slot machine manufacturers how their machines have been compromised thought of the six credits that the game thinks it paid out these are the quarters obviously significantly more than six when they realized what was happening the slot machine industry introduced a delay so if you heard a payout and where the coins are following about every six or seven seconds there would be a slight delay the delay was to how smart the light beam and so the light beam would stay on and the delay would say whoops there should be no light so the machine would shut down the good guys are ahead again but not for long Carmichael modifies the light wand so the cheater can quickly turn off the device during the lag time you just had an off and on switch it was probably the most simple electrical circuit there is problem solved it's back to business as usual but then in 1996 alert surveillance officers finally catch Carmichael in the act they noticed the money was coming out and the foreign count was stopped of the machine and here we go again here comes the security Carmichael responds quickly he pulls the light wand from the machine and I'd sling the tool and the tool goes through across the casino well the security I'll go over there and they're looking all over the place for this tool can't find the tool I told him I said there is no tool but eventually the light wand is found it looks like Carmichael's luck has finally run out or has it but they didn't have a case because where did that tool come from I mean is it mine or is it somebody else's they already had or I had a real good attorney the prosecutor didn't feel there was a sufficient evidence the surveillance cameras were not on the machines enough to show him actually using the device in the machine and authorities can't bust him on being in Las Vegas illegally since his parole expired four years earlier so they dropped the charges against them Carmichael has eluded justice but once again he's high on the radar at the Nevada Gaming Control Board and his next misstep could easily be his last [Music] Carmichael keeps his operation undercover then in 1999 prison buddy Michael balsamo re-enters the picture he had done well for himself with Carmichael's cheating devices in the past and he's eager to take advantage of Carmichael's latest technology I think Tommy Carmichael would tell you that his fatal mistake was involving Michael balsamo in his cheating group because balsamo was kind of out of control and didn't really care what he did or how he did it balsamo has big plans arms with the light one he takes off for fresh Casino territory throughout the U.S three months later balsamos arrested and the light wand is confiscated and turned over to the FBI an investigation is launched when agents pull balsamo's phone records a number from Las Vegas keeps showing up Tommy Carmichaels the Nevada Gaming Control Board teams with FBI agents to tap Carmichael's phone yeah I've got some incredible news it's days of cheating Vegas are coming to an end but instead of pouncing right away agents listen goes in through the coin slot Carmichael who has no idea authorities are on to him is hard at work on a new cheating device because once again slot machine manufacturers have caught up to his game-changing devices they've just introduced machines called ticket in ticket out the ticket and ticket out is when you win money instead of winning money you get a ticket and then you go and cash the ticket in Carmichael's light wand is useless because the new slots have no coin release to manipulate so he buys a ticket in ticket out machine like the older slots the machine still accepts bills and coins so Carmichael devises a tool to trick the slot machine he calls it the tongue it was like a tongue depressor and it actually went in where the coins went in and what I was doing is I was taking over the coin acceptor with a uh with this device Carmichael's tool takes advantage of a flaw in the design of the machine's Optical counting system after a coin is put in it falls straight down past a series of three lights but Carmichael discovers he can trick the counter by moving his tool back and forth in front of the Middle Light by blinking the center light even if the other two were off it wouldn't matter it would think that coins were going through that path stuck together in less than a second Carmichael's tongue tool triggers the machine into giving him hundreds of dollars worth of playing credits it's the same as sticking money in and now you cash it out it's their problem it's a new device and I've just created Carmichael asked several of his fellow cheaters to test the device and help him work out the Kinks they're called the tongue we would follow them to these locations and watch them do it steal money it's a very backed off surveillance package but we're doing it for a reason we were building a bigger case the Tipping Point the reason that we dropped the hammer on them is that they had perfected successfully tested a 25 cent coin device and they were upgrading the thing to a five dollar coining device five dollar machine can lose lots and lots of money in a very short period of time it had the potential for millions of dollars worth of losses we were going to shoot it making a couple million dollars a piece and and then just retire it this one works completely different everything else went up Carmichael still has no idea the feds are on to him he is moving fast so now the FBI has to act Carmichael flies to Atlantic City to score some easy cash agents are waiting for him he is caught red-handed with his tools and arrested in 2000 the cheater who changed the security game by defeating every bit of Technology he encountered pleads guilty to running an illegal gambling Enterprise always looking for a good angle Carmichael gets a lighter sentence by agreeing to show authorities how all his tools work it was fun I mean 20 years it was 20 years of this go to the wheels fall off you know but there are still dozens of other cheaters out there using the tools Carmichael created and one of the boldest is Michael balsamo who has now taught his entire family to steal Michael balsamo was about Michael balsamo and he got a lot of people into hot water in Las Vegas balsamo's wife Stephanie and his mother-in-law levana soon mastered the art of slot cheating they used the light wand preying on older casinos that haven't upgraded to the ticket in machines yet surveillance footage shows the family in action Stephanie was the one who was primarily doing the work she was the one who was stealing inserting the cheating device collecting the money the role of her mother was to sit next to her and have a very large purse put in a strategic position where it was a blocking agent so that the cameras could not see exactly what was going on but all of it was orchestrated to draw attention away from the activity that they were doing which was cheating Stephanie balsamo is extremely Adept at using the light wand it is literally less than a second maneuver to get it from her purse without you just see her hand go in her purse typically come out of her purse and go into the hopper if you watch it in real time you will never see it she is that good and that fast when the video is slowed down you can barely make out the edge of the light wands handle the way it's designed it fits in the palm of her hand and it follows the curve of her finger so that you don't see it for at least a year the balsamo family wins the Battle of cheats versus casinos but the game is far from over on April 28 2006 balsamo's wife Stephanie and her mother draw the suspicions of security officers all over Southern Nevada in less than an hour they had hit three separate casinos 10 miles apart and they had never ever lost at least Stephanie and everything if she sat down at a machine she walked away with buckets of coins after reviewing hours of surveillance video gaming officials finally have enough evidence to bust them on June 5th 2006 Michael balsamo his wife Stephanie and his mother-in-law levana are arrested and charged with several counts of manufacturing and possessing a cheating device in 2008 they all go to trial balsamo's mother-in-law is convicted but given probation balsamo's wife Stephanie is convicted and sentenced to between 16 and 32 years in prison as for Michael balsamo he never made it to trial while out on bail he disappears Michael balsamo fled to Argentina we received reports from his family members that he passed away there's some doubt that he in fact has died because he is such a scam artist so to this day he still is listed as being alive in Vegas at least balsamo is out of the picture and Carmichael is back in Oklahoma banned from ever entering a casino in Nevada again as for slots they continue to evolve to become more secure the slot machines are computerized today they're computers and so to cheat a slot machine this day and age you pretty much have to be a computer expert a hacker and without question there is someone like Tommy Carmichael trying to find a way to beat them Tommy Carmichael and Michael balsamo spent the better part of two decades cheating Vegas there is no way to know for sure exactly how much they stole but experts believe it was in the millions and in an ironic twist of fate Tommy Carmichael the slot cheat Mastermind who is now banished to Tulsa still isn't done with Vegas he has one more hit Carmichael develops and patents an anti-cheating device which he tries to Market to the casinos they have been approved by Gaming and it had all the licensing and everything done to it soon as they found out that I was the inventor of it I said now the gaming industry which had lost Millions thanks to Carmichael and his inventions wants nothing more to do with him it is game over Tommy Carmichael is a very bright person who had he used his intelligence for good probably would have been a much richer man than he is today but it's not just cheaters with technical know-how the casinos have to look out for other criminals changed the game by using sheer force the heart of every casino is the cage a highly secure area where money is counted and chips and tokens can be exchanged for cash the cage this is run a lot like a bank but honestly this is more secure than any bank this is where all the money is so we take our security here more seriously than any other place for years cages were considered Rock Solid fortresses even though a few unarmed Casino guards a couple of cameras and a dark reputation were their only protection it was perceived that organized crime had a lot of influence in Las Vegas and that they were owners or part owners involved in casinos popular consensus was that anybody who robbed the casino would end up dead the next day buried out in the desert someplace but in the 1990s corporations started building and buying casinos cages still had Millions on hand but security hadn't changed and without the Mythic layer of mob protection the once impenetrable Fortress became vulnerable no one knew it but a violent outside force was about to change the game of cage security forever The Aladdin Casino tourists work the slots players huddle around the gaming tables at 9 00 PM black and white surveillance cameras capture a suspicious group entering the casino they've got masks on they've got guns they start yelling hitting people knocking people down they make their way to the cage small enough to dive under the 15-inch clearance below the cage bars they open up all the drawers grab all the money they could as quick as they could as they ransacked the cage Casino staff offered no resistance they're not supposed to fight these guys just let them take it back off it's no amount of money is worth your life [Applause] the thugs Inside the Cage leap out and race for the door in less than two minutes the robber's bag 47 grand in cash this was the first time anything like this had happened a flat out takeover of the Casino cage area Casino cameras see it all but after review of the grainy black and white footage they still don't know the identities of the masked Bandits they could see enough skin color under their masks to know they were black but nobody was going to be able to identify we didn't have any real leads to go on there's really no physical evidence that would lead us to anybody two days later LAPD was serving 28 search warrants related to a gang homicide the police rolled up at one of these locations and bad comes flying out lands practically at their feet they look in the bag and there's a bunch of Aladdin Casino money wrappers in there corsets our first clue that the guys who robbed the casino had a connection to LA but no one is sure exactly what the connection is the LAPD immediately calls Las Vegas Police and since the investigation has crossed state lines the FBI gets involved all three agencies Focus attention on a potential La gang connection but nothing comes of it and the investigation goes cold [Music] two months later the flamingo another casino with easy access to the cage is hit four guys come running in guns out all masked up off the counter grabbed the money they all leave getting a stolen van takeoff less than two minutes and they were out of there with 150 000. once again the robbers leave behind no clues little evidence and no suspects desperate to avoid a mass Exodus of customers Vegas increases camera coverage and adds Security on Casino floors the reason that everybody was so concerned about this robbery series was that they didn't want it to affect tourism they didn't want anybody not to feel safe in a hotel in Las Vegas and that's what this gang was making people feel unsafe they were unsafe nobody wants to go to hotel that you know it looks like you're in Baghdad but there is no stopping the bandits two days later they hit Harris only this time they amp up the attack four young men come running in they pissed a whip a lady they hit another guy in the head two of them ball at the counter they grab another guy by the hair hold a gun to his head will the tube behind the counter rifle the drawers jump back over the counter they all run outside with a little over ninety seven thousand dollars they crashed through a gate and they go into the Harris parking garage where they switch to another vehicle police officer sees this van coming out with its lights off three in the morning he starts following it the van takes off the chase is on they get the helicopter up the squad cars converge and there's a 20-minute high-speed chase through Vegas the subjects Ram a police car that set a roadblock lose control hit a fire Hydra and crash into a telephone pole and everybody's scattered police K-9 units pursue on foot 30 harrowing minutes later they bust all four thieves plus the getaway driver unmasked authorities discovered that the terrifying Casino cage attackers are just teenagers from Los Angeles gangs hoping to build up their street credibility The Gangs will use kids for a lot of stuff they'll use them as Lookouts they'll use them as couriers they'll use them to pass messages sometimes make deliveries or carry money because they know that even if they get caught the kid will have no incentive to talk because he won't be looking at that much time he's a juvenile plus the younger they were the Dumber they were to put themselves at this kind of risk that means one thing to authorities we didn't have the guys who had been setting this up and was responsible for robbery after robbery so that's what we were trying to uncover the cops put the squeeze on the attack crew interrogating them for hours in search of the ringleaders but whoever is running this dangerous scam has been careful the teenagers don't even know the names of the guys they're working for a year goes by it took so long the time kind of worked in our favor because these gang members they were continually getting in trouble with the law and when they would get jammed up bad enough they'd be looking for a way to get out they'd be thinking well you know I I know a little bit about this casino robbery so we got a lot of bits of information from a lot of people and we put the whole thing together [Music] authorities uncover not one but two ringleaders behind the violent cage raids Melvin Foster and Chet Govan are unlikely Partners from rival Los Angeles gangs loyalty to the gang really goes out the window when it comes to making money Melvin Foster was a member of the Los Angeles Bloods gang he had gotten the idea for the robberies after he traveled to Vegas and recognized a serious flaw in Casino cages elephant Foster was well aware that most of the casinos didn't have bars and stuff they looked more like a bank counter but there was a lot more money behind the counter than you would find at the typical Bank Foster had mapped out a plan he started by choosing casinos with cages close to exits and with the fewest cameras and security guards Foster was ready but he wanted to increase his odds of success for that he needed a partner someone Street Smart someone like him but who could he trust family he turned to his cousin Dion Chappelle Chappelle suggested a partnership with her boyfriend from the Rival Crips gang his name was Chet Govan who went by the street name short dog foreign 1994 Los Angeles on a normal day these two gang members would kill each other before they would ever talk guys are supposed to be Rivals supposed to be trying to tear each other's head off but next you know they rob that kind of activity together Foster had the mind and Govan had the medal they needed each other even if no one could understand the partnership on the street Foster and Govan used young gang members from LA's toughest neighborhoods to storm the Vegas casino cages unchallenged finding young men in the streets that were willing to get involved especially if they thought they could make a quick Buck it was really easy because they know they're willing to go out and do something crazy after the heist the gang used two Escape cars the first was for the getaway from the casino the second car was waiting in a parking garage then they switched into that car with the money and headed to Los Angeles the masterminds waited nearby Czech Grove Anna Melton Foster wouldn't be anywhere near the casino during the Rivalry when they got word The Heist was pulled off Govan and Foster made their way back to South Central Los Angeles in their own car this way they would never be connected with either the robbers the physical evidence from the robbery or even the money incredibly Foster and Govan didn't give a dime to the Brazen young gang members who pulled off the heists the guys they're working for are not planning on sharing it with them I'm going to use them up until they can't use them anymore you know they move on to the next youngster that want to do something stupid for them once Foster and Govan are arrested the two Rivals quickly flip on each other the authorities now have enough to put them away Foster gets 18 and a half years in prison Govan is sentenced to 22. the five men who we had caught after Harris robbery they all pled and they got between 10 and 18 years apiece for Las Vegas the robberies were game changers when it comes to cages in today's modern Casino the cages are deliberately set in the back far from exits making a Fast getaway virtually impossible they are also being watched from every angle I have more cameras per square foot in this area than anywhere in the casino I've got 60 cameras in this small area I have cameras embedded in the bars but in addition to that we're more Vigilant in front of this cage than we ever were before we have security that is staged here 24 7 not just one officer several the cage interior has also been revamped making the money less accessible because because those those individuals were able to slide right into the cage we had to look at that and say that really didn't work did it it was a very glaring weakness that nobody had really thought of but when it was demonstrated to us at that point all the bars came down lower so that somebody could not do that anymore the lowered bars are only the First new layer of protection the initial door you walk in to get into the cage leads you into the chip Bank area where they're going to be conducting transactions taking chips to the table bringing chips back that have been redeemed from a game today the cage is no longer an open area it's a Labyrinth of multiple rooms beyond that door that's gonna have a cage going into the main cage but then next to that is going to be another door so you go in one door that door is going to close and lock behind you both doors can't be open at the same time and then to get actual entry to the cage you have to go through another door and then usually behind that we're gonna have our count areas so you're going to be going through three to four doors to get to the count area where we're actually counting the money

Channel: Wonder

Views: 1,159,565

Keywords: Wonder, wonder channel, survivial videos, survival stories, i shouldn't be alive, wonder i shouldn't be alive, outdoor channel, extreme documentary, cheating vegas full episodes, cheating vegas documentary, cheating vegas season 1 episode 4, cheating vegas season 1 episode 1, cheating vegas season 1 episode 3, cheating vegas season 1 episode 2, cheating vegas roulette, cheating vegas s1 ep1 wonder, cheating vegas craps, vegas cheaters caught, vegas cheaters that got away

Id: JV7d_9S2mBs

Length: 139min 29sec (8369 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 24 2022