Las Vegas: Playground of Cheaters | Cheating Vegas | TRACKS

in Las Vegas more than 35 million people try to strike it rich every year most leave empty-handed or worse but cheats and Vegas are always looking for new ways to beat the system and Vegas security is just as committed to stopping them cheaters cheats because basically they have the feeling that I am special because I can do this they'll say there's an opportunity for me to make money they'll go home and they'll practice it practice a practice it come in and beat us but every time the cheaters think they have the system beat the system gets better these are the crimes that push Vegas to up their game 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 the technology just seems to be never end 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 they 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 it 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 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 but once you're in the book you have the right to dispute it but no one has ever won their way 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 moneymakers in Vegas there are 120,000 working slot machines one for every 5 residents they're called one-armed bandits because they're responsible for more than 75% 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 pay out from the earliest days cheats have tried fooling the machines with slugs were 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 sheets 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 a missionary that were successful and 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 just wherever you wanted to go up a vacation you went to withdraw also the story begins in Carmichael's TV repair shop a friend of his dropped by with a what he told him was a cheating device to 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 the cheating device brought in to Carmichael shop that day Hotwire's the hoppers motor triggering a payout this 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 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 friends 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 seventy-five dollars back then on a good day by working all day long you might make three 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 of months at a time but when I'd come back it seemed like the shop never made any money so I finally just shut the shop down completely and and moved out there 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 you're also spending larger money we build the show he had some pretty good dinner for me fifteen eighteen hundred dollars per meal of pretty good for four or five people he found a way to make money faster and he didn't mind and probably enjoy being a criminal and so he decided it was worth the risk being 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 catched 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 in machines and if you tried to cheat it with the wire end it would blow this fuse and and never shut down soon these upgraded slots are everywhere and for Carmichael it looks like the end for his easy money I was starting making two or three four hundred dollars a day at beards lucky because everything was shrinking down to nothing to continued 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 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 there's not so well I believe you know and I was pretty much it Carmichael is in serious trouble cheating especially using the device that 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 was 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 realized 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 eyes actually was living in Las Vegas and every time I had to make appearance from probation I would actually fly from Vegas to Tulsa here and make my parents and I get back on plane go back home to Vegas while he waits for Michael Balsamo to get out of jail Carmichael cases out the casinos since his old tools no longer work the 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 person in the market buy some new slot machines and the salespeople would open up the doors take things apart and show it to him he would talk to engineers at trade shows they'd show them the guts of machines 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 sluggish 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 history only 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 eleven and a half inches long it's went through an air hole in the machine once inside the slider has to slip underneath a secondary security door then turn ten 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 microswitch and stop the count whenever so the machine was always paying you but you never knew how much it was paying it because you could actually keep it from County 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 states to work Vegas that 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 ten 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 casinos 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 an 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 Carmichael 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 I was gonna try to catch me in the casino but Carmichael gets a lucky break 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 worked we were getting everything under different names and everything so 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's 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 ever feel guilty about not taking the money from the casinos and I have actually asked myself I said yeah you know you tried reasoning these things out and I'm thinking well honestly do I know 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 cans 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 useless the slots mechanical counters have been replaced by state-of-the-art optic sensors this optic was 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 it would 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 to be my life 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 sheath 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 fake 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 with the illicit sales of light wines plus his own slot cheating Carmichael is making more money than ever before oh there was pot it was a lot of fun with nothing but Disneyland more or less it was just a great big party most 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 drive up to Reno just for something to do or Lake Tahoe or landok city or Biloxi he hung out with a drug crowd they partied a lot remember at their core they're all con men 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 but with so many people using Carmichael's light wands there is more room for error light wands 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 two-week and black electrical tape put on there because we had to repair the device it had become broken just now Julie's back to demonstrate how it's inserted through the coin return and positioned properly inside the game notice that the credit meter remains at six credits in cash Gaming agents create a video to show slot machine manufacturers how their machines have been compromised [Music] obviously significantly more than 6 and they realize what was happening the slot machine industry and 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 outsmart the light beam and so the light beam would stay on and the delay would say well 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 often 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've noticed the money was coming out and the foreign count was stopped of the machine and here we go again there comes the security Carmichael responds quickly he pulls the light wand from the machine and I sling the tool and the tool goes across the casino well the security I'll go over there nerve looking all over the place for this tool can't find the tool I told him I said there's 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 it's at mine or somebody else's they already had or I had a real good attorney the prosecutor didn't feel there was 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 some a proper charges against 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 cheating group because Balsamo was kind of out of control didn't really care of what he did or how he did it Balsamo has big plans armed with the light walk he takes off for fresh casino territory throughout the u.s. three months later Balsamo is 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 Carmichael's the Nevada Gaming Control Board teams with FBI agents to tap Carmichael's phone his days of cheating Vegas are coming to an end but instead of pouncing right away agents listen goes into the coif lot Carmichael who has no idea authorities are on to him his hard at work on a new cheating glance 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 for the coins with him and what I was doing is I was taking over the coin acceptor with a with this device Carmichael's tool takes advantage of a flaw in the design of the machines 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 pass stuck together in less than a second Carmichael's tongue tool triggers the Machine into giving him hundreds of dollars worth of playing credits the same as ticking money in and now you cash it out a third problem it's a new device and I'm Jessica Carmichael asks several of his fellow cheaters to test the device and help him work out the kinks called the top we would follow them to these locations and watch them do it and 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 and successfully tested a 25 cent pointing device and they were upgrading the thing to a $5 pointing device $5 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 this one works completely different everything else went on carmichael still has no idea the feds are on to him he is moving fast so now the FBI has to act when 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 there was pop 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 Boston was about Michael Balsamo and he got a lot of people into hot water here in Las Vegas boss ahmo's wife Stephanie and his mother-in-law Bhuvana soon master 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 put inserting the cheating device I'm 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 maneuvers to get it from her person now you just see her hand go in her purse typically come out of her person 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 cheeks versus casinos but the game is far from over on April 28th 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 ten miles apart than they had never ever lost at least Stephanie never if she sat down on 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 Bhuvana are arrested and charged with several counts of manufacturing and possessing a cheating device in 2008 they all go to trial while Simoes 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 receive reports from his family members that he passed away there is some doubt that he in fact has died because he is such a scam artist and so to this day he still is listed as being live 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 their 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 sheet mastermind who is now banished to Tulsa still isn't done with Vegas he has one more hit Carmichael develops and patents and anti cheating device which he tries to market to the casinos they had been approved by gaming and it had all the licensing and everything done to it but soon as they found out that I was the inventor of it they 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 has 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 that casinos have to look out for other criminals change 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 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 we're their only protection it was perceived that organized crime had a lot of influence in Las Vegas and head they were owners or part owners of all casinos popular consensus was that anybody who robbed a 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 mod 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 p.m. black and white surveillance cameras capture a suspicious group entering the casino they've got masks on they've got guns they start yelling getting people knocking people down they make their way to the cage the bandits are 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 ransack the cage casino staff offered no resistance they're not supposed to fight these guys just let them take it back off its no amount of money's worth your life the thugs inside the cage leap out and race for the door in less than two minutes the robbers bagged 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 gonna 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 bag 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 of course that's 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 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 vault the counter grab the money they all leave getting a stolen van take off took Weston 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 weren't safe nobody wants to go to hotel of it you know it looks like you're 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 just a whip a lady they hit another guy in the head two of them ball to counter they grab another guy by the hair pulled the gun to his head while 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 Harrah's parking garage where they switch to another vehicle police officer sees this van coming out with his lights off 3:00 in the morning he starts following it van takes off the chase is on they get the helicopter up squad cars converge and there's a 20-minute high-speed chase to Vegas the subjects Ram a police car that's at a roadblock lose control hit a fire hydrant crash into a telephone pole and everybody scattered police k-9 units pursue on foot 30 harrowing minutes later they bust all four thieves plus the getaway driver unmasked authorities discover 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 in the past messages sometimes make deliveries to 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 that 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're trying to cover 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 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 pages Belva foster was well aware that most of the casinos didn't have bars and stuff they look 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 do and Chapelle Chappell suggested a partnership with her boyfriend from the rival Crips gang his name was Chet Govan who went by the street name short dog in 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 we trying to tear each other's head off but next you know they robbed that kind of activity together Foster had the mind and Govan had the metal 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 Tara was willing to get involved especially 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 to 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 check Cove an American foster wouldn't be anywhere near the casino during the robbery 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 and I plan on sharing it with oh no use them up until they can't use them anymore you know they move on to the next and youngster that want to do something 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 Harrah's robbery they all play and they got between 10 and 18 years of peace 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 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 cannot 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 lead you into the chip Bank area where they're gonna be conducting transactions taking chips to the table bringing chip fact that have been redeemed from a game today the cage is no longer in 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 gonna be another door so you go in one door that door is gonna 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 gonna be going through three to four doors to get to the area where we're actually counting the money still in spite of all the new defenses the casinos put in place there will always be another game-changer who will come up with ways to beat the system the only thing everyone in Vegas can bank on is that the battle against Sheets will never end

Channel: TRACKS

Views: 87,897

Rating: 4.6853933 out of 5

Keywords: TRACKS, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, Vegas betting, Las Vegas, vegas cheats, vegas cheaters exposed, vegas cheats documentary, cheating vegas full episodes, vegas gambling, slot machines, gambling in Las Vegas, Las Vegas casinos, slot machine jackpot, slot machine strategy, Visit las vegas, las vegas wonders of the world

Id: GHsVPkAmcYo

Length: 47min 37sec (2857 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020