There’s that old saying that cheats never prosper, however there have been plenty of examples in life where that’s been held up as a falsehood.
However, those usually come in scenarios of casual rule-bending, and not so much in ‘zero sum’ games where one side wins and the other loses.
Casinos have invested heavily in the surveillance and security measures that help them to catch fraudsters in the act, and while some card counters and the like still slip through the net, for the most part brazen acts of cheating are a thing of the past in Las Vegas and elsewhere.
Alas, that’s not always been the case….
Some individuals have gained notoriety for cheating casinos out of profit, and whether you consider them to be criminals – or ‘Robin Hood’ style characters – is up to personal perception.
But what most will agree on is that the most famous casino cheats in casino history have some brass neck to try and even pull off their tricks and scams….
Dennis Nikrasch
If you had a criminal mindset, it would be quite a boon to be skilled as a locksmith AND boast a photographic memory, enabling you to take just one look at a lock and craft the perfect key to unlock it.
Blessed with those ‘gifts’, Dennis Nikrasch was soon in demand and began working on the side for the Genovese crime family.
Submerged in the criminal world before moving to Las Vegas, Nikrasch realised he had the perfect tools to crack slot machines – a series of keys, magnets and rods that would hit the payout mechanism and see the locksmith land the jackpot prize.
Even when slot machines went ‘digital’, Nikrasch was not put off and began working on his code that would, when downloaded into a slot machine, override the game and pay out as a winner.
He, and his criminal allies, set up a squad of ten or more gang members, with some tasked with blocking the view of surveillance cameras and others with occupying pit bosses and other security personnel.
One such haul yielded a rather handsome $3.7 million (£3 million) in ill-gotten gains, but disagreements on the cut taken by each gang associate would ultimately bring the scheme to its knees.
An irked colleague grassed Nikrasch and co to the authorities, who would tap the phones of the locksmith and his criminal connections. Their subsequent conversations would leave them bang to rights, and Nikrasch – thanks to his later confession – would serve eight years for crimes including racketeering, conspiracy and money laundering.
Tommy Glenn Carmichael
While some casino fraudsters are opportunists who spot a nefarious technique to make some cash, Tommy Glenn Carmichael was a ‘career’ criminal who fleeced casinos of millions of dollars.
He stumbled upon an idea to use a top-bottom joint, which is effectively a long and manoeuvrable iron rod, to forcibly trigger a slot machine’s payout mechanism. With a hit in the right place, Carmichael could manipulate a slot to spew out coins as if he had won fairly.
A test run saw him win $35, before a weekend in Las Vegas saw Carmichael walk away some $10,000 (£8,200) richer.
But it wouldn’t be long before the whole premise of slot machines would change, with the payout triggered solely by a random number generator contained within the game. Carmichael’s ruse was over….and worse still, he was arrested on suspicion of cheating and sentenced to five years in prison.
Upon his release, Carmichael was not rehabilitated….far from it. Instead, he invented two tools – the ‘monkey claw’ and the ‘light wand’ – that could trigger the slot’s payout switch by reaching in through the coin slot.
Soon, he was back making millions in Vegas and Atlantic City, while selling other scammers versions of his ‘tools’.
But in 1996, Carmichael’s luck would run out. He was caught on camera at Circus Circus using his devices, and later jailed for just shy of a year for his misdemeanours. To this day, he remains in the Black Book of the Nevada Gaming Commission, making it a criminal offence for him to set foot in a Las Vegas casino.
Ida Summers
You won’t find a Wikipedia page dedicated to Ida Summers or a sexy, sophisticated movie based on her life on the big screen, but she takes her place on the list of the great casino fraudsters thanks to the sheer audacity of her schemes.
She was just one of the many attractive women that frequented Las Vegas’ casinos at the height of the mafia era, and so she didn’t attract much attention – in a cheating context, at least – from pit bosses and blackjack dealers.
But maybe they should have taken the time to look a little closer. Summers, who would later be christened the ‘Vegas Vixen’, was engaging in ‘mucking’, which is the act of taking strong cards like an ace, concealing them about your person and then replacing them in your hand later when required.
And she got away with it too, until she was brought down by the classic failing of all such schemes: greed.
Summers began employing a team of ‘muckers’ each of whom would be taking strong cards for their own use – sometimes more than one player would be recruited at a single table.
She was ultimately accosted when she even tried to change an entire shoe of cards – distracting the dealer before placing a shoe she had brought in, with cards offering more favourable odds to the players, in place of the casino’s own.
Soon, the casinos she was frequenting began to become suspicious of her good fortune and winning record, and an investigation – aided by FBI special agent Dave Spencer and surveillance specialists – saw Summers charged with various counts of misdemeanour.
Bizarrely, her punishment was just 12 months of probation, despite masterminding a fraud that would have easily cost the casinos she visited a minimum of six figures in losses.
Richard Marcus
The simplicity of Richard Marcus’ scheme is such that it’s amazing to think he got away with it for so long.
But the French-American Richard Marcus stumbled upon a scam that would last for 25 years….and net him more than £30 million.
Playing roulette, Marcus would stack two chips on top of one another. The top would usually be worth $5, and the bottom one a considerable amount more – as much as $1,000.
If Marcus’ bet lost, he would – by sleight of hand, aided by his background as a trained magician – quickly swap the bottom chip out for a cheaper one, saving himself hundreds if not thousands per spin.
And then, when he did win, he would benefit from the full payout by making it clear to the croupier that his bottom chip was far more sizable than the one above it.
On the rare chance he did get caught out, Marcus would act drunk in a bid to convince the croupier it was a legitimate mistake for him to be staking so much.
Monique Laurent
Like Ida Summers, Monique Laurent’s beauty enabled her to blend in with the well-heeled patrons of the glamorous Casino Deauville in France, where unbeknownst to bosses she was the mastermind of a devilish scheme.
Her brother not only worked as a croupier at Casino Deauville, he was also an expert in technology – the perfect foil for Laurent’s scheming.
The siblings came up with the idea of a miniature radio receiver that could be attached to the roulette ball, with the person holding the transmitter able to effectively ‘stop’ the ball with a 90% accuracy.
So, while they were taking some losses, the Laurents were also racking up plenty of wins – thanks to betting on six consecutive numbers on the wheel, therefore giving themselves a larger margin for error.
Monique hid the transmitter in a packet of cigarettes – the scheme would later be called the ‘French cigarette packet scandal’ by the media – to keep it away from prying eyes, and the ruse worked like a charm.
Unfortunately, you can’t keep winning with every spin without drawing suspicion. A specialist debugging crew was brought in as part of an investigation, and they uncovered the source of Laurent’s continuous victories.
Monique, later dubbed the ‘Beautiful Thief’, was rumbled.