Modern Cheating
Well, we’ve come a long way from coins on strings.
Yes, everyone who is old like me knew I was talking about casino cheating. In the primeval casinos that existed when I began playing (this was shortly after we crawled out of the sea and grew legs), cheating in a casino often meant putting a coin on a string, inserting it into the coin slot on a machine and pulling it out after a free handle-pull.
Of course, if you’re under 40, that last paragraph may confuse, with terms like “coin” and “handle.” You see, coins were these circular metallic disks we had to manually insert into a slot machine—that’s why they’re called “slot” machines, by the way—after which you would pull this handle, the “one arm” in the term “one-armed bandit.”
I can tell I’ve probably lost the youngsters out there, so I’ll just move on.
Other cheating methods involved teams that exploited weak dealers, marked cards, fancy shuffling tricks, and that Three Stooges episode where Larry stands behind a guy and alerts Moe that his opponent has four Kings by saying, “Ow! Ow! I just had four kinks in my back.” (That one always works.)
These days, cheating methods are getting much more sophisticated, as evidenced by the recent FBI crackdown on a poker cheating scheme that involved rigged shuffling machines, chip trays that could read cards, contact lenses that detected secretly marked cards, and other high-tech gadgets.
More interesting was who was involved in the alleged illegal gambling rings, which resulted in 34 arrests—NBA stars and coaches and alleged mob figures from New York’s Gambino, Bonanno, Genovese and Lucchese families.
Here, I thought those guys were out of work after the FBI pretty much dismantled the New York families. But at least the mob lingo has survived. According to the indictment, cheating victims were called “fish.” Allegedly, they were lured to rigged poker games by NBA luminaries, known as “face cards.”
And of course, now the mob nicknames are back in the news. The alleged cheating teams included Nelson “Spanish G” Alvarez, Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh—also known as “Flappy” (that’s what I always called him)—Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino, John “John South” Mazzola, Robert “Black Rob” Stroud, Eric “Spook” Earnest, Tommy “Juice” Gelardo, Anthony “Black Tony” Goodson and Vito “Sardines on White Toast” Italiano.
(OK, I made the last one up.)
Once players were lured to join poker games with “face cards,” allegedly including an NBA Hall of Famer and coach, a current star and a former player, the technology kicked in. In addition to rigged shufflers and chip trays, they used an X-ray table that could read face-down cards.
The indictment also noted more traditional schemes related to illicit sports betting, but those involved low-tech stuff like players faking injuries to influence prop bet outcomes. Quite serious allegations, but nothing as intriguing as using special contact lenses and eyeglasses to read pre-marked cards. Wow. I have a headache just trying to follow this stuff.
Luckily for the cheaters, the mob doesn’t run the casinos anymore, so no one has to worry about De Niro smashing their knuckles with a hammer.
(Come on, didn’t you see Casino?)
Speaking of casino crime, I see they want to re-establish the “Strip Court.” The Nevada Resort Association and Culinary Workers Union Local 226 are pushing for an amendment to Governor Joe Lombardo’s crime bill that would step up penalties for repeat offenders convicted of misdemeanor crimes while at Las Vegas Strip casinos, re-establishing a court that operated for more than a year beginning in 2023 with the power to ban offenders from Strip casinos.
“We are imploring you to enact meaningful safeguards to prevent the escalation of crimes senselessly perpetrated against our tourists and resort employees,” stated a letter from the operators and union to the governor.
I’m wondering if they included parking fees in that list of crimes.
Finally, a man was just found guilty of “a series of fraudulent activities” at an Iowa casino, involving winnings from a roulette scam and cashing in $12,500 worth of $500 gaming chips in several separate cage transactions. They say he had someone else cash some of the chips, and he himself made four different cage trips, changing his clothes before each one in trying to avoid detection.
I’m wondering how he thought different outfits would fool the surveillance cameras. Did he switch from a Hawaiian shirt to a suit and a fedora? Did he wear funny-nose glasses? Was a clown suit involved?
How about a football helmet, a cape and X-ray funny-nose glasses that can detect marked cards?
Hey, these days, anything’s possible.
