Richard Marcus was a casino cheat in Las Vegas for 25 years. He says he used a mixture of chip scams and social engineering to con casinos such as Caesars Palace, the MGM Grand, and the Riviera out of millions of dollars. Though he was tailed by private investigators, he was never caught.
Marcus discusses the influence of the Italian Mafia in Las Vegas and his early years of being recruited while working as a dealer at the Four Queens Casino. He covers casino cheating teams and how they used the false shuffle in baccarat and the Savannah move. He also discusses casino surveillance, security, and the role of the police and the FBI, and he suggests ways to catch cheaters.
Marcus now works as a security advisor at several casinos and chairs the Global Table Games & Game Protection Conference. He is the author of "American Roulette," "The World's Greatest Gambling Scams," and "The Great Casino Heist."
Marcus discusses the influence of the Italian Mafia in Las Vegas and his early years of being recruited while working as a dealer at the Four Queens Casino. He covers casino cheating teams and how they used the false shuffle in baccarat and the Savannah move. He also discusses casino surveillance, security, and the role of the police and the FBI, and he suggests ways to catch cheaters.
Marcus now works as a security advisor at several casinos and chairs the Global Table Games & Game Protection Conference. He is the author of "American Roulette," "The World's Greatest Gambling Scams," and "The Great Casino Heist."
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00:00I'm Richard Marcus.
00:01I scammed casinos out of $25 million.
00:04I never got caught.
00:06This is how crime works.
00:11When the public comes to gamble,
00:13the only thing they really know about the underbelly
00:16of Las Vegas is what they see in the movies.
00:18They're not exposed to it.
00:20There's all kinds of other stuff going on.
00:22You know, there's soft cheating, there's hard cheating,
00:24there's stealing, there's heists.
00:27To try and cheat a casino,
00:29it is a very dangerous thing to do.
00:31You will most likely end up being arrested, put in prison,
00:34so please do not do it.
00:41All of my casino cheating moves
00:44were based on basically two or three simple things.
00:49One of them was to increase drastically the size of a bet,
00:55anywhere from a starting bet of $10 to making it $1,000,
01:01or a starting bet of $100 to making it $10,000,
01:05after the outcome was already known
01:08and claiming the dealer made a mistake.
01:11And of course, the Savannah move.
01:13We figured out a way by hiding a $5,000 chip
01:16underneath a $5 chip at the bottom of a roulette layout,
01:20and the dealer would only see the $5 chip on top.
01:25The top $5 chip was jutted out just a few millimeters
01:30to cast a little shadow on the bottom chip
01:32where you couldn't really see the denomination.
01:35You knew it was there, but you couldn't see.
01:37So the dealer just naturally assumed
01:39it was just two $5 chips.
01:41If the bet wins, they have to pay $10,000.
01:44If the bet loses, right, before the dealer can take it,
01:48I would go out and grab the bet and take it away,
01:52and most times, the dealer didn't even see me do that.
01:55You would think it's a flagrant move.
01:57You would think the dealer would catch it every time,
01:59but the dealer only ended up seeing it
02:01maybe once in five times on the average.
02:03The cheating move occurred when we lost the bet.
02:07It was opposite to what we were doing before that,
02:10because when the bet won, it was a $10,000 payout
02:14that the dealer didn't see, so the dealers couldn't pay it.
02:17They had to call the supervisor over,
02:19and the supervisor had to call surveillance
02:22to play back the video, right,
02:25and to see if it was a legitimate bet,
02:27and of course, it always was.
02:29So surveillance was the ones getting us paid,
02:31and when the bet lost, what did I put back?
02:34I put back $10.
02:36What did the dealer think was there the whole time?
02:39$10.
02:40We did the Savannah move for a minimum of $5,000 payoff
02:44to a maximum of a $20,000 payoff
02:46when we had two different Savannah bets on the layout,
02:49and I had a few incidents where I got caught,
02:51but I never got prosecuted.
02:54Andy Anderson was chasing me around Las Vegas
02:57while he was working for Griffin Investigations,
02:59private detective agency that worked for the casinos
03:02to help protect them against people like me.
03:04He would always grab me up and take me to the back room
03:07just to get me ID, just to hassle me.
03:09He was a constant pain in the neck,
03:12but then when I wrote the book,
03:13and we met for the first time outside of a casino back room
03:17at a game protection conference
03:19where I keynoted the conference,
03:22he told me that they were going around
03:24to places like Caesars Palace, taking wheels apart,
03:29looking for digital equipment.
03:32Back in the 90s, when nobody was using digital equipment
03:34in casinos to cheat them, right?
03:36They were looking for, did I have a magnet?
03:39Was I controlling somehow how the ball landed?
03:42This blew my mind more than anything else
03:44when I heard this, because the move was so simple.
03:46I just made a bet.
03:47If I won, I won.
03:48If I lost, I took it back, and that was it.
03:50I train casinos now, and I train them specifically
03:55how to stop the Savannah move,
03:57which entails a very simple movement.
04:00When the dealer waves off, no more bets, right?
04:03Instead of just standing there,
04:04casing the layout with their eyes,
04:07they need to take a step out of the box to the left
04:11and look and look and see if there are any
04:15high-denomination chips out there
04:17before they spin the ball.
04:23When I first came out to Vegas and started cheating casinos,
04:26it was the end of the mob era,
04:29and it had an intimate feel to it,
04:32and there was no amusement parks, no volcanoes.
04:35It was just pure, you know, pure action, pure gambling.
04:39I was recruited by a professional casino cheat
04:42named Joe Klassen.
04:43So I'm dealing in a casino at the Four Queens
04:46in downtown Las Vegas.
04:48He came up to my table, and then he said to me,
04:51how about you and I, we get together for a drink
04:54after your shift?
04:55So I agreed to meet him across the street at the Horseshoe,
04:58and Joe says to me, why are you the only person
05:01in that casino not stealing chips from the rack?
05:04And I knew that that was true.
05:06I could see the other dealers were all stealing,
05:08like, you know, $10 here, $15 here, you know, red $5 chips,
05:12and, you know, I just wasn't interested in that.
05:14He said, I'm a professional casino cheat,
05:17and I'm looking to recruit somebody for my team.
05:19One of my guys just left.
05:20I need a replacement.
05:21Two weeks later, I quit my job to go with them.
05:25I knew nothing about the type of cheating that they did,
05:29which is strictly a chip manipulation.
05:31So I had to get trained.
05:39The first move that he trained me at
05:42was to actually bet $15, three red $5 chips,
05:48and then after the dealer pays, to switch in two $500 chips
05:54with a $5 chip on top, so that's $1,005,
05:58and claim to the dealer and say, hey, you paid me wrong.
06:01What is this crap?
06:02Pay me right.
06:03And as I switch it in, underneath my arm
06:07is a whole bunch of hidden $500 chips that are exposed now.
06:10Those are backup chips to claim credibility
06:13that I'm a $500 player.
06:16He broke the move down into me.
06:18That social engineering is all based on psychology.
06:22I can make you believe that I'm a guy that
06:25bets $10,000 a hand in a casino, which I did,
06:30and they never call surveillance because they
06:32believe I'm a high roller.
06:33He trained me how to be a claimer.
06:35A claimer is the person who takes the money off the table,
06:38regardless of who actually switched the chips.
06:41Everybody thinks that casino cheating
06:44is about sleight of hand.
06:45I make you look this way, and then I
06:47do a switch on chips that way.
06:50I have to divert your attention.
06:51But it's all the opposite, he taught me.
06:53You do it right under their nose.
07:00For the first 13 years, we had three other members and me.
07:05We had Joe, who was the boss, and he
07:07was surveillance and security for our own team.
07:10He protected us.
07:11I was mainly the claimer.
07:13I was the person who took the money off the table.
07:16And then we had Duke, who was the mechanic.
07:19His job was to manipulate the chips.
07:22And then we had Jerry, and his job
07:25was to carry through betting patterns that
07:29would give Duke, the mechanic, the opening
07:32that he needed to actually do the move that I could claim.
07:36That was our first team.
07:38The second half of my career, I worked with two other guys.
07:42One guy whose name was Balls.
07:44He was fearless, and he would throw $5,000 or $10,000
07:48in a poker pot without even thinking about it.
07:51And my second partner was Pat.
07:54Pat became the claimer, and I became
07:57the mechanic for that team.
07:58And that was the team that we worked
08:00for the second dozen years of my career.
08:04First, we have to scout out the casino, make sure it's right.
08:07Then we have to get the particular chips we needed.
08:10In all cases, there was a high denomination chip involved.
08:13Then we had to get our positions around the table.
08:17In blackjack, we only needed one seat, so that was fairly easy.
08:22In craps, we had a mechanic and a claimer,
08:25so we needed one person to be standing
08:27behind the other, which is not that hard.
08:30But in roulette, which is the most sophisticated,
08:35it's almost choreographed.
08:37So we have to have four people on the game, three of them
08:40actually sitting, and one of them standing.
08:44So that sometimes took time.
08:46When I used to go through casinos,
08:49I could really identify cheaters because I recognized
08:53the betting patterns.
08:54For instance, they want their chips
08:56to be perfectly centered in the betting circle,
08:59or on roulette, they want it perfectly straight up
09:02on the number, the chips, because they do not
09:05want the dealer to have to touch the chips
09:08or fix them because they're messy.
09:10The language that they use, because casino cheating teams,
09:14they never speak to each other.
09:15They use sign language, hands touching the face,
09:19hands touching their ears like this.
09:21That might mean, come to me.
09:22Rubbing a chin means everything is OK.
09:25Now, from the casino point of view,
09:28they're not skilled in that.
09:30They don't train for that.
09:31But for them, it all ends up with the video cameras today.
09:36The best night of the year to work to cheat casinos
09:39is always New Year's Eve.
09:41That's when the action is the highest.
09:42And there's the most people in the casino, or in Vegas,
09:45a big championship fight night, or a huge concert.
09:49That's what draws all the high rollers in.
09:51That's what we wanted.
09:52But the negative part of that is you have tons of people.
09:56Sometimes you can't get a seat.
09:58So you might have to wait to get around the roulette wheel.
10:00You might have to wait an hour or two hours
10:03just to get in position.
10:05So when you're doing a sophisticated roulette move,
10:08you're looking at an hour to an hour and a half
10:12of doing the move.
10:13But if you're doing something simple like the Savannah,
10:15you're looking at total, provided
10:17that you have the $5,000 chips you need to do it,
10:20you're looking at just a few minutes.
10:23My favorite casino, without a doubt,
10:25was Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
10:27They treated us so well.
10:29Total take from casinos in my career,
10:32probably 4 million of that came from Caesars Palace in Las
10:35Vegas.
10:35And the other big, we would call them chocolate chip casinos,
10:40which meant that since $5,000 chips were chocolate colored
10:44in most casinos, because not all casinos can handle
10:47$5,000 chips, they're going to be
10:49casinos, because not all casinos can handle $5,000
10:53cheap moves only because they don't have the action, right?
10:56Any casinos that had the $5,000 chips in play
11:00were our favorite casinos.
11:02We just couldn't go to the cage because they
11:04ask all kinds of questions.
11:06Where'd you get them, this and that.
11:08So what we did is we actually had a side operation
11:12for cash outs.
11:13We'd take the $5,000 chips after a day or two
11:16after they were gotten.
11:18And then we would go to the tables
11:21and we'd break them down.
11:22Then we start a cash out.
11:24The process moves to the cage, where
11:25we turn those chips into cash.
11:28So how did we distribute the money?
11:31Not only was I the main claimer, I
11:32was designing most of the new moves.
11:35But in any kind of criminal operation,
11:40you have resentment, just like you
11:43do in the regular business world.
11:45We had the same thing.
11:46You really don't want to have a falling out with somebody
11:49because your freedom is always at stake if somebody
11:51turns on you.
11:53So we always split the money by how
11:56equally amongst whoever was on that particular team.
12:00How did we spend most of this money?
12:03We each did our own thing.
12:04I like to bet sports.
12:06And I lost quite a bit of money doing that.
12:08And I like to go to restaurants and stuff.
12:11I spent a lot of money doing that.
12:12I live well.
12:13But I will say this.
12:14I didn't really make any wise investments.
12:22When I was a kid, the only person
12:24I knew that wasn't Italian was me.
12:26People asked me all the time, since I was cheating back
12:28in the days of the mob, they saw the movie Casino,
12:31where De Niro tells the guy in the back room
12:33to break the guy's hands because he was cheating.
12:37I came right in at the tail of that.
12:40The Italian mob, their main thing in casinos
12:45was skimming money from the count rooms.
12:48Again, it was in the movie Casino.
12:49You saw guys walking out with Joe Pesci
12:52and some other guys.
12:53You saw them walking out with suitcases filled with cash
12:56that were never going to get reported to the Gaming Control
12:59Board or the IRS.
13:00But also, there was a mafioso named Tony Spolatro.
13:04And he was the head of the infamous Hole-in-the-Wall gang.
13:08They would take the room next to the room
13:10where these rich people were staying.
13:12And then when they were down in the casino or seeing a show,
13:16they would drill a hole in the wall
13:19and go in and rob the place.
13:21Sometimes you see scenes like in the movie 21.
13:25And it's about the MIT blackjack card counting team.
13:29They get roughed up.
13:30When I first started out in the early 70s,
13:33I did get some serious threats.
13:36And they had no evidence against me.
13:38But they didn't like me because they knew what I was doing.
13:41Two security guards took me up in an elevator
13:44to the top floor, the penthouse of the Desert Inn.
13:46They had the key.
13:47And they walked me through the suite
13:49right to the balcony overlooking Las Vegas Boulevard.
13:53And they said to me, kid, the next time we see you here,
13:57this is how you're leaving the casino.
14:00And then they turned around.
14:01And they walked me back out the door.
14:03And I had a few of those type of threats.
14:07Bodily harm, prison, and all that stuff.
14:09But nothing ever happened to me.
14:13And the person who recruited me taught me
14:15that just keep your mouth shut.
14:17Any evidence they have on you, they have.
14:19You're not going to help yourself by trying
14:22to talk your way out of it.
14:24So I was always confident and stayed confident.
14:28And that drove me through it.
14:31In the United States, blackjack is the big game.
14:33In Asia, it's Baccarat.
14:35In the UK, it's roulette.
14:37The most difficult place to cheat casinos is London.
14:42They have so much faith in their people on the floor.
14:45What they have is video coverage, 24 video coverage.
14:49And on every roulette game, they had not only a supervisor
14:54on the game, but they had a manager on the game.
14:57They had not only a supervisor on the game,
14:59but they had a guy in a high chair that
15:03was like a ladder chair and never
15:05take his eyes off the layout.
15:07Just sit there like this.
15:08That was his job, just to make sure
15:09that he saw everything that happened.
15:11And we had to deal with that.
15:13In the United States, it's like they
15:14got one supervisor for every two, four, or even six games.
15:19And in London, they have audio surveillance
15:20right on the tables.
15:21They have hidden mics right on the tables.
15:23But in the United States, they don't have any audio.
15:27They rely completely on visual.
15:29So they try to avoid things like standing behind a table,
15:32looking suspicious, especially if it's card counting.
15:35Like somebody might be back counting without playing.
15:38That means standing there, counting the deck down,
15:41and waiting for the deck to become advantageous
15:43to the player so they could give the player a signal
15:46to come and make big bets because it's
15:48to the player advantage.
15:49And the only thing we concentrated on
15:52is avoiding surveillance when they
15:55were going to be called to verify
15:58one of our illegitimate bets.
16:00Surveillance never catches on to sophisticated professional
16:06cheats by themselves.
16:09They must have the input from the floor,
16:12or else they get nowhere with that.
16:15And another reason for that is surveillance
16:17has evolved where today, watching the games
16:22and protecting the assets is just one piece of what they do.
16:25Back then, it was all they did was protect the games.
16:28But now they have to worry about all kinds of stuff.
16:31Active shooters, terrorism, human trafficking,
16:35prostitution, defend themselves against heists.
16:38They're constantly training.
16:40They got guard.
16:41They got canine units.
16:43They got so much stuff going on that they just
16:46don't have time to watch the games as much as they
16:49need to be watched.
16:53I knew from the beginning that we weren't the only ones.
16:56The really best casino cheats were the Italians.
17:00And there were very few professional casino
17:02cheating teams in the world.
17:04There's never been more than three or four of them
17:07at the same time that are really prolific, great cheating teams.
17:10One day, we go up to Lake Tahoe.
17:13And we're doing a cheat on a roulette table, which
17:16involves passports.
17:19We're doing a cheat on a roulette table,
17:21which involves passposting $100 chips straight up
17:25on a roulette bet for a $3,500 payoff.
17:29Duke went right out to pick up the dolly.
17:31And it happened that the person's hand who went out
17:34and collided with our mechanic's hand
17:37was the Italian mechanic for the Italian team.
17:41And now we had a little bit of a problem
17:43here because at the time, we were
17:46on the south shore of Lake Tahoe.
17:48We all sat down together, all eight of us.
17:51So we decided, OK, you guys take these two casinos
17:55on this side of the Lake Tahoe Strip.
17:57And we'll take these two casinos.
17:59And we stay out of each other's way.
18:01Now, as the years went on after that, we would run into them.
18:05I never really got to see what move they were doing,
18:10what their move actually was.
18:12I would try to sneak around and see if I
18:15could see what they're doing.
18:17And then I saw their move.
18:18And their move was great.
18:20They would bet four stacks of roulette chips, $1 roulette
18:23chips, on four different areas of the wheel.
18:26Usually, the winner had to be near one of their four stacks.
18:29Dealer was going to put the dolly on the number that
18:32won their mechanic, or they were all mechanics.
18:35Whichever one of them was closest
18:37would just go in there and swish.
18:39With a swish, he would just move that bet,
18:41that stack of chips, to the winning number
18:43before the dealer could get there
18:45and put the dolly on top of it.
18:47And imagine that, a stack of 20 roulette chips
18:49to just move it that fast without any of them falling
18:52down.
18:52I mean, it was so lightning quick.
18:54And when I saw that, I said to myself, wow,
18:57these guys are better than we are.
18:58And that haunted me.
19:05One day, at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas,
19:09I put the Savannah bet down, just
19:10like all the other 1,000 times.
19:12The dealer tells the pit boss, and then he disappears.
19:17They started to close the games down
19:19because they wanted to sweat me out and see if I would run.
19:22So they would cash everybody else on the table,
19:25cash them out.
19:26And then the dealers would have to stand there,
19:27and then I would stand there.
19:29And this went on two or three hours.
19:31And they would discuss it in the surveillance room upstairs.
19:34So finally, another guy comes into the pit,
19:37comes right up to me, gives me his card.
19:40He says, Mr. Marcus, my name is such and such.
19:43I'm the president of the Golden Nugget here.
19:47We're not paying you.
19:49First time it happened.
19:50So what do you mean you're not paying me?
19:51He said, we're not paying you.
19:53He said, you have a problem with it?
19:54You take it up with the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
19:57Let them pay you.
19:58We're not paying you.
19:59That's how it ended in Las Vegas.
20:02That's how it ended.
20:03In Nevada, if you cheat in a casino for a $5 gain,
20:10you are getting arrested and charged with a felony.
20:13If it's your first time, you could actually
20:15do a year in prison.
20:17In Europe, it's very liberal.
20:20If all jurisdictions had really harsh penalties,
20:24I think you would find a lot of the cheaters deciding
20:27to become advantaged players.
20:29When it comes to, what could the casinos really
20:32do to reduce the cheating?
20:35Train your personnel to understand cheating,
20:40to learn the cheat moves, to make initiatives, to stop it.
20:46Every casino should have a game protection trainer
20:50and make sure that they're not cheating.
20:52And I think that's a big part of the game.
20:55Every casino should have a game protection trainer
20:58and make sure that it filters all the way down
21:01the system to the dealers, because the dealers are
21:04your first line of defense against all casino cheating.
21:08So I think it really comes down to training their staffs how
21:12to combat it more than anything else.
21:14Now, a lot of casinos actually have
21:18a unit of the state police that's in the casino.
21:23Law enforcement has more direct access
21:26to background information on people.
21:28A casino who suspects somebody might be a cheater without,
21:31then they don't have any evidence,
21:33they could get more information from law enforcement.
21:36That would increase the probability
21:37that this person might be a casino cheater,
21:40because he or she has been involved in some other crime
21:44of another nature.
21:45Most of them, you know, a very high percentage,
21:48they're just variations and improvements
21:51to the same old scams.
21:53The Savannah is actually a variant of another scam
21:57that was called the walkaway scam that was done
21:59with cash instead of chips.
22:02Cheating today is probably bigger in casinos
22:05than it ever has been because of the introduction
22:09of digital cheating, equipment cheating,
22:11and all kinds of other things.
22:13What you see more and more of a trend now
22:17is the work of slot machines.
22:19There's a term called reverse engineering,
22:21which enables slot sheets to more or less predict
22:25based on slot machines' recent activity,
22:28which is supposed to be random,
22:30but by taking actual photographs of what's going on
22:35with the machines' activity in recent times
22:37and relaying that data to a Russian laboratory,
22:41or a Chinese laboratory somewhere,
22:43and then the information comes back to them on the property
22:46that a certain slot machine is going to hit.
22:49So we're seeing a lot more of advantage play taking over
22:55from what used to be digital equipment scams.
22:58When it comes to cheat detection,
23:01AI is the most overrated piece of technology
23:05that you can think of.
23:06The only part of that that's somewhat unreliable
23:09and the only part of that that's somewhat effective,
23:12in my opinion, against the cheating
23:14is the facial recognition.
23:16Because if you have a database with my picture in it,
23:20and I walk in and you have good FR equipment,
23:24you're gonna know I'm in your casino.
23:25But the AI itself catching the cheating is,
23:31no AI equipment's gonna tap you on the shoulder
23:34and say, hey, that's Richard Marcus over there.
23:36He's getting ready to do a cheat move
23:38on blackjack table number 14.
23:40It's not gonna happen.
23:41In bigger casinos that have higher limits,
23:43you're gonna have higher value cheat moves.
23:46But the percentage of the total casino bankroll
23:49that's affected by cheating will more or less
23:51remain the same in all casinos.
23:54It'll be a certain percentage of what the casino win is,
23:59is eaten up by cheating, just like in retail stores,
24:02a certain percentage of the profits
24:04are eaten up by shoplifters.
24:05So when you take casino cheating as a whole,
24:09is it several hundred million dollars a year
24:12that cheats take out of casinos across the world?
24:15Definitely.
24:16Is it gonna put the casinos out of business?
24:19Well, it could only really put a casino out of business
24:23if it affects the integrity of that particular casino.
24:27In other words, if high rollers and people
24:29who frequent a particular casino
24:32hear that a lot of cheating scams are going on,
24:34that's where the casino could really be hurt.
24:37What's really negative is when their own employees
24:40get involved in it, and usually the employees
24:43who are cheating, they're cheating the casino.
24:44They're not cheating the players.
24:46It's an organized collusion scam
24:48where they're cheating the house.
24:49And these are the scams that make
24:50the newspapers across the world.
24:52Do casinos actually cheat the players?
24:55Well, that depends on what you consider cheating.
24:58What they do is they manipulate the rules
25:01to make it more and more difficult for them to win,
25:06which some people might look at as cheating.
25:08Two good examples of that, in England and France,
25:11where roulette started, it was just one zero.
25:13And zero is a number where if you bet everything else,
25:17any straight up number besides zero and double zero,
25:20you lose.
25:21You bet red, you lose.
25:22You bet black, you lose, right?
25:24Then the United States, they made it two zeros,
25:26which doubles their house edge.
25:28Now there's actually roulette tables in the United States
25:32with three zeros,
25:33and that triples their original house advantage.
25:36And the second advantage of that is with blackjack.
25:38It used to be in all casinos, blackjack,
25:41when you had an ace and a 10,
25:42you won and you won the hand, you got paid three to two.
25:46Now, I believe in most casinos in Nevada,
25:49they are now only paying six to five.
25:52Okay, so that's a big difference.
25:54So is cheating casinos a victimless crime?
25:57If I'm talking straight up to a person and I say,
26:00you know what, I cheated casinos for 25 years
26:02and there's no victim.
26:05Sure, some people would argue with me,
26:07but what's the impetus of their argument?
26:09Are they arguing out of definition
26:11or are they arguing because they're offended by what I said?
26:14But as far as just taking the money,
26:17I don't think that many people feel sorry
26:19for banks or airlines when they get ripped off either.
26:23So that's my opinion.
26:31So, you know, when we had that problem,
26:33when I was doing the Savannah at the Golden Nugget
26:36and the president came down and said,
26:37you know, I'm sorry, we're not paying you.
26:39I mean, that effectively not only ended my career,
26:43it ended Pat's and Paul's career.
26:46The gaming control board was following me.
26:48The major thing that was implemented because of me
26:51on the law enforcement side,
26:53they increased the penalties as a deterrent.
26:55They just, you know, started putting more people in jail
26:59because they didn't want any more of me's around.
27:02I knew my last day was gonna be
27:03a New Year's Eve, 1999 going into 2000.
27:07I wrote the book, American Roulette.
27:08I didn't write the book till 2003.
27:11My career ended in 2000.
27:13I never got caught.
27:14Every other like financial crime like that,
27:16it's usually three years, right?
27:17That's the statute of limitations.
27:19Three years, it's over.
27:20But in Canada, when I was called to do,
27:23make some comments about that false shuffle scam,
27:27I told the journalist on the phone that,
27:29oh yeah, I have plenty of experience.
27:32I cheated the casinos in Canada.
27:34And what I didn't know,
27:36there is no statute of limitations in Canada.
27:39So I publicly admitted that I did all these crimes in Canada
27:43but I was lucky because they didn't have any video evidence.
27:48So that was scary for me.
27:49One thing, you know, I must say is that, you know,
27:53I am not encouraging in the least
27:56for anyone to try and cheat a casino.
27:58It is a very dangerous thing to do.
28:01So what I'm doing now is,
28:03I am a game protection trainer and consultant.
28:07I go around the world and I train casino staffs
28:11in a lot of things that we've been talking about.
28:13You know, what casinos need to do,
28:15how they need to improve their surveillance.
28:17And I also, since 2022,
28:20I hold a major annual conference with 50 speakers.
28:25That's basically what I'm doing now.