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by: Glenn Haussman.
When people think of the great cheats in poker, it’s usually images of the Wild West that are conjured up. But in the techno-forward 21st century,
...casino cheats are dreaming up new scams they hope are foolproof.

This week, a trio of gamblers pleaded guilty to cheating at poker with a scam so ingenious it could have come out of a scene in the new 007 flick Casino Royale. Though the plan netted the scammers nearly US $500,000 (an incredible £250,000) at more than a half dozen casinos throughout the United Kingdom, their methodology was actually so successful it proved to be the cheats’ downfall.

Turns out this team saw one of its players win an inordinate number of hands, that casino managers realized something had to be amiss.

The scam went like this: One team member used a miniature secret sleeve camera to tape the cards as they were being dealt. The signal was sent to a van outside where high tech equipment froze and evaluated the images of the cards flying through the air. Once the van man determined the cards, the information was sent via an earpiece to a third player who was sitting at the poker table.

An experienced poker player, team leader Yau Lam, 45, was sent to prison for nine months while his partners Fa Tsang, 41, and Bit Wong, 39, received suspended sentences of none months each. Instead each will have to complete 150 hours of community service. Additionally, the trio has been banned from entering any casino in the country for two years.

\"Between you, you constructed a sophisticated and unusual system,” said Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, QC, during the sentencing procedure at the Southwark Crown Court. “The result was a virtually foolproof advantage over the dealer which enabled you to walk away with thousands of pounds. But you were not as clever as you thought because eventually you were caught.\"


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The group was first found out on Sept 13, 2005, when managers at the Mint Casino, in South Kensington, became suspicious of Wong\'s apparently extraordinary run of luck. Here Wong won an incredible 34 hands out of 44, a winning percentage so inordinately high something had to be up. According to police records, in one session of less than an hour, Wong took home more than £6,000 (US$11,761). They were nabbed when the Metropolitan Police\'s Gaming Unit arrived on the scene and discovered the illegal electronic equipment.

The prosecuting attorney, Derek Mather told the London Telegraph: \"The use of such equipment is clearly an ill practice, which subverts the whole element of gambling and indeed skill within the game.\"

\"I am pleased that our crime prevention systems were tested and were successful in detecting what for the UK casino industry was the first success against this type of electronic theft,\" said Michael Hoskins, director of security for Stanley Casinos, which owns the Mint.

\"These three people executed a sophisticated system that allowed them to cheat at least one casino out of a significant amount of money,\" said Detective Inspector Darren Warner, in charge of the Met\'s Gaming Unit.

\"The unit believes the method was the first of its kind to be found used in the UK.\"

Probably the most successful casino scam of all time was done by a group of MIT students who created a card counting system to beat Blackjack. The MIT Blackjack Team as the were called would utilize what were technically legal methods to reap millions from Las Vegas casinos and others around the world in the early to mid 1990s. The team was backed by anonymous wealthy investors and provided the capital for the players to hit the tables. There the team members pretended to not know each other. One player would bet low at a table and then when the count became favorable for a bog win, would communicate with elaborate codes and gestures to signal other players with the big bankrolls to come in and rake in the rewards. Eventually the team was found out and essentially banned from casinos across the globe.

A movie based on the MIT team called ’21’ is currently being developed and will star Masi Oka, who stars as a time bending mutant in the NBC show Heroes.

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