Here are a few of the people who’ve won against casinos!
6 - Two Men and a Woman
Science has made leaps and bounds towards helping us understand our universe and the
laws that govern them. As technology gets better and people learn more about physics,
they begin to do the previously unimaginable. Sometimes, those involve cheating.
In 2004 two Serbian men and a Hungarian woman walked into the casino at the Ritz in Piccadilly,
London, and won big using physics and lasers. On their first trip, they won 100,000 Euros which
caught the attention of casino security. On their next trip, they won a whopping 1.2 million Euros,
and with this new victory, they were arrested and brought under investigation.
After a thorough look into their scheme by Scotland Yard, it was decided that they did
nothing wrong, and the three were released with their winnings. Here's how they did it.
A laser embedded in a cell phone would scan the Roulette wheel. It would then
send that signal to a computer to find out the decaying orbit of the ball. This scientific
method lets you predict where two orbiting bodies will be by measuring their distances over multiple
orbits. This would give them an accurate reading of the area the ball would land in. Then,
they would guess the exact number it would fall on. Like the radio-roulette scandal,
they'd make multiple bets, with the winning bet covering the losing ones.
The craziest part of this whole story is that this process happens in a matter of
seconds. Once the wheel starts spinning, players have a small window of time to
keep making bets—three rotations of the roulette wheel. Our physics-savvy trio
got an accurate reading in about two seconds and made their bets right before the cut-off.
The question, in this case, was, "is it cheating or physics?" No matter how you feel about what
they did, the fact that they were let go at least proves that they didn't break the law. They are,
of course, banned from the Ritz and probably aren't welcome in many casinos around the world.
5 - The Rosselli Brothers The Rosselli brothers are
some of the slickest criminals of all time. They hatched a scam that gained them millions
while keeping their identities unknown to this day. In 1995, the siblings began
their scheme by finding a hacker who could acquire people's personal information—people
with perfect credit scores. After that step, they stole these "perfect targets" identities
and started opening accounts with casinos. The idea was to convince the casinos to
give them a huge credit line based on their credit scores. To get the casinos on board,
they had to have a large amount of money active in each account for over six months.
Once the six months were up, the brothers could tap into the casino's credit line.
The Rosselli brothers were big-time gangsters and had plenty of money lying around,
so they dropped $50,000 in all of the accounts. That initial deposit made
casinos more likely to match their deposit or offer a hefty line of credit. Six months later,
the brothers tapped in. Being the forward thinkers that they were, the con-men opted to
nourish the accounts. They didn't just grab the money and run. They played with it, making sure
never to lose their initial $50,000 investment. Remember, the loans weren't in their names;
they had nothing to lose. The more they played, the bigger their credit lines got.
The brothers called it quits in 2000 and got away with $40 million—and
they did get away with it. They were long gone before the FBI caught wind of their scam,
and people started receiving letters from casinos all over the country asking for their money.
To this day, nobody knows their true identity. The Rosselli name comes from a pair of actual
brothers whose identity they stole. We don't even know if they were really siblings!
4 - Stefano Ampollini Sometimes crimes are very mundane,
while others seem like they came straight out of Hollywood. This is a scam full of codenames
and inside men, with a dash of tech to top it off. In 2011, Stefano Ampollini,
"Codenamed Parmesan," hatched a plan with two casino employees in Cannes, France.
Using invisible ink, they marked the cards with their value so that Parmesan could see
them with his infrared contact lenses. This made knowing what the dealer had and what was
coming child's play to Stefano and his crew, who raked in 70,000 Euros on their first haul.
The downfall of these "Geniuses" is the classic story of greed. Instead
of walking away with their winnings, the group decided to test their luck on a
second run at the same casino. Only this time, the casino noticed Parmesan's irregular winning
pattern and started paying close attention. They saw him folding strong BlackJack hands,
making it seem like he knew what the dealer was holding. With this evidence in hand,
they contacted the police and had an investigation opened. The whole scheme, infrared lenses and all,
was quickly discovered, leading to a case and conviction. Parmesan was given 2 years in prison,
one of his partners was given 3 years, and the other spent 30 months in jail.
3 - Monique Laurent Sometimes beauty can be someone's best friend,
but every once in a while, it can lead straight to their downfall. Monique Laurent would find this
out the hard way after her get-rich-quick scheme fell under a man's lustful eye.
In the 1970s, Monique Laurents' brother got a job at the Casino Deauville in France. He worked at
a roulette table and became interested in how you might control the results.
So when he had no gamblers, he would spin the wheel, again and again,
trying to figure out how to predict the outcome. After a while and with no luck, he asked his
sister Monique for help. Being the ambitious woman that she was, she excitedly took on the task.
Monique decided the answer was in her brother's technology hobby. It turns out the answer was in
the air all around them. They used a miniature radio transmitter to control the outcomes of
the games. The next step was to create a perfect replica of a roulette ball with the transmitter
inside of it. This took a while to get just right, but they got what they wanted with the help of
a friendly sculptor. The rigged ball and radio transmitter could cause the ball to land on one of
six specific numbers with 90% accuracy. All they needed was another person to enact their scheme,
and after approaching Monique's husband about it, he eagerly joined the team.
They had everything they needed and could begin their plan. The scheme went like this. The brother
would spin the wheel until he could discreetly switch the real ball with the replica. At that
point, he would signal his accomplices, and his sister would activate the transmitter hidden in
her box of cigarettes. Her husband bet on the six possible outcomes that they could predict.
Even though he'd make five losing bets, the winning bet was enough to cover his losses
and win some money. The plan was perfect, and if not for greed and lust, they would have got away.
Unfortunately for them, the owner took a romantic interest in Monique. With the man
they were stealing from lingering meteors away, the plan was sure to go up in flames—that is,
unless Monique could charm and distract him. Instead, she rejected him,
and he started to notice her weird behavior. Eventually, they were found out after the
casino hired a debugging crew to locate and remove the source. This scandal was a huge
shock in the gambling world and altered how players are monitored forever.
The trio never served any prison time, as French Law wasn't as harsh when it comes to
Casino cheats in the 1970s. However, they did have to return all their "winnings."
2 - Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo There is a question that comes
up a lot when it comes to casino cheaters. While everyone agrees that you shouldn't be
allowed to cheat your way through a casino's vault, they have a harder time agreeing if
using math to win is cheating. This question came up for Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo in the 1990s
when he came under the watchful eye of the casinos that he was playing roulette at.
The man discovered that you could figure out where the ball was likely to land by
understanding the imperfections in the wheel. He recorded results from roulette wheels and ran them
through a computer, learning that certain numbers came up with a higher probability than others.
Using this knowledge, he went on a streak in Madrid and then Vegas that netted him
almost $2 million. Eventually, he was banned from most casinos, but he was able to keep
his winnings due to a supreme court judge ruling that he had done nothing illegal.
What card counters do is decide, using math, if the undealt deck they are playing with favors the
casino or the player. They do this by determining if the deck is filled with face cards such as
kings and queens or the lower valued number cards. Using his technique, a player can clean a casino
out. But is it cheating? Legally, no. Counting cards without outside aid or devices is not
illegal. However, most casinos are privately owned businesses and therefore can kick you out
for whatever reason they like—aka—counting cards or studying their roulette wheels.
1 - Richard Marcus Richard Marcus is a self-proclaimed
pro-cheater and has the gambling career to back this statement up. He loved gambling ever since
he was a kid and used to make bets with his parents. As he grew up, he quickly learned
the pitfalls of gambling and ended up losing all his money in Las Vegas. He spent months homeless,
living under a bridge vowing to get revenge on the casinos that cheated him.
Marcus ended up inside the system when he got a job at the Four
Queens Hotel And Casino. He used this connection to gain insider information
on how casinos and dealers push the games in the house's favor. Like something out of a movie,
he teamed up with some other career cheats and spent many years perfecting methods
of stealing millions. By the time he left this group, he was rolling in his winnings.
By far his most infamous trick is called the Savannah Method. Marcus claims it's the best
gambling cheat ever created. The way it works is the gambler,
holding a cocktail glass, goes up to a roulette table and bets two chips,
one on top of the other, at an angle so the dealer can't see the bottom one.
The two chips are a $10 chip on top and a $1000 chip on the bottom. If the bet wins,
then the gambler leaves the $1010 in chips on the table and wins big. If they lose, the plan
comes into play. First, the gambler pretends like they're drunk. They'll then pick up the chips,
at which point the dealer will call them out and tell them to put the chips back. The gambler
drunkenly apologizes, saying they didn't realize they lost and puts the chips back. However,
they switch the $1000 chip for a $5 one. If you win, you win big, but if you lose,
the loss is only $15—definitely a dangerous game for the casino and the gambler.
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