Ignorance is bliss and crime doesnât pay: two idioms that shouldnât go in the same thought. If youâre going to show the initiative to be a criminal it will pay in the end if youâre smart enough to pull it off. Make no mistake, law enforcement has seen it all and your chances of making a clean getaway are slim. The following dumb criminals shouldnât have even gotten off the couch.
10. Deaf Robber Canât Hear Alarm
A man name Klaus Schmidt attempted to rob a bank in Berlin during the summer of 1995. He walked in the front door brandishing a pistol and demanding that a bag is filled with cash. An understandably rattled bank teller asked the masked man if he needed a bag for the cash he was attempting to clear out of the tills, to which he responded: âYouâre damn right itâs a real gun!â The bank employees quickly realized that the criminal before them was in fact deaf.
The alarm was sounded, and the employees pretended it wasnât very loud, so as not to tip off the armed man. He was even unaware when police entered the bank and quickly put him into custody. His response? Schmidt sued the bank for taking advantage of his hearing impairment.
Even the professional gamblers canât always hit it big. In fact, the most recent bigâand controversialâwin for pro gambler Phil Ivey of $9 million pales in comparison to massive wins from more or less regular people. These are some of their stories.
10. The Tragedy of the Big Megabucks Hit
The story of one Cynthia Jay is a sad one, and it includes a cash prize nearly four times that of Phil Iveyâs $9 million win. Jay won $34,959,458.56, to be exact, the largest win to date at the time. This was in January of 2000, and two weeks after her big win, Cynthia married her boyfriend Terry Brennan. Then, disaster struck.
Five months after her big win, a drunk driver slammed into Jayâs Camaro while she waited at a stoplight. The cost was high: Cynthiaâs sister lost her life, and Cynthia herself was paralyzed from the chest down. Instead of enjoying her newfound wealth with her new husband, Cynthia was forced to mourn the loss of her sister while unable to feed herself let alone go on her honeymoon.
The drunk driver, Clark Morse, already had 16 prior arrests, and this most recent incident was the last straw. He received a minimum of 28 years in prison for his crime. Cynthia says sheâd trade back all of her money just to take a walk in the park and see her sister again.
Beginners luck is usually the higher power attributed when hustlers are in full swing. Craps, with its seemingly endless betting options, can be very intimidating to first-timers. Many people could blow entire fortunes at the craps table and walk away with their head down. Of course, instead you could win 154 consecutive throws your second time playing.
The latter was the case at the Borgata in Atlantic City in 2009. Patricia Demauro, a grandmother, bought in for just $10 and won over 50 times that amount. After her friend played briefly, Demauro stepped up to the plate. While she never disclosed her winnings, even if she was a conservative gambler, her $10 would have earned her a minimum of $500 on what would have seemed like an impossible number of winning throws.
8. The MIT Students Who Beat The System
You know youâve made the big time when thereâs a movie made about your exploits. If you have seen the movie 21, then you are already familiar with the plot of the next story in this big win saga. Through the use of a tactic known as card counting, a group of MIT gamblers beat the system.
The technique is designed to anticipate whether upcoming card will be high or low. High cards mean higher bets and if the players are right, then they win. The problem is, the house frowns on players that count cards, and if the dealer notices then heâll ask you to take a hike.
The answer, as the MIT team found, was to work as a team. While some members counted, others would exclusively play the high roller tables. Meanwhile, the signal team members would blow lots of money with big bets to distract the dealers. After all was said and done they would end up ahead and over several years won millions. The teamâs winnings were so significant that at one point they even formed an investment company simply to handle their excess cash and makes sure that the bankroll was there for future play.
7. The One-Man Blackjack Master
While a team of mathematicians from MIT crushed the house to bring home millions, a lone wolf had them beat in the end. Don Johnson, a single gambler who operated over several months during 2011, opted out of the card counting game.
Instead, Johnson negotiated favorable terms to gain better chances of winningâknown as âedgeâ in the gambling world. When selecting the casino he would play, Johnson sought out establishments that already had favorable rules. By sticking to tables that would let him double his bet on any hand, and dealers that would stop drawing when their hand totaled 17 he would have a serious advantage over other players.
If that wasnât enough, Johnson negotiated an unprecedented guaranteed payback rate. Many casinos offer their biggest gamblers 10% of their money back as a buffer against big losses. Johnson enjoyed a 20% paybackâhe could reliably gamble much higher sums with less fear of going home broke. To top it all off, he negotiated the ability to bet higher than other players, up to $25,000 per hand.
The reason Don Johnsonâs streak was so short lived: he won $15 million from three casinos in half a year. Itâs no surprise then that his money isnât welcome in Atlantic City, and I suspect that they called Vegas and California too.
Life is funny isnât it, in the way that it can turn out exactly the way we want against all odds. Peter Edwards should get a job as a talent scout for pro football teams, because he marked his three-year-old grandson as a football star. Edwards wagered ÂŁ50 ($80), at 2500:1 odds, that his grandson Harry Wilson would play for the Welsh National Football team.
In October 2013, Harry Wilson was 16, and the Wales National team played Belgium in a World Cup Qualifier. Belgium wasnât anticipating the 1-1 tie, and no oneâexcept perhaps Edwardsâexpected to see the youngest person to date to represent Wales in national play. Late in the second half, Harry Wilson made his debut. No matter what his performance was on the field, simply stepping on as a player transformed his grandfatherâs ÂŁ50 investment into ÂŁ125,000 ($200,000).
If I had a time machine, I would use knowledge of the future to play the stock market. It almost seems as though a man named David Threlfall perhaps had access to a time machine. In 1964, he wrote to British Wagering company William Hill asking for odds that a man would walk on the Moon within seven years. William Hill responded with the offer of 1,000:1. Not wanting to tempt fate, Threlfall placed a ÂŁ10 bet.
As time went by, more and more people were successfully launched into space. It seemed as though Threlfallâs wager was part of âthe actionâ. Newcomers to William Hill didnât get the same astronomical odds that Threlfall did, and he received many offers for his high-odds ticket. Threlfall held fast, and he received his ÂŁ10,000 check on the spot.
4. Amarillo Slimâs Big Ping-Pong Bet
Mobsters and professional gamblers: two groups of people who reliably have nicknames. In the case of Amarillo Slim, or Thomas Austin Preston as his birth certificate said, was a pool hustler and a card shark. He is known as the winner of the 1974 World Series of Poker, but many people probably remember him for his crazy and somewhat unorthodox bets. The biggest and most memorable of which was his ping pong match with professional Bobby Riggs.
Riggs was a Wimbledon champion, and a gambler himself. He took a challenge from Slim, winner gets $10,000. There was only one string attached; that Slim select and provide the paddles. Riggs could pick whichever he wanted, but only from the two that Slim provided.
On the day of the match, held at the Bel Air Country Club, Amarillo Slim showed up with his chosen paddles:Â cooking skillets. Amarillo had practiced for months with skillets in preparation, and as a result he easily won the match (and the money) 21-8.
3. The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo
When a player breaks the bank, it doesnât mean that the casino is out of money. It does however mean that the âbank breakerâ won every chip at the table. A while back, in 1891, to be specific, a man named Charles Deville Wells managed to break the bank at Monte Carlo. This win netted him about a million francs which translates into about $500,000 today.
Wells wasnât known for his honesty; many knew him as a cheater, and he bankrolled his entertainment by swindling investors out of their hard earned cash. That night, he tried his hand at roulette and (perhaps for the first time in his life) played a clean game over 11 hours where he won his massive payday.
Wells gained renown in his day for his gambling exploits, but his luck didnât stay with him. He lost all of his newfound wealth in Monte Carlo, then he had the misfortune of arrest in England for his financial cons. After an eight year sentence he had two more arrests and ultimately died penniless. Luck can be a funny thing.
Wells had a hell of winning streak with his eleven hour marathon, but other people have had similar luck, if not even more astonishingly so. Archi Karas had a streak so hot it must have left scorch marks on the tables. He showed up in Las Vegas with just $50 in his pocket. Once he started playing, he didnât lose. The year was 1992.
Karas was not a novice player; he had just lost $2 million in a poker game in Los Angeles. His luck changed for the better when he ran into a friend at Binionâs Horseshoe casino, a friend that lent him $10,000 to bankroll as seat in a game of high stakes Razz. Razz is an inverted variant of traditional pokerâhere the lowest hand wins. His friendâs confidence was not misplaced, Karas needed only three hours to repay his debt with 50% interest and save enough to keep on playing.
Three hours turned into three years and at the end of his colossal streak he had amassed a fortune of over $40 million.
Of course, a streak is only a streak, and when his luck finally changed, he lost about $30 million in a little under a month. First he tapped out at craps. Then, in an effort to recoup his losses he lost another $17 million at the baccarat table. He decided to take a break but couldnât stay away and when he returned he lost the remaining $10 million.
Instead of calling it quits, Karas went hot again by turning a $40,000 bankroll loan into $1 million. So it goes I suppose.
1. Sean Conneryâs Roulette Run
Before he became the famous actor, and the rugged and refined James Bond, he was a child who was no stranger to the world of gambling. As a child he would accompany his father on gambling runs and even when he was making steady money as an actor he continued to gamble.
In 1963, Connery was staying at a casino in the Italian Alps. He was playing roulette and after a few unsuccessful spins for 17, his number finally came in. Connery left his winnings (at a 35-1 wager) and spun again on 17. It came in three times in a row, after which he collected and left 17 million lire richer (about ÂŁ163,000 today).
There is of course a whirling controversy over access to, and regulation of illegal drugs and substances. What many people donât realize is that while these particular substances have been singled out, they are by no means the worst things we can use to get high. Ironically, many of these things can be found at your local supermarket or pharmacy, and can be purchased without a prescription. We do not promote the use of any of these, this is for educational purposes only.
10. Diethyl Ether
More commonly known as simple âetherâ has been long used as a medical anesthetic. Equally long is its history of recreational use that spans the globe from Russia through France and into the good old US of A. It affects your body in much the same way as alcohol but it has a less lasting effect. The biggest plus? Itâs dirt cheap.
So why arenât we all ordering shots of ether at the local watering hole? Itâs pretty dangerous. The material is highly flammable and should be handled with care.
9. Dextromethorphan (Robitussin)
Robitussin has garnered a bit of a bad reputation. It was originally based around Codeine as the active ingredient and cough suppressant, but we know now that Codeine is highly addictive. Dextromethorphan (DMI) was created as a non-addictive substitute. When used recreationally, DMI can induce powerful euphoria, intensely elevate mood, highly increase awareness, and cause vivid dream-like states. Other not so sought after side effects include disorientation, confusion, altered perception of time, decreased sexual functioning, and hallucinations.
While many users liken ârobo-trippingââas the experience is calledâto being drunk and high at the same time, high doses can impair language, memory, and judgement. Additionally, while DMI isnât the worst thing in the world you could ingest, many cough syrups contain high levels of Acetaminophen or Guaifenesin which if taken in large doses can be extremely dangerous.
Doxylamine or the antihistamine that goes by the trade name Unisom, is normally used to treat allergies. It can also have a sedative effect that can combat insomnia. The medicine itself is not only mostly effective but also mostly harmless when taken as directed.
When taken in very large doses it can produce a cheap and legal high. It produces hallucinogenic symptoms as well as agitation and confusion. The larger the dose, the higher the danger with symptoms including prolonged agitation, seizures, and occasionally a coma.
7. Tramadol
Tramadol has a complicated legal status. While it is considered a prescription drug it does not fall into a federal schedule classification and only has schedule classification in a few states. While Tramadol is not an opioid like Vicodin or heroin, it offers a similar highâif somewhat weaker. Even though this drug is abused by recovering addicts, the murky legal classification means no matter whether you have a prescription or not, in many states it is legal to possess Tramadol regardless.
6. Kava
Unlike the prior items on this list, Kava is an herb instead of a manufactured medication. It hails from the Pacific Islands where the islanders have been using it for a long time. In addition to being a tribal medicine, the herb has gained popularity in the Western world where there are no restrictions on the possession or use of the plant.
The island natives would crush the herb and use it in traditional ceremonies and at social gatherings. Users report that moderate doses can produce euphoric feelings and a relaxed state. Too much Kava produces hallucinations and scientists believe that prolonged used can cause yellow skin discoloration, drowsiness, ataxia, liver damage, and malnutrition.
5. Kratom
The Mitragyna Speciosa plant, or Kratom, hails from Southeast Asia. Traditionally prescribed medicinally to relieve pain, the Kratom plant comes from the same family as the coffee plant. It is banned in its native Thailand due to abuses but is perfectly legal in the United States where it has been gaining popularity as a psychoactive agent. It can be bought easily in the Western world as an âherbal supplementâ; donât be surprised if you canât find it at the supermarket. Most users have to order it online.
Kratom can be ingested orally or smoked. It can be steeped into a tea-like preparation. A few grams can produce a high lasting as many as three hoursâbuyer beware: Kratom is considered highly addiuctive.
Like Doxylamine (Unisom), Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) can be used to combat allergies or as a sedative for those having trouble sleeping. Even though the drug can have dangerous side effects when taken in large doses, it has gained significant popularity among recreational users.
When taken in moderate to high doses the drug can produce drowsiness, fatigue, disturbed coordination, dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, and hallucinations. Once the threshold of regular high dosage has been reached, the dangers increase substantially. Side effects of regular high dosage include fever, hypotension, seizures, convulsions, asteatosis, gastrointestinal symptoms, deep coma, and death. Bear in mind that normal usage presents a very low risk or no risk at all to users.
Dramamine, or Dimenhydrinate is a common drug used to stave off motion sickness. Like Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) it is a deliriant, and in high doses it can cause audio and visual hallucinations. For many recreational users these hallucinations are accompanied by euphoric feelings and the drug is not only abused by recreational users but by psychiatric patients who are attempting to self-medicate. Over time, regular use and prolonged exposure to high dosages can have negative effects on your heart and GI tract.
2. Propylhexedrine (Benzedrex)
This chemical compound was initially designed to replace an addictive and heavily abused ingredient known as amphetamine sulfate in the nasal spray Benedrex. As it turns out, Propylhexedrine is also a prime candidate for abuse. This substitute has earned the nickname âstove top speedâ based on the extraction process that has been refined by some recreational users have developed to separate the chemical out as a crystal form and due to the effect it can have on users.
This extraction process has proved too involved for many users; the chemical itself is contained in a cotton rod that is included in the inhaler. These users simply eat the cotton rod to get a high similar to a weak amphetamine high. This is strongly recommended against by professionals in the field and the resulting side effects can be very dangerous.
The biggest concern with the drug is that it is a vasoconstrictor, and therefore it greatly increases your blood pressure. As a result, symptoms include psychosis, myocardial infarction, pulmonary, vascular disease, pulmonary hypertension, and sudden death.
1. Oxymetazoline (Afrin)
What Oxymetazoline lacks in strength, it makes up for in accessibility. Users report a relatively weak high that has a high chance of causing psychosis and in some cases recurring hallucinations. The compound itself can be found in the highly available nasal spray Afrin. If all other things were equal, Afrin and consequently Oxymetazoline would be a foot note. What sets it apart is how highly addictive it is.
Afrinâs packagingâsomewhat ineffectivelyâcautions against using the drug for more than a few days at a time. This is partially due to the fact that prolonged use can cause nasal swelling that effectively prevents the product from working as intended as a nasal decongestant. Doctors who have treated addicts report that people who are addicted simply cannot function without Oxymetazoline in their system once they are hooked. Buyer beware: this is not a habit you want to pick up.
Leave it to chance, luck of the draw. Let the chips fall where they may. We have been playing games of chance as long as we have been enjoying the warming glow of fire (thatâs a long time kids). Of course where some stand to win, many stand to lose. For some, those odds simply arenât good enough; they want to take a chance and make it into a sure thing.
In the modern era, casinos are a big business. A big pot of gold attracts a whole host of treasure seekers and some criminals learned the hard way that crime doesnât pay. Except when it does payâthe ones who got away clean with a fat paycheck are still out there.
Ohio, 2012: between 50 and 70 professional swindlers descend on the stateâs casinos in a complex and sophisticated roulette scam. The group of crooks originated from a New York crime ring, and they were leaving nothing up to chance.
The scam: players from the crime ring would enter the games with low bets. They would swipe certain colored chips while a cohort distracted the dealer. Once they had the chips, they would be passed along the table and the players would leave. They would then resume play at another table where that color chip had a higher value and cash out at the new, higher rate.
Once the criminals were exposed, the crime ring was found to have its hooks in four different Ohio cities. Officials estimate that the group was able to net about $2,000 per cheat. While four men were arrestedâthey plead guiltyâthere are many other crooks out there that escaped the long arm of the law.
We call those who are experts at their trade artists, and two men who called themselves âthe Roselli Brothersâ were full-blooded scam artists. They used a blend of casino cheats and identity theft to grift over $37 million from casinos in New Jersey, Nevada, and Puerto Rico. They did it all without dropping even a dime of their own money.
The scam: the brothers were known to operate for five years starting in 1995 and ending in the year 2000. They started by hiring a computer hacker to lift data from credit systems and target people with high credit scores. Using their new stable of identities the Roselli brothers opened accounts with contributions of their own money totaling about $50,000 (they quickly reimbursed themselves). Within six months their operation had significant credit lines with all the major casinos across the country.
To keep gambling officials in the dark, the brothers produced an ingenious gambling schedule and offsetting betting procedures that fooled gambling regulators in believing that they were losing money when in fact they were cashing in big. By paying of all of their markers they pushed their credit limits increasingly upward.
New Yearâs weekend in 2000 was their grandiose exit from the game. The brotherâs toured Las Vegas with astronomical bets and big hands before disappearing forever. The FBI didnât even realize that a scam had taken place, and discovered the crimes six months after the blowout finale in Vegas. They also discovered that the real Roselli brothers died many years ago and that the clever imposters were as gone as ghosts. Their true identities were never discovered.
Given the interconnected nature of well, just about everything, criminals donât even have to be at the betting tables to rip off some of the largest, richest, and most influential casinos across the globe. In 2012, 14 scammers were charged with stealing over $1 million from Citibank using casino kiosks in Nevada and California. To perpetrate their theft, the conspirators discovered a hole in the kioskâs electronic security. By taking advantage of the fact that the kiosks allowed multiple unrecorded withdrawals inside of a 60 second period, these swindlers were able to exploit the system.
The team, led by a man named Ara Keshishyan, opened multiple checking accounts at various Citibank locations. Then, at casinos in Southern California and Las Vegas, they would use the 60 second window to withdraw sometimes as much as ten times the amount of money deposited in their accounts. As long as the withdrawals were under $10,000 then federal law enforcement didnât bat an eyelash.
Ara, as ringleader, would take a considerable cut from his team once the money was collected at the cages. The team would split the rest and their stays would be comped along with food, drinks, and entertainment. While these amenities were free, the cost was ultimately high.
The entire team was arrested, and Ara was charged with 14 cases of bank fraud. A conviction sentence could carry a penalty of up to 30 years in prison as well as $1 million fine per count of bank fraud. His team that got to eat and drink for free? Five years in prison and $250,000 in fines per co-conspirator.
Not so recently, in the summer of 1973, the Casino Deauville in France was the site of one of the greatest roulette cons in the history of casino scams. It involved a casino roulette dealer (who was also a radio amateur), his brother-in-law, and his beautiful sister.
The scam: the dealer/radio amateur built a radio transmitter that fit perfectly into a pack of cigarettes. In addition to this disguised receiver, he also modified a weightless receiver into a roulette ball. His brother-in-law would serve as an unsuspecting player who was experiencing a hot streak where the dealer would be using the modified ball.
The sister would stand a table over so as not to arouse suspicion, and she served as the âbutton pusherâ. Using the sophisticated cigarette pack she would engage the transmitterâs button which would cause the receiver would fall from its spin and land in groups of six possible numbers. The scam had an accuracy of 90% which considering everything is impressive.
It only took a week for the three criminals to rack up winnings equaling about $1 million in todayâs money. This string of big wins caused casino officials to investigate what was happening but they couldnât figure out how the gang was cheating the system. Their break came when, completely by chance, the casino owner took a romantic interest in the sister.
She rejected his advances, but now he noticed her, and how she was on the casino floor for every big win. He put two and two together; he had a team sweep the floor with a device that detected radio interference and the trio was quickly found out and arrested. Perhaps if the sister wasnât so pretty the three of them would have retired as very rich criminals.
Despite the ominous name, the Cutter Gang was not a roving knife-wielding street gang. The name comes from the standard practice of cutting the deck when playing at the baccarat table. The Cutter Gang is now famous for cheating casinos out of millions in 2011.
The scam: a member of the gang accepts the offer to cut the deck. He takes a cutting card and drags it along the deck while separating the cards before placing it back in the deck. The advantage was that the cutter had tiny cameras hidden in his cufflinks to record the order of the cards. Once the deck was cut and the values of the cards were recorded, the cutter would excuse himself and pass the information on to another member of the gang. Every single hand would be a winner.
Such a streak of âluckâ caught the interest of the authorities however, and the gang was detained in Las Vegas after a million dollar win. After finding no evidence wrongdoing, the authorities cut the gang loose. Later in 2011, the gang was again arrested in the Philippines for cheating but they escaped police custody and are still at large.
In the same year that the Cutter Gang was cheating themselves into millions of dollars, a multinational team composed of three Italians and a Frenchman ran a casino con of their own. Their haul netted them approximately $84,000âa small sum compared to some of the other heavy hitting heistmasters on this list. What makes their scam stand out is its ingenious nature.
While playing stud poker at the Princes Casino in Cannes, the Frenchman would mark symbols on card decks with invisible ink, or ink that was invisible to the naked eye. It Italians wore special and sophisticated contact lenses that allowed them to see the marked cards and therefore they had a serious advantage.
Their winning streak ultimately led to the involvement of the authorities and the cops were just as clever as the crooks in this instance. They quickly found the invisible markings on the cards but at first they couldnât figure out how the scammers were seeing the ink. It wasnât until a sharp officer noticed that all three of the men were wearing the same contact lenses that the criminal foursome was found out.
4.Ritz Roulette Scam
“Roulette – detail” by Conor Ogle from London, UK – Spin. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
If invisible ink and special, sophisticated contact lenses arenât clever enough for you check out this Eastern European trio from Hungary and Siberia. They managed to steal about $2.1 million from the Ritz Casino in London using cutting edge laser technology. While they were snagged by authorities, they got to keep every penny of their winnings.
Hereâs how law enforcement thinks they did it: the scientific theory of sector targeting is essentially the card counting of the roulette table. The theory works by using figures and equations to determine the âdecaying orbitâ or the rate at which the ball is falling to a stop. Based on the input of data, the formula can spit out a prediction, often accurate, as to where the ball will end up landing.
To gather the necessary data to produce a result, it is alleged that the trio used laser scanners built into their phones. The scanners could determine the ballâs speed, and that information was fed into a computer. The computer would produce recommendations and the players could make the necessary calculations to place their bets before the spin was over.
Though sector targeting clearly gives one or more players a serious edge over normal gamblers, and certainly over the house, it was determined not to be technically illegal. The gang was arrested but they were ultimately let go without any charges.
Championship poker player Phil Ivey Jr. was accused of cheating his way to a $9.6 million baccarat table in 2014. Suspected of using a technique known as âedge sortingâ he worked his way up the ladder at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City. Edge sorting is the practice of mentally recording any abnormalities or small imperfections in cards, then using those same aspects to later identify the card.
Though it is difficult to prove, edge sorting is frowned upon within the regulated gambling world. The way Ivey is alleged to have done it crosses the line. With a partner, Ivey discovered that some of the tableâs cards had diamond shapes and patterns with defects on the back. Some of the cards had full diamonds present while others were cut in half. Ivey, along with his partner would then instruct the dealer to flip the cards over in certain predetermined directions to make the identification process easier and therefore allow them to make smarter, more successful bets.
The Borgata has since filed a lawsuit against Ivey who flatly denies any wrongdoing, though this isnât the first such claim of edge sorting he has faced throughout his career. If he successfully beats this lawsuit then he will officially be the most successful single con artist in the history of the game.
A man by the name of Phuong Quoc Truong assembled a team of professional illegal card counters through a recruiting campaign that spanned the entire US. He would convince dealers to cheat for him and by the time his recruiting run was complete he was in control of a team of over 30 accomplices and co-conspirators.
The scam: a compromised dealer would pretend to shuffle the cards. Instead, he was really simply putting the corners together so that the deck would sound as if it were actually being shuffledâthe cards remained in their original order. In an elaborate ruse, a player in the gang would pretend to smoke a cigarette while secretly relaying information about the dealt cards to another player via a hidden microphone in his sleeve.
The smoker would be given instruction, and in turn, would hold his cigarette in various ways to signal to other players when to make their bets. This plan netted the gang over $7 million grifted from 25 different casinos before they were apprehended by authorities. Their clandestine methods were not discreet enough it seems; they were caught by an alert security guard watching on a CCTV feed.
Melbourne, Australia 2013: An unidentified man stole over $30 million from Melbourneâs Crown Casino with a clever security camera hack. The sophistication and intrigue surrounding the con and subsequent con is something straight out of Oceanâs Eleven.
The Crown Casino has not officially revealed how the heist was committed, but Las Vegas casino consultant Barron Stringfellow put together his interpretation of how it might have gone down. If the unidentified man wore an earpiece whole playing the VIP tables while an accomplice monitored the stolen security feed from a remote location then the player could be fed information regarding which play was most advantageous.
The only piece of information that the Crown Casino has definitively released is that a VIP staff member responsible for looking after the unidentified man has been dismissed, but it is unclear if the employee was involved in the theft. While officials are less than optimistic about recovering the money, the Crown Casino is still holding on to hope.
