For as long as there have been casinos, there have been those who try (and in many cases succeed) to cheat them. Where there’s money, crime almost always follows, and casinos have been forced to invest heavily over the years, both in staff and technologies, to weed out the scammers.
Here’s our rundown of some of the most notable casino scam artists and cheats, the schemes they pulled, and how they managed to avoid the detection of casino bosses to profit.
Top Casino Cheats and Scams
Tommy Carmichael
One of the most notorious slots cheats of all time, Tommy Carmichael pulled his scams over a number of decades, thieving millions from casinos in Las Vegas and beyond. His chosen MO was slot machines, with Carmichael using his skills as a TV repair man to build tools that would guarantee him winnings. His most famous device was arguably The Monkey Paw, which allowed Carmichael to trigger the micro switch inside slot machines responsible for paying out.
While he constantly tweaked and adapted his approach over the years in response to increasing security methods, Carmichael was able to successfully liberate millions of dollars from Las Vegas casinos over his career. Carmichael was eventually co-opted to the casinos’ cause, developing tools to prevent others from cheating slot machines.
Richard Marcus
While Carmichael worked exclusively on slot machines, others have been more flexible in their cheating. Richard Marcus is one of the most prolific casino cheats to have impacted on the casino business, developing creative strategies for a number of table games, including blackjack, baccarat, poker and roulette.
A dealer turned rogue, Marcus came into his own when he met up with fellow gambler Joe Classon. In response to feeling cheated by his employer casino, Marcus devised a strategy he and Classon would put into place to scam the casino out of money, which spawned a successful career in cheating the house.
Marcus was eventually caught and convicted for his crimes. He has been blacklisted from every casino in the state of Nevada, with an international reputation that precedes him wherever he goes. As one of the most notorious casino cheats in history, Marcus has maintained he doesn’t regret his actions.
Ron Harris
Ron Harris found his way into the world of cheating casinos through specialised employment. In the 90s, Harris joined the Nevada Gaming Control Board as a software analyst, tasked with identifying flaws in casino software and random number generators. This gave him a unique insight into the inner workings of casino games and RNG maths, which would initially pay dividends when he decided to attempt to scam millions from casinos in Las Vegas.
Harris became infatuated with the maths of Keno, the bingo-like casino gambling game, where a fixed set of numbers threw up some interesting calculations. With an accomplice, Reid Errol McNeal, Harris began buying high value Keno tickets, where he could establish better odds of winning than the average player.
Despite running successfully for some time, his scams were eventually flagged to the authorities after casinos became suspicious of their winnings. Investigations eventually pointed towards Harris as the likely mastermind, and he was convicted accordingly. Harris went on to spend 7 years behind bars for his crimes.
Louis ‘the Coin’ Colavecchio
While some casino scams are highly intellectual and intricate, others are more simplistic in their design – if not, execution. Louis Colavecchio, nicknamed ‘the Coin’, pulled off his scams with the help of counterfeit coins. Colavecchio created steel discs from dies of original coins, which he fed into slot machines undetected. These allowed Colavecchio to essentially game slot machines in Las Vegas, by using his fake coins in place of real currency.
The scam was pulled successfully for some time, netting Colaveccio some significant winnings along the way. He was only detected when a casino spotted some of his coins on the floor, leading to an investigation that ultimately unravelled the full extent of his scams. As a result of Colavecchio’s scams, casinos have now moved increasingly away from coin operated machines towards a paper voucher system, removing this weak link in machine security.
Gonzalo García Pelayo
The original roulette wizard, Gonzalo Garcia Pelayo mastered the game through a careful analysis of numbers and patterns. Through analysing huge data sets gleaned first hand from watching roulette games unfold, Pelayo used the results to make predictions about how future spins would play out. So successful were his techniques that he managed to rack up winning of $700,000 before being detected by casinos in his native Spain.
At a resulting trial, Pelayo was found not to have cheated the casinos, with the judge remarking that it was wise to analyse data and to take account of the variation in individual casino roulette wheels before betting on outcomes.
Pelayo ultimately took his strategies to Las Vegas, where he was able to win several millions of dollars. He is known to still work in the gambling sector, putting his numerical and analytical skills to good use in building his fortune.
As in the case of Pelayo, not everyone who has made serious money from casinos has done so through cheating or scamming their way to success. But for those that do attempt this path, jail time is so often the result.
Casinos are amongst the most difficult institutions to scam, taking active measures to prevent losses to those who would seek to defraud them. While there will always be those that try their luck, scamming casinos has historically seldom proved to be a good or sensible business model in the long run.
