Biggest Casino Scams in History

Films like Ocean’s Eleven, 21 and even The Hangover may glamorize beating the house when it comes to card games and slot machines, but genuine gambling scams are less of a laughing matter. Mostly, the perpetrators will see time behind bars for their actions, even if they initially manage to swindle casinos out of millions of dollars.

The very nature of casinos and gambling mean there will always be those who try to break the system for their own financial benefit, but the following six examples should serve as cautionary tales for any and all about the dark world of cheating, bribery and deception.

• The Roselli Brothers
• Phil Ivey
• Tran Organization
• Tommy Carmichael
• Serbian trio
• Stefano Ampollini

1. The Roselli Brothers – $44,000,000

The infamous Roselli Brothers were originally from San Diego but moved out from the west coast to form part of one of the biggest casino scams the world has ever seen. These con artists used a false-shuffling trick to orchestrate one of the most sophisticated card-cheating schemes ever witnessed.

Members of their Tran organization bribed dealers and supervisors to perform what looked to be legitimate shuffles – but were not. This tactic allowed certain cards to stay in order, allowing members of their gang to recognize sequences and therefore predict upcoming cards. Using this illicit knowledge, the Italians could adjust their bets accordingly, allowing themselves to rake in significant profits.

During a spell from 2002 to 2007 this scam spanned multiple land-based casinos, amassing over $7,000,000 in wrongfully acquired winnings. The lesson worth taking from this tale is the length of deception some will go to in order to achieve an advantage is incredible, which surely emphasizes the need for online casinos to continually evolve and enhance their security measures.

Another $37,000,000 was emptied from the gambling accounts into the hands of the Roselli Brothers – who truly did combine their class with craftiness. Delving deeper in their escapade uncovers an extreme modus operandi of totally trusted credit systems being ripped through and broken. Harnessing the power of hacking, these individuals accessed the credit scores of the wealthy by posing as high-rollers.

Having created fake bank accounts under aliases, they started playing at the major casino sites in Nevada. The con artists finished up with around $44m in takings – a truly astounding amount of losses for the gambling world to suffer.

2. Phil Ivey – $22,000,000

American professional poker player Phil Ivey used a technique known as ‘edge sorting’ to controversially land himself over $20,000,000 in a brazen pair of casino scams. His plan worked to convince the dealer to rotate high-value cards – for example by claiming you are superstitious – then picking them out using asymmetrical irregularities on their long edges.

Meticulous with his detail, Ivey used this approach to land millions from Borgata Casino in New Jersey as well as Crockfords in London. However, the ‘Tiger Woods of Poker’ was not permitted to keep his winnings with court decrees eventually deeming Ivey’s means to be in fact cheating.

It was August 2012 when reports broke that he had won an estimated £7,300,000 ($12,000,000) playing Punto Banco at the London casino, but was refused payment beyond his initial £1m stake because of his use of edge sorting. Less than two years later Borgata were suing him in Atlantic City and claiming he had cheated at baccarat by taking advantage of a defect in the manufacturing of the playing cards.

Both casinos used the same kind of playing cards, manufactured by Gemaco, which Ivey may well have been aware of. The lawsuit included $10m in winnings which seven years later a federal judge allowed Borgata to pursue recovery of through his assets in Nevada.

3. Tran Organization – $7,000,000

The infamous Tran Organization was a gang of criminal casino cheats during the 2000s that targeted nearly 30 land-based casinos across the United States and Canada, running up Casino fraud to the value of around $7,000,000. By 2011, as many as 47 people had been indicted in relation to the Californian-based crew’s crimes, but before that their bribery was quite ingenious.

Taking their offers right to the dealers themselves, they had these crooked croupiers perform false shuffles at baccarat tables where Tran members would track the order of cards. The gang used microphones to share information and with computer software predicting which cards would be drawn when, various North American casinos were eventually rinsed for over $7m before they were caught – although it’s possible they landed more outside of the authorities’ knowledge.

4. Tommy Carmichael – Millions…

Tommy Carmichael’s life was going nowhere fast until a friend pitched up at his house with a tool in his car that he claimed would change his life. The TV repair businessmen practiced until perfect exactly how to use the top-bottom join in order to rig casino machines to the point where he was able to land $10,000 in winnings one crazy weekend. After that success he managed to accumulate millions of dollars over the next few years before casinos caught on and started using RNGs (random number generators) to prevent his and other people’s similar scams.

Tommy ended up going to prison for his crimes, but on his release worked out ways to utilize the tool up against modern slots and even teamed up with other professional gambling cheats to continue to swindle land-based sites in Las Vegas and Atlantic City for millions every day. Eventually he turned good after a 12-month prison sentence, using his undoubted skills for a better cause and working with gambling organizations to develop an anti-cheating device.

5. Serbian trio – $1,600,000

Two Serbian men and a Hungarian woman were behind a disturbingly brutal raid of the Ritz Casino in London to the tune of £1,300,000 ($1,573,000 in today’s US Dollar). Equipped with a laser scanner inside their phone, the trio took the house to the cleaners by analyzing the position and speed of the ball at roulette tables to almost precisely estimate exactly where it would eventually land. This audacious attempt utilizing the very latest in modern technology served as a stark reminder to anyone in the industry at the lengths crooks will go to when it comes to casino cons.

The method of attack by this group from Eastern Europe has been since referred to as ‘sector targeting’, while you may be surprised to learn that although they were arrested they were eventually released without charge. That is because even though the casino’s security footage led to their capture, the many charges were reportedly dropped because their method of trickery was not yet technically covered by gambling laws.

6. Stefano Ampollini – $100,000

Contact lenses might seem like a simple solution to those usually needing to wear glasses to see clearly, but you might not know that they were the secret ingredient that allowed Italian scammer Stefano Ampollini to walk away from a casino with almost $100,000. Ampollini outrageously used infrared contact lenses to beat the house at Les Princes Casino in Cannes, France in 2011.

With the help of an insider, he and his accomplices were able to mark a deck of cards with invisible ink, which he could see with the special contact. Unfortunately for the Italian he was arrested two months later when he quite remarkably returned to the scene of his crime for an attempted second helping.