Gambling Cheating Devices
Gambling cheating devices have long been used by crooks to manipulate games of chance in casinos. These gadgets are available in many sizes and shapes, from high-tech scanners that can determine a roulette wheel’s speed to a simple magnetic device that can make a machine spin when it shouldn’t. The card holdout is the most popular gambling cheating gadget. It allows players to remove cards and store them until later. Other devices have included the daub cup. This is a small container which can be used to make marks on cards as they’re being dealt. It can then be pinned inside of a shirt for easy access.
A group of criminals known as the Piano Wire Gang used this device in Connecticut tribal casinos to cheat slot machines. The piano wires were used to jam the internal timer that measured the rotation of the reels, allowing criminals to manipulate the result of a spin. The scam was successful, until the criminals got greedy. They tried to cash in a $50,000 jackpot. This attracted immediate attention from security.
Another high-tech device that has been used to cheat casino games is the poker scanning camera, which was often hidden in a power bank, cuff or leather belt. This device would scan a barcode on a marked card, and feed it to an analyser. This type of device can still be found today, although it is less common since more advanced technologies have been developed to prevent it.