The High-Tech Cheating Method That Has Poker Players ConcernedCasino Cheats Busted In France Reveal Latest Technology |
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A pair of so-called “casino gangsters” have been arrested in France after using cell phones to secretly film cards being dealt at various casinos across Europe.
A 37-year-old Lithuanian man and a 63-year-old Ukrainian man were arrested at a lakeside casino in Enghien-les-Bains and now face fraud charges. Casino staff first alerted police that the players were allegedly displaying “unusual behavior” while recording six-figure wins.
Now, poker pros are showing concerns about the security of their own games.
High-Tech Cheating
The casino and police allege that the pair made use of tiny cameras hidden in their cell phones to track which cards were being dealt. As they played, casino staff said they always seemed to know which cards opponents held.
The scheme allegedly involved one player placing his cell phone on the table during blackjack and poker games, allowing for low-angle photos of the card faces as they were dealt. The second player also had a cell phone taped to his stomach, recording images of the cards via tiny holes in his shirt.
Police said the pair also used microscopic earpieces that were so small, they could only be removed using a magnet. The images were then relayed to cohorts away from the casino, who could then tell the two players which cards were being dealt.
Police allege the men used the cheating scheme at several European casinos and scored €200,000 from one French casino alone after several visits.
“They were using sophisticated equipment that until now was unknown in France and little known anywhere else in Europe,” Stéphane Piallat, a police investigator in charge of betting and casino fraud, told Le Parisien newspaper. “The cameras could have been specially made, or they could be prototype models produced by a company.”
“All this points to a highly organized crime gang,” a source close to the case told The Times of London. “It looks like they’ve been going from country to country, hitting casinos one after another, and then moving on. It’s what every gambler dreams of, winning big every time.”
Poker Players Concerned
Some high-stakes poker pros have become concerned about this type of cheating. Matt Berkey recently spoke on the Only Friends podcast about the technology used in these types of cheating schemes, and believes that poker games may have been affected as far back as five years ago.
“We’re speculating that we were cheated,” he said. “But the level of confidence that myself and roughly 100 other high-stakes regs have is somewhere in the 90th-plus percentile … just really, really impossible for a lot of the events that occurred for it not to be cheating.”
With technology so small that recording devices and transmitters are virtually undetectable, it’s possible that unscrupulous poker players could have been using the same method to track hole cards as they are dealt around the table.
The issue was even brought up during this summer’s annual Tournament Director’s Association conference.
“There are cases coming, and there will be stories that break, where people are using cheating devices not just on their phone, but even on their rings or pens,” said TDA founder Matt Savage on the Poker Stories podcast. “Technology will continue to stay ahead of what we’re doing at the poker table. Could this be a problem for the future of poker? I believe it can. We need to be careful as operators that this doesn’t happen.”
Berkey proposed a possible solution to the problem would be to fix every dealer’s pitch so cards are not exposed, perhaps even sliding them face down to every position at the table.
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