Random $$ Slots Technology, Business & Entertainment of Slots

• There was $51.8 million in disputes last year.  97% of the disputes involved slots
  
• Mr. Ye, a Chinese resident of Mexico City, lost his appeal and is not going to be extradited back to Mexico.  He is being accused for money laundering, and the Venetion was fined $1.5M and had to forfeit $47 million to the Feds.  What you may not have seen is that his house in Mexico was raided and they found stacks of U.S. and Euro currency - over $200 million of it.  The stacks of money were bigger than a cord of wood, and were hidden in secret areas of his house, including behind false walls. Also, Mr. Ye had to forfeit his $400K Rolls Royce, a gift given to him by the Sands. 
  
• Don't try this - a casino employee with the keys to the TITO kiosks was recently caught.  He attached a paper clip at just the right spot on $100 bills.  He would put the rigged bill into a Kiosk and the bill would register, but would also jam.  He then opened the kiosk and removed $100 and his jammed bill for a $100 profit.  Casinos are wondering why there are so many paper clips in their kiosk cash bins.
  
• There have recently been 70 cases of counterfeiters that wash a $10 bill and print $100 images on the washed paper.  The paper looks and feels legit, but sometimes these fake $100 bills had misspellings and some even said "not for legal tender"
  
• A Bryan Combs, Director of MIS in a Nevada casino, was caught in a $238K scam involving players cards.  When he was caught, he had 41 "test cards" on him, with made up player names like "Ima Zebra" and "Dee Test".  He would load up these cards with free play and then go out to the casino to convert into real cash.
  
• In a variation of the player's card scam a manager in another casino created fake players and loaded up their player cards with $500 during the casino's special promotion period that gave $500 to select legit players. During lunch break he would go out to his car, change clothes to look like a typical low life player, and come back in to use up the free play on these cards.  The day that he was caught, he had made $3900 during his lunch break.

• Another player card scam a casino manager, Tony Ahn, associated with NYNY and MGM would scan lists of players that had free play on their cards.  He would look for people that would not be coming in anytime soon, such as players from Europe.  He would then make new cards for each of these players.  He then gave these cards to another person to play them.  They caught the guy trying to use the fake players cards, and used Facebook to trace the source to Tony.  Be careful what you put on your Facebook page!  This scam cost the casinos an estimated $1 million.

• Sometimes you don't need to be sophisticated.  A thief was recently arrested because he would wander around the casino looking for machines with credit still on them.  No one would be at these machines, so he would simply cash out the TITOs and leave.  When he was caught, he was chased out into the parking lot.  Being very overweight, he couldn't outrun security.  He had over $1000 on him.

• A Mr. Moody is a known thief that the casinos may till be looking for.  His technique it to approach kiosks where people were about to cash out large sums of money.  Just before the money came out of the kiosk, he would step up and ask the mark for directions to the Men's room (or other such place).  As he did so, he would step between the mark and the kiosk and reach behind his back and grab the money.  With the money now in his pocket, he would causually walk away, with the mark wondering why the kiosk wasn't giving any money.

• There was a slot machine called Haystacked that had a software flaw.  What you would do is first win a bonus round.  You'd then quickly press the Cash Out button until a TITO came out.  Then you would slip a $100 bill back into the machine.  Now the machine would somehow get confused and it would not deduct the cost of the spin each time time you pressed the spin button.  Instead, it would just accumulate your wins.  Cash out for real and pocket your profits.  A gang had figured this out and was slowly moving across the U.S. towards Nevada when the Nevada folks got a warning and caught them.  For readers that are now rushing out to find this machine, the software has since been fixed.

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