Phuong Quoc Truong doesn’t operate by half measures. In 2011 he amassed a 30 strong team of card counters and blackjack dealers in a bid to make some serious money in South Californian casinos. The dealers would pretend to shuffle the packs while in actual fact keeping the pack in a preferred order. A signaler then passed on what was on the table before a ‘smoker’ informed another member of the team what to bet. It sounds convoluted but with so many people in on the scam it was bound to pay off in the short term at least. And that it did to the tune of $7 million from 25 different casinos.

All good things come to an end though, and the group were eventually caught by the Gaming Commission. The group all plead guilty with sentences ranging from probation to six years in prison. They even had to forfeit properties and jewelry as part of the sentence. Clearly on this occasion, crime didn’t pay!

In 2004 a sneaky trio devised an elaborate laser based system that performs detailed calculations on the speed and direction of the ball to the point there is can isolate which sector its likely to fall in. This information was then thought to have been fed back to their phones.

Of course with roulette there is only a slight edge as it is, and so this system offered a serious advantage. The group tried out the system at London’s Ritz Casino, winning well over £1 million in the process.

Suspicions grew and the gang were arrested and their sector targetting scam revealed. However, there was no specific law at the time that applied to the situation, so unbelievably they were soon released!

Another tale of casino rouges from France happened in 1973, when a casino employee and his accomplices won $1,000,000+ through devious means.  In an elaborate scheme the dealer build a radio transmitter into a packet of cigarettes, with a receiver inside the ball. When a button was pressed the ball would stop in a certain area of the wheel. not precise as such but the scheme was rumoured to have around  90% accuracy.

Again this scheme almost went unnoticed but the casino owner just so happy to be enamored by the roulette dealers sisters who was in on the scam. Due to his over interest he noticed one or two things that were off, and this eventually led to authorities figuring out what was happening. The scam was detailed in the 1984 movie Tricheurs (The Cheaters).