Technology Raises the Odds Against Casino Gambling Cheats

Dave Rapp has barely finished his lunch when he gets the call--a suspicious blackjack player is racking up the chips, and the casino is nervous.

“What kind of money’s he betting?” Rapp asks the casino in Tunica, Miss.

A thousand dollars a hand, and he’s winning. Strangely, the casino, which is supposed to know the high rollers, doesn’t know this one.

Rapp heads to his pickup truck and flips on his laptop. A few clicks later he’s looking at a live shot of the player in Mississippi, more than 1,600 miles away, all from the comfort of his small truck.

If the player was a known cheat or card counter, it’s a safe bet Rapp would know the face. He has 5,000 memorized. But this one, he tells the casino, isn’t one of them.

Tracking Cheaters by Computer

For years, casinos have relied on the old method of catching cheats --spotting a suspect in the casino, then looking through pages of mug shots for a match.

Now nabbing cheaters has gone high-tech--computer programs that recognize faces, databases of suspects, and networks that link nearly every casino in the country.

A person playing blackjack in Las Vegas could be caught by virtue of his record at a casino in Atlantic City--in real time. And none too soon; casino operators say that as gambling has surged nationwide, cheating has grown more widespread and sophisticated.

“There’s just so much out there people don’t realize,” said Andy Anderson, another cheating sleuth. “People don’t realize how easy it is to cheat.”

Anderson, 55, pops a “Beat a Cheat” demo tape into a VCR and points out two guys next to each other at a blackjack table. As soon as the cards are dealt, the two quickly switch cards. It happens almost every hand, but most people, including the dealer, won’t see it.

To Anderson, it’s obvious.

“There, there, you see?” he says, pointing to the switch.

His adrenaline is pumping. Even though this is an old tape, the high of catching a cheat has returned.

“To me, it’s exciting and it’s never the same,” says Anderson. His targets range from hardened professionals to college math students paying their tuition with casino winnings.

Authorities arrest an average of 600 cheaters a year in Nevada-- people like Dennis McAndrew, formerly known as Dennis Nikrasch, who masterminded two slot cheating schemes that netted $16 million, two of the biggest scams in Nevada history. His trick was to conceal a hand-held device that could program slot machines to deliver him winnings. He is serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence.

Anderson used to patrol the casinos, keeping an eye out for suspicious activity. But many cheaters began to recognize him, and now he rarely enters.

Instead he lets technology do the work. He has put cheaters’ mug shots into a computer program and markets the database to the casinos. His service is for hire through his company, Casino Visual Identification.

To look up a cheat or card counter in Anderson’s program, a casino official clicks the mouse on the icon for the game the player is playing. Blackjack has a picture of a blackjack hand, craps a picture of dice, roulette a roulette wheel. Each game has a list of known cheats or card counters. Each name has one or more pictures to go with it, players’ aliases and lists of their associates.

Also, a casino can communicate directly with another casino through Anderson’s service, sending a live picture via a system similar to e-mail and typing in a question such as: “You seen this guy?”

For up to $16,000, casinos can buy Anderson’s database and facial-recognition technology, developed by another company he works with, or they can rent the programs for about $675 a month.

Rapp works for the other cheat-catching company in town, Griffin Investigations, owned by Bob Griffin and his wife, Beverly.

The latest advance is a facial-recognition program that helps casinos identify a player even if they don’t know his name or background.

A surveillance camera takes a still picture of a player, then focuses on the eyes and their shapes. The computer searches through the thousands of pictures in its database to find which people most closely match the eyes of the player.

“The old mug-shot books, you had to look through there and hope you could find it,” said Derk Boss, director of surveillance for the Stratosphere Hotel-Casino and Tower. “It makes it a lot easier and brings it up to high technology-- where we all want to be.”

The biggest threats to casinos are gangs of cheats who swoop in and quickly target several casinos over several days or weeks. Many wear disguises, such as beards and wigs; some even dress in drag. Some are just gangs of card counters, a practice that’s not illegal but is vigorously discouraged by casinos--because it improves players’ odds, and that’s bad for the house.

Since casinos are private property, some states, including Nevada, allow them to bar card counters. In New Jersey, casinos can only limit a counter’s bets. One acknowledged card counter, Anthony Campione, was awarded more than $1.51 million in 1995 after a jury found a New Jersey casino discriminated against him. A state appeals court reversed the award in 1997, but Campione had died the previous year.

Sorting the Bad From the Lucky

In the past, casinos counted on pit bosses with good memories to spot the undesirables. The high-tech methods are bound to give them an edge.

On this day, Rapp, 41, has his eye on a gang of Las Vegas cheats who have taken $5 million from casinos over the last 10 years. This group enlists the help of the dealer, who discreetly shows a player the hole card, allowing the player to decide whether or not to take another card. Even though members of the group have been arrested, they haven’t been prosecuted because conspiracy is difficult to prove, Rapp said.

“I’ve been chasing this same group. They’re always doing something. They aren’t there for the buffet,” he said, staring at their mug shots.

His cellular phone rings. Another casino suspects a cheat and wants Rapp’s opinion.

“It keeps us working,” he said.

As for the suspicious gambler in Mississippi, he turned out to be just a regular player having a bit of good luck.

“It turned out negative, nothing,” Rapp said. “Eventually he may have lost his money back.”