Читать книгу Great Gambling Scams - Howard Monte/Nigel Montgomery - Страница 9

Richard Marcus readily admits that he was hooked on gambling from a very early age. The incredible roller-coaster ride culminating in his becoming, without doubt, the greatest casino cheat ever started years earlier in elementary school, where he started flipping baseball cards with his school mates. As he had accumulated the biggest collection of baseball cards in the neighbourhood, housed in 20 shoeboxes, his collection became the target of his crooked schoolboy peers, who were determined to relieve him of his prized collection no matter what. It was there that he first learned about cheating at gambling.

The baseball cards had coloured banners on them depicting the player’s name and team logo, with two teams sharing one colour. When these kids flipped cards, the cards were held face down, and each turned the top card over. Whoever matched the colour of the previous card won. Then they started playing for serious stakes: whoever matched ten colours won a huge pile of cards. Richard lost his whole baseball-card collection flipping over a couple of days, but soon realised that he had been cheated out of it. His school friends had gone to the amazing lengths of memorising all the teams, players and colours on every single card. When it was Richard’s turn to call, and they saw he was calling correctly, they simply held the top card in place and pulled out the one in second place underneath. Because of this sleight of hand, Richard couldn’t win any pots, and his precious baseball-card collection passed into the hands of his cheating peers. This very first experience of gambling changed Richard’s life forever, making him determined to be on the side of the cheaters rather than a victim, and turned him from adolescent baseball-card collector to grown-up thief.

By the age of 13, Richard was missing school classes regularly, and was already involved playing in poker games downtown and visiting the track when he should have been in class. He needed a constant supply of cash to finance his gambling, both at cards and at the track, and was not averse to pulling off the odd con or two. One of his favourites in those early days was a trick he had picked up from a movie. He would send one of his trusted mates into a candy store to buy some chocolate for around 50 cents, and got them to pay for it with a $20 bill on which Richard had drawn a little heart in crayon next to the presidential portrait. Once his friend had come out of the store with the change of the twenty, Richard went into the store next. He would also buy some candy, and pay for it with a dollar bill. When the shopkeeper had placed the note in his cash register, and paid Richard the change for the dollar, Richard would go into a well-rehearsed song-and-dance routine, insisting he had paid with a $20 bill and demanding change from it. He would then deliver his coup de grace: ‘I know I paid you with a twenty, and I can prove it. My grandmother gave me that $20 bill last night and drew a little heart on it in crayon.’ Of course, the shopkeeper would go back to the till, pull out the top $20 bill in the cash drawer, see the heart on it that Richard had described, and melt. Richard got his 19-odd dollars in change – and a free candy bar. By his early teens he had palled up with an Italian boy called Paul who came from a Mafia family and they must have pulled this one off a thousand times all over Bergen County and New York. They used candy stores, delis and even busy supermarkets to pull their ruse. Their well-practised routine earned them plenty of cash, as did the next scam Richard figured out, one that they would put into force the minute they had learned how to drive…

Four years later, Paul drove his new GTO into a filling station and asked the attendant to fill it up. Paying for the gas with a $100 bill, and making certain he flashed the cash so the attendant saw the wad it had been peeled from, Paul went into his newly rehearsed routine: ‘Jesus, my dad’s gonna kill me. I know I had it on ten minutes ago.’

‘What?’ the attendant enquired.

‘My diamond ring. My dad bought it for me for my 18th birthday yesterday, and now I’ve lost the fucking thing.’

‘That’s life,’ came the casual reply.

‘It’s probably worth a couple of grand. But that’s not the issue, it’s the sentimental value that counts.’ Then Paul got into his shiny car and started the engine, before leaning out of the window, almost as an afterthought, to deliver the crucial line. ‘Look, I doubt I lost the ring here in this filling station, but should it turn up I will give you $500 reward for its return. I’ll be watching the Giants game at McCann’s over the road.’

Richard left it an hour or so, and then pulled up to the same gas station in a beat-up Chevy. ‘Five dollars’ worth, please,’ he said, handing the attendant an assortment of loose change, dropping a few coins as he did so. On bending down to retrieve the change, bingo! He stood up with Paul’s lost ring in his hand. ‘Look what I’ve found. Do you reckon it’s worth anything?’

The attendant took the ring and examined it carefully. ‘It’s probably a cubic. I can’t believe anyone losing a real diamond in a filling station.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right, no sweat, I’ll give it to a girl if I get lucky and pull.’

Now the attendant got interested. ‘I could give you a little money for it if you like?’

‘How much?’

‘I dunno, twenty bucks?’

‘Twenty bucks! You gotta be kiddin’. Even the cheapest cubics cost more than that! And, anyway, the bloody thing could be real, and it’s massive.’

The attendant had been sucked in. ‘OK, how much do you want for it, then?’

‘A couple of hundred at least.’

‘Wait here,’ the attendant said. ‘I’ll make a quick call from inside, see if my pal is interested, see if we can do a deal.’

At McCann’s, where the Giants game was on the TV, the barman answered the phone. ‘Anyone in here lost a ring at the Texaco garage down the road?’

Paul took the call.

‘Hey, I’ve found your ring.’

‘Brilliant, I’ll be right there.’

The attendant came back outside to Richard. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, ‘I can go a hundred on it.’

They settled on $150. Richard took the cash and met Paul on a roadside hill overlooking the Texaco garage. From the comfort of Paul’s air-conditioned GTO, they took turns in watching the attendant pacing up and down the garage forecourt, looking at his watch. After about ten minutes, he couldn’t take it any more, jumped into his own car and sped over to McCann’s. The duo followed him and, when he emerged from McCann’s, realising he had been conned, Paul and Richard roared by in the GTO, and Paul yelled ‘Asshole!’ out of the window.

They repeated the gas station scam many times, almost always collecting.

When Richard Marcus drove to Las Vegas in his new Mustang convertible in the summer of 1976, a few days before his 21st birthday, I doubt even he could have imagined how his life was about to pan out. Courtesy of a substantial touch he had landed at Saratoga racetrack a week earlier, the new wheels also had twenty grand in cash stashed in the boot. Richard couldn’t wait to step inside one of the upmarket casinos he had heard so much about over the past few years – unbelievably, despite having gambled every day for the past decade, he had never actually set foot inside a casino.

His first port of call in Vegas was the showy and glitzy Riviera Hotel, where he took a suite, and spent the next few days playing high-stakes baccarat with his twenty-grand bankroll. To start with, he did rather well, turning his twenty grand into fifty, and then into a hundred. The casino, keen to massage the ego of their new young high-roller, comped everything, from the suite to expensive dinners in their best restaurants, and endless rivers of champagne. And, as they had seen happen a million times before, the casino’s investment in pampering paid off. On the day of his 21st birthday, Richard Marcus blew the whole lot. The following day, he sold his prized Mustang convertible and promptly gambled away all that money too.

He was now absolutely broke, literally penniless, and the Riviera caught on to this fact pretty quickly too, turfing him out of his $800-a-night suite after noticing he hadn’t wagered a single bet for a couple of days. Richard ended up on the Strip, and it was scorching, over 100 degrees outside in Vegas during the day. He soon discovered how much he had taken the comfort of air conditioning for granted as he pounded the streets, looking for somewhere to shelter, forced to eat in cheap coffee shops and run out without paying the bill. The night after sleeping in the luxury of the $800-a-night hotel suite, he bedded down below the I-15 overpass, in the company of druggies and winos. That was to be his home for the next ten days. In the mornings, he slipped into hotel pool areas and used the outside bathrooms to wash and shave with toiletries he stole from the hotel’s trolleys. Then he ate in all the hotel coffee shops, each time walking out without paying.

Richard was starting to get worn out by this existence. Figuring he would have to get a job to stay sane, he started to make enquiries about how one got a position in the casinos as a croupier; he had realised that, as gambling was all he knew about, he would have to take up employment on the other side of the table, at least for the time being. He quickly learned that to find a job in the hotels and casinos on the main part of the Strip meant attending croupier school and passing tests. He couldn’t wait that long, so decided instead to settle for the trashier casinos downtown, where you could literally walk in and get started as a ‘shill’ – a casino employee who sits at the card tables and plays with the house’s money. The idea is to keep all the tables in action during slack periods, so that when real punters walk in there are always games in progress, and not empty tables with bored croupiers standing behind them.

After several dry runs and knock-backs, Richard got lucky and was offered the job of a shill in a downtown, downmarket dump of a casino called the Four Queens. Mercifully, his life as a bum and coffee-shop renegade was over. Soon he was practising dealing games, and a month later he was promoted to dealing blackjack, mini-baccarat and roulette at the Four Queens. He started in the graveyard shift from midnight to eight in the morning, before being transferred to the swing shift that ran from six o’clock at night to two in the morning.

Over the next few months as a swing dealer, Richard got to know all the gambling junkies, addicts and degenerates. A pathological gambler called Whackey was one of the regular patrons. He used to come into the Four Queens every night at nine, always overly refreshed, and had been doing so as long as anyone remembered. The only culture associated with Whackey was to be found under his nails.

One night, he told Richard his story – which, unbelievably, turned out to be true. Whackey was a bum who spent the day begging on the Strip, and the nights emptying his pockets in grotty bars on cheap spirits, and at the Four Queens where he played slots and a bit of roulette, finances permitting. One night just before Christmas ten years earlier, Whackey had arrived at the Four Queens a little earlier than usual as it was raining, promptly emptied his pockets into the slots and lost. He then marched over to his favourite roulette table, and placed a folded-up dollar bill on number 4. The dealer spun the wheel, and the ball landed on number 4. Whackey won $35. Keeping his lucky dollar bill, which he put back in his pocket, he let his bet ride. Number 4 repeated, and Whackey now had $1,225. He wanted to let it ride again, but the casino maximum was $100, and Whackey bitched at this and reduced the bet to the $100. Number 4 came in a third time in a row, and Whackey now had $4,725. The casino manager pulled the croupier off the wheel, and installed another, meaner one. That didn’t put Whackey off one iota. He not only won again, but number 4 came up an incredible fifth time as well. Whackey’s five-time win on roulette is still Las Vegas’s official record on an honest roulette wheel. The casino had no hesitation in calling in the Nevada Gaming Board the following morning to examine the wheel to ensure it had not been tampered with – which it had not.

But Whackey wasn’t finished yet. Not by a long chalk. He took his $12,000 in roulette profits to the blackjack table and placed a $1,000 chip on all seven betting stations. As only a single card deck was in use, the four blackjacks he got that first round was the maximum possible. Whackey went on an incredible winning run. The Four Queens kept changing dealers and plying him with more whisky to break his run, but Whackey kept winning and winning. He was ahead three hundred grand when he hit the craps table, and there he shot the dice for an incredible two hours. By the time it was all over, Whackey had the Four Queens beat for an incredible million dollars, at which point, he literally fell into the craps table, intoxicated and exhausted. In a panic, the casino manager coaxed Whackey into the best suite, and put his million in the casino cage for safekeeping, but not that lucky $1 bill which had started his incredible roll. Whackey took it up to his suite and put it safely under his pillow.

Unfortunately, waking up the next day as a millionaire – and realising he didn’t have to go back on the streets begging – sadly proved to be poor Whackey’s downfall. Having nothing better to do, he went back into the casino, where it took him a whole week to blow the entire million dollars. Before kicking him out of his suite and on to the strip, the casino manager offered him $100 for the lucky one-dollar bill that remained in his pocket. Whackey refused. The next night, he was arrested in the Four Queens Hotel gift shop for stealing a candy bar that cost a dollar.

After he finished his story, Richard asked him why he didn’t simply pay for the candy bar with the dollar bill. He should have known the answer, it was simple, really. That was his lucky dollar, and there was no way the Four Queens was getting it.

Richard had also experienced the few punters who tried to bribe him to turn the tables against the house. Dealers are vulnerable to this, being persuaded to flash their hole card at blackjack, or overpay a winning bet. Richard was having none of that. But, one night in June 1977, a man who was going to change his life forever sat down at his mini-baccarat table.

It was late in the shift, and Richard’s table was dead. A very handsome man in his mid-forties, casually but stylishly dressed, sat down at the table and changed up a hundred dollars. He seemed more interested in small talk than the cards. They exchanged stories about places they both knew in Manhattan, and Richard confided in him his story about how he had ended up being a dealer at the Four Queens. Richard immediately liked the man, and felt comfortable and impressed with him. At the end of the shift, the man suggested that Richard meet him for a drink at the Horseshoe Casino bar. Richard, never having socialised with a customer before, sensed something important was about to happen, and agreed. And that was how Richard Marcus met Joe Classon, Las Vegas’s smartest cheat.

Binion’s Horseshoe was considered one of Vegas’s smartest joints. It was a no-limit casino, and people could – and did – make bets of a million dollars on the throw of a dice or the turn of a card. It was also home to the newly started World Series of Poker. Over cocktails, Joe sussed Richard out. ‘I’ve been watching you deal baccarat for the past week, but you wouldn’t have seen me. None of the floormen at the Four Queens has the slightest idea what goes on at the baccarat tables, yet you didn’t nick a dime. Why’s that?’

‘No reason, nothing much worth stealing, really. I only got chosen to deal the baccarat because I was the only one in there who understood the rules.’

Joe was quite right, baccarat had only recently been installed at the Four Queens, and the bulk of the personnel and punters didn’t even know the basic rules. And some of the crew were stealing small-value chips and getting away with it. Richard had not been tempted, though – memories of those ten nights under the freeway were still fresh in his mind. Richard was impressed with Joe’s knowledge of the casino, although, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t picture seeing him in there before that night. He felt sure, though, that Joe was going to make a move on him at any minute, an illegal move to rob the casino, and somehow Richard felt that the more he heard from his new friend, the more he was going to go for it.

‘So, where do you see yourself a year or two from now? Not still dealing in that shit hole across the road, surely?’

‘Nah, I’m just waiting for the right move to come along, I suppose,’ Richard replied.

‘Suppose I was to give you a push in the right direction, so to speak?’ Joe now fixed Richard’s gaze with his own, firmly and confidently.

Richard downed his drink in one, shook Joe’s hand, and agreed there and then to be part of his team. All he had to do now was come up with a worthwhile scam at the Four Queens, and turn his back on his career as a croupier. He was in; there was now no turning back.

When Richard next met Joe ten days later, it was in his suite at the Tropicana Hotel, and he had the scheme completely worked out. In Joe’s suite were his two associates, Duke and Jerry. Duke was in his mid-thirties, and had baby-blue eyes, while Jerry had the look of an American football player. They were passing round a joint, but Richard didn’t smoke, so he got straight down to business, and divulged his plan.

‘About ten minutes before the end of my shift at two in the morning, I want Joe to come and sit on my baccarat table and play in $100 black chips. That will set him up as a big player for the few hands that are left before I hand over to the next dealer on the graveyard shift. Now, here’s the key: it is my job to shuffle the cards and place them in the baccarat shoe before the new dealer gets to the table. I am going to set up the deck during the shuffle with as many winning player hands as I can, and let Joe know before I leave the table how many there are going to be. Joe will have to keep an eye on the floorman while I am doing the shuffling and lacing the cards, to make sure he is not taking too much notice, but, from experience, at that time in the morning, on a quiet table he rarely does. As soon as I am gone, and the new dealer comes on, you guys, who have already been in the casino for a while getting noticed as big hitters on the dice and roulette, come and sit down at the table and bet the maximum on the player until the run is over. After that, in order to avoid suspicion, play a mixture of bank and player to almost equal sums of money, so the worst you can lose is the bit of tax, and stay there until the shoe is over. If I can get five or six player hands in the shoe, it will be a good night’s work. And the beauty of it is, if the Four Queens think they have been burned, they will assume it must have been the fault of the graveyard dealer, not me, as I will already be gone.’

The room had gone quiet, and Joe’s three new accomplices in crime sat with their mouths wide open.

‘What about the burn card?’ Joe asked.

‘Quite right, I forgot. I will try and make the top card a deuce, so that the dealer has to burn two cards. Be careful to make sure that she burns two, not one or three; many dealers make a basic mistake on the burn. So, when I give Joe the signal after the shuffle I will say two, six. This means that the top card is a deuce, two cards will be burned, and there will be six winning player hands. Of course, if I can’t force a deuce to the top, I may say five, five, but, whatever I say, if the top card that comes out isn’t the one I mentioned, something’s gone wrong and the whole thing is off.’

They spent the next few hours going through it all, and decided to get four more players involved so that they could cover all seven boxes, at $500 a box, netting themselves $3,500 a hand. Duke and Jerry had their girlfriends coming over, and Joe had a couple of other trustees in mind. It was decided that all seven would enter the casino at different times and from separate entrances, and change up sufficient money at blackjack, roulette and craps to ensure that the casino saw them as big players before they even hit the baccarat table.

Part two – the winning series of bets – was easy, but part three – getting out – was more difficult. Joe elaborated on Richard’s theory: ‘If us seven continue to play after the coup until the shoe is over, betting roughly equal sums on the player and the bank, we will probably lose a little back, but we will keep the bulk of the thousands we have stung them for. That will be worth it, and the casino will see us as big players, even though they can’t win back what we have had them over for. In other words, they won’t even realise they’ve been robbed.’ The scene was set for the following Saturday evening. The Four Queens was about to get fleeced.

Upon shuffling the baccarat cards for possibly the last time in his career, Richard decided to try and put as many hands together as he could for his team. Joe was signalling – by gently rubbing his chin with his thumb and forefinger – that Harold, the floorman, had his back to him, and Richard quickly got a deuce and two dead cards, followed by four natural hands together. Then he managed to put in three more winning hands for the player, all unnoticed. By the time he had finished shuffling, and was ready to lace the cards, Harold the floorman had acknowledged the fact without even turning his head. ‘Two, seven,’ Richard told Joe, and then he received a tap on the shoulder, and his replacement arrived, a small Korean girl. The coup was on.

Of course, Richard wasn’t there to witness the finale himself, it was relayed to him back at Joe’s room, over bottles of champagne and much joy just over an hour later. Everything had gone to plan, just as Richard had said it would. The girl dealt seven winning hands in a row, and the team scooped $24,500. By the time the men in suits arrived, the offset procedure was already under way, and, soon after that, the conspirators slowly peeled away from the table, leaving the poor little Korean girl dealer staring at an empty table with hardly any house chips left. Joe divvied up the money among the team. Richard received his first pay day as a casino cheat, and he now started to wonder what Joe had in mind for their next scam, what Joe was going to teach him and when it was going to happen. He had the buzz. He could hardly wait.

Ten days later, on the way to Joe’s flat, he phoned the Four Queens and handed in his notice. When he arrived at Joe’s flat, he was about to learn the tricks of the trade that were to make him the best casino cheat in the world. Richard Marcus’s new career had begun.

‘What would you say,’ Joe asked him one day, ‘if I told you I could bet $15 on a hand of blackjack, or on a roll of the dice, and get paid a thousand bucks if the bet wins, and only lose the 15 if it doesn’t?’ He led Richard into his study, where he had a full-sized blackjack table set up. Joe took hold of a stack of red $5 chips from the dealer tray, and placed three in each of the seven betting boxes. ‘Go behind the table and deal me seven hands as you would in the casino.’

The shoe on the table was loaded with six decks of cards, just the same as it would have been in a proper casino. Richard dealt Joe the seven hands, and he played each one as any other casino punter would, ensuring he didn’t bust. Richard ended up busting, and then Joe told him, ‘Pay all the hands exactly as you would in the casino.’

Richard removed a stack of red chips from his tray to pay all the winning hands, and, as he just finished cutting down the three red $5 chips to pay the first box, Joe screamed, ‘Hey! That’s not right! I’m betting $500 chips here and you’re paying me with reds! What’s going on here?’

Richard could not believe his eyes. On the first betting post in front of him sat two Tropicana purple chips with a face value of $500 each, capped with a red chip on top of them with a face value of $5. And to make the effect even more dramatic, towards the edge of the table where high rollers keep their valuable chips there was a stack of some more purple chips to complete the illusion. Richard hadn’t even noticed him palm the purples on to the table, let alone switch the original bet. Richard was absolutely gobsmacked and was certain any other casino croupier would be too. But he had many questions and reservations as to how this move would pan out in a real casino, with floormen, pit bosses, overhead camera surveillance and of course the possibility of a fellow player on the table grassing on them. Joe set to work to iron out all of Richard’s concerns, and explain the move in greater detail. At this stage, as far as Richard was concerned, one thing was certain: the move certainly worked, it was a beauty. It was known in the trade as pastposting, and Richard couldn’t wait to get to work on it with Joe and his team in the real environment of a casino, in real life and for real bucks.

The newly formed team practised the move for the rest of the afternoon. Joe explained that the dealer knew in the deep crevices of his brain that the original bet was $15, as most dealers – experienced ones, at least – scan the table carefully before even dealing the cards. But now he sees the $1,005, two purples and a red staring him in the face with the back-up purples on display, all reason and what he has stored in his memory goes completely out of the dealer’s head, and he is completely bowled over. And he reaches into his chip tray, fetches out the valuable purple chips and pays, 90-odd per cent of the time. Occasionally, there is heat, and Joe then went on to explain how they had created a sophisticated signalling system between themselves in case they got steam, and had to make a quick exit out of the casino.

Then Joe explained how it worked at the craps table, too. The idea and move was the same, it was just that the method differed somewhat. At craps, as opposed to blackjack, a two-man team was used. The claimer stood behind the mechanic on either end of a busy craps table. The mechanic bet $15, three red chips on the pass-line where players betting with the shooter placed their chips. If the shooter rolled a 7 or an 11 on his first roll, he won. If he rolled a 2, 3 or 12, he lost. Any other number rolled was called a ‘point’ and had to be rolled a second time before a 7 in order for a pass-line bet to win. If the 7 came out first, pass-line bets lost, and the team were down a mere $15.

If the pass-line bet lost, the mechanic simply bet again after the dealer removed his losing chips. Eventually, the pass-line bet would win, and the mechanic’s hand would reach down to the layout as soon as the dealer paid his bet and made the switch, removing the three original red chips and replacing them with two purples and a red. He did this by picking up the three reds with one hand while laying down the move chips with the other, all in a fraction of a second. Then the mechanic yielded his place to the claimer, who immediately put his stack of purple back-up chips in the players’ rack along the rail and began claiming that the dealer had paid his bet incorrectly, that he had bet purple chips and only been paid by reds. The cleverness of this move was that the dealer and the boxman (an inspector seated between dealers at either end who watches their payouts and keeps an eye on all the action) had never set eyes on the claimer until that moment. This move was vital, because, if the same person betting $15 on the pass-line for several losing rolls all of a sudden shows up a winner on a thousand-dollar bet nobody has seen him make, the pit would become much more suspicious than if it was evident a new player’s thousand-dollar bet was his first bet, plus the valuable purple back-up chips in evidence to back him up as a high roller. It was for this reason – and to keep the pressure on each team member to a minimum – that the team changed who claimed at regular intervals. Joe, of course, was in charge of the security, and would position himself at the end of the craps table, to signal the go-ahead (thumb and index finger on chin), the all-clear to claim the bet (chin) or the quick exit signal (nose) if the heat came on too strong.

Joe decided that Richard was to be the new claimer at the very next game, and gave him this final piece of advice. ‘After you have been paid, bet back $205, two black chips with a red on top. That bet makes the original winning bet of the two purples with the red on top look more legit; they will probably think you have a superstition of placing a red chip on top of all your bets. Win or lose, you leave the table after that bet. Sometimes, steam comes after you have been paid, so keep an eye on me and, if I give you the nose, don’t even place the bet back, simply say thanks, and leave the table right away. We will have a designated “safe house” to go to where we all meet if there is steam. I will then hang around the table for a little while to see what happens when the pit bosses huddle together, and the suits arrive. They won’t know me as I wasn’t part of the operation, and would be out of the camera shots from the eye in the sky. Then I’ll join you at the rendezvous. All clear?’

That Friday night, Duke, Jerry, Joe and Richard descended on the MGM Grand, where Richard was to claim his first pastpost on a craps table. They found a busy table, with only one boxman, which was a bonus, and were soon in action. Jerry placed his $15 bet, the roller threw a 7, the dealer paid the front-line winners, and in a flash Jerry leaned over and made the switch, turned and walked away. Within a fraction of a second after that, Richard was making his claim, strong and loud. ‘Hey, what you doing, man? I’m betting a thousand here, and you’re paying me in reds!’

The dealer turned to the boxman, who merely shrugged, and Richard got paid. He then bet the $205 back-up bet, which lost, and then left the table to meet up with the rest of the team in the keno pit, their appointed point of call. Everyone was in awe of Richard’s coolness. He had excelled himself on that first go, but the night was still young, and they decided to hit the Dunes as well. There they found another busy craps table with only one boxman, and made a couple more moves, which went like silk. They had cleaned up over three grand on that very first night, and celebrated over a late-night breakfast next to the Dunes. To his delight, Richard realised that this was just the beginning.

After further very successful evenings over the following weeks at blackjack and craps, Joe decided to put Richard in for the next echelon of cheating. Roulette. While the blackjack and craps coups had generated profits at around even money, the attraction of roulette was that winning bets got paid out at a whopping 35 to 1. However, the chip move was far more complicated at roulette, and Joe explained how it was going to work. As Richard was now firmly installed as the new claimer, that would be his job at the roulette. However, this time there was going to be a big difference. At roulette, there is only one croupier, and a floorman who would wander around and be in charge of supervising two tables at once. Any black $100 chips that went into play on roulette had to be announced to the floorman so that a high roller can be monitored. Richard’s first move, a very clever psychological one, was to go straight up to the roulette table and place a legitimate bet of $100 on a number. That way, when the team made the move later on the same table, and Richard went to claim, he would already be recognised as a big player. Then the rest of the team would get to work, with a combination of skill, distraction and sleight of hand to end up claiming a pastpost of $100 straight up on a roulette number. The move was audacious and very daring, and extreme skill and split-second timing was essential. The move worked because roulette dealers have to turn their back to the table, only slightly and for just a fraction of a second, after the ball has landed to recover stacks of chips from the back of the table to pay out the winners. It was during this small but very valuable window of opportunity that the team would get to work, and they decided that they were going to go for it at Joe’s favourite hotel, the Tropicana, on Saturday evening.

Richard dressed for the part, wearing an expensive suit and borrowing Joe’s smart gold watch and diamond ring to portray the image of a high roller. He waltzed up to the roulette table, and placed a $100 black chip on number 4, and the bet lost, so he simply waltzed off again, towards a far-off blackjack table but still close enough to see the signal he was waiting for, a small tug on Joe’s right ear. Significantly, however, and exactly as planned, the large bet had been noticed by the dealer who announce to the floorman ‘blacks in play’, and he eyed up Richard and scribbled a note on his pad.

Richard was now marked as a straight-up, $100-bet-per-number player, and this was to become important in about twenty minutes’ time. Now, Jerry and Duke were seated at the same table, having bought dark-blue chips, the farthest ones away from the croupier, and were busy distributing these small-denomination chips all over the green layout, getting ready for Joe’s signal by the wheel to put their plan into action. The move was spectacularly simple, yet needed precision timing. As soon as Jerry and Duke received the nod from Joe, Duke bet four of their dark-blue chips on each of the numbers in the third dozen of the roulette wheel – that is, numbers 25 to 36. At the same time, Jerry bet 20 dark-blue chips on the third dozen, 2–1 chance. They repeated this operation until a number in the third dozen actually came up, and the second it did Joe tugged on his ear and Richard was at the table.

‘Thirty-three black,’ the croupier announced, placing the little plastic dolly on the chips which covered the number and then got to work scooping up all the losing chips off the layout. The side bets were always paid out first on roulette, and, as the croupier turned to reach for the two stacks of blue chips he required, Jerry’s hand shot over the table and placed the $100 black chip under the winning chips on number 33. As the croupier turned back to pay the side bet with his two stacks of blue chips, Richard was already congratulating himself. ‘Wow! I’m on that, my lucky 33! I love it, what a great casino the Tropicana is. Three-and-a-half grand for my lucky 33!’

The croupier looked at Richard sheepishly. ‘I didn’t see the black there, I’m gonna have to call over the floorman.’

Charlie the floorman arrived right at the table, and enquired what the problem was.

‘He’s got a black there, I just didn’t see it, boss.’

‘Are you sure it was there before the spin?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’d better call over the pit boss. If you don’t mind, sir, this will just take a moment.’

The pit boss wandered over, and the dealer recounted the tale. While he was doing so, Jerry, Duke and Joe were making the table noisy, congratulating Richard on his win, Joe clapping his hands and Jerry telling him to let his bet ride – ‘I feel a repetition coming!’

The floorman then delivered what was to save the payout: ‘I saw him bet $100 on a number earlier.’

The pit boss nodded to the dealer, who reached for $3,500 worth of black chips, and paid Richard out. He left his $100 bet on for the next spin, and it lost. Richard left the table to join the others at the keno pit, and then they all went off for a drink to celebrate. Richard Marcus’s first bet on pastposting roulette had paid off. The roulette road show, which was going to earn them millions, was about to begin. And it was to last for years.

One man went on a crusade to try and stop the party. His name was Steven DeVisser and he worked for Hanson Security, a detective and investigation company employed by many of the major casinos to curb cheating on all the games, to arrest and convict the slot mechanics who were wiring up the machines to pay out jackpots, and also to identify card counters. DeVisser enjoyed a formidable reputation, and had produced results for the casinos, getting many cheats convicted of felonies, and locked up. He knew exactly what Richard Marcus was up to, and did his damnedest to get him pulled, backrooming him many times. But Richard was just too smart for DeVisser, or anyone else for that matter, and was never convicted of any felony – indeed, he only made his astounding story public after his card-playing days were firmly behind him.

All of which makes Richard Marcus, without doubt, the most successful casino cheat in the whole world.