Cheaters have devised some high-tech and interesting ways to steal money from slot machines over the years, but one gambler recently in Washington was even more creative.
Don Hitchcock, 51, appeared in court last week after allegedly using a massage gun to score some slot machine winnings at Northern Quest Casino. The property apparently featured vintage games that used coins, and over five visits to the property, Hitchcock utilized the massager “to shake the coin platform on slot machines, which caused coins to fall into the payout chute,” according to KHQ.
Court documents indicate that the suspect admitted to the scheme and was released on his own recognizance. However, he was barred from visiting casinos and other sites with gambling machines.
A Look at Some Other Recent Cheating Schemes
Casinos are regularly targets of cheating and other thefts. The poker world was recently rocked by the arrests of two men in France who were allegedly using tiny cameras in their cell phones during blackjack and poker games.
This allowed for low-angle photos of the card faces as they were dealt. 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.
In December, GGPoker admitted that a player under the name “Moneytaker69” had been banned from the site for utilizing a superuser-type scheme and confiscated funds and refunded players. Under certain circumstances related to the ‘“Thumbs Up/Down Table Reaction” feature, the player could customize his own game client. This allowed the player to “deduce all-in equity by exploiting a client-side data leak vector,” GG noted.
In November, Nevada law enforcement officials arrested two people alleged to be involved with cheating at the Rampart Casino, located in the Las Vegas suburb of Summerlin. The Nevada Gaming Control Board reported that the two players won a combined five figures during two sessions in which the dealer colluded with them to reveal hands before a game played out.
