Blackjack Cheats Jailed

The Casino Four have been revealed as George Michael Lee, Duc Cong Nguyen, Hop Nguyen and Tien Duc Vu. These are the people who defrauded twenty five casinos located in the USA and Canada to the tune of two and a half million bucks (£1,500,000). This group of people are also known as the Tran Organization.

The leader Lee was given a three year prison sentence and ordered to repay his share of their winnings. Other members were given sentences ranging from one year in prison to probation and similarly they have to repay the money they made. Another eleven people have also been charged as accomplices. In total twenty nine people were involved.

The cheating system they employed is known as a "false shuffle" which they employed in games of blackjack and mini-baccarat. The gang bribed casino card dealers to carry out false shuffles. By doing this they made groups of un-shuffled cards which are known in the industry as slugs. They would track the order of cards dealt in a card game, then one of the gang would send a signal to the dealer to perform a false shuffle. When that slug next appeared, the gang members would know the sequence of cards.

In order to communicate between each other, and to determine and pass on the card sequences in the slugs along with indications that the slug had started to be dealt, they used a variety of mechanisms. These included hidden radio transmitters and software that would predict the card order.

The fact that they were able to get away with the scam for so long is an indication of the level of sophistication they achieved. They were caught only because of the acute observational skills and persistence of one particular casino manager who noticed that they won more often after particular dealers had shuffled the shoe even though those dealers were not present when the shoe was dealt. Despite this, it took several years to gather sufficient evidence on them in order to bring the case to court.

There have been a number of scams with casino games such as Blackjack and Roulette. These scams have also been attempted on online casino sites as well.