Dealing With Casino Cheaters: Don’t Mess With The Mafia
Posted: November 22, 2019
Updated: December 19, 2019
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Don't want a basement in the desert...then don't cheat
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Hammer to the hand was commonplace
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It's just business, nothing personal
Author: Johnny Blood [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
If you’re dealing with casino cheaters, what should you do? Well, when the blackjack cheater in the movie “Casino” gets his hand smashed with a hammer? Then his partner is offered either the cash he “won” plus the hammer, or to leave with nothing. Back in the day, casinos didn’t mess around when it came to dealing with casino cheaters.
Introduction: Dealing With Casino Cheaters: Don’t Mess With The Mafia
In July 2014, Mark William Branco and Bellagio co-worker James Russell Cooper Jr. were arrested and charged with cheating the Vegas Crest Casino. Essentially these two craps dealers were posting winning numbers after the dice landed. Their efforts got prison time and a banning from every casino in the US. At least they kept all their fingers. Or didn’t end up with their heads in a vice. A few years ago, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, things might not of turned out quite so well for them.
Give Me A Hand
The online casino sites in the US.
Permanent Home In The Desert
A gaming protection expert, Max Rubin, who works exclusively with the Barona Resort & Casino near San Diego, says that’s how it was back in the day. Calling it “cheater’s justice”, use of the hammer on the hand was the way things were dealt with. “Back then if you stole a million-and-a-half dollars, you would disappear. If you stole a few hundred thousand, you might get chained to a wall and beaten”. Everyone knows that the desert is filled with unknown graves. As there were no specific laws relating to cheating, then the casino bosses decided the punishment and security handed it out. Max re a dealer who was stealing chips. “He was in a basement for three days, supposedly without water. He got a beating everyday, and then they threw him out into the street.”
A Bullet Or A Beating?
The owner of the now de-funct Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, Ted Binion is clear, “Don’t get caught, whether or not you’re breaking the law.” He recalls looking down at the tables and seeing a cheater. He took out his pistol to shoot him there and then. Luckily security convinced him not to go down that route, but still dragged the poor sap into the street and beat him unconscious. Lots of shit went down in those days. It was nothing personal. Just business. Luckily that can’t happen today when you play with these online gambling sites in the US.
Dealing with Casino Cheaters: Getting Soft
Max Rubin looks at the present way of dealing with casino cheaters and Russian hackers have discovered. As Rubin says, looking back on his many years in the industry, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen casino cheating on the decline.”
