High-tech scams make it easier to beat the house

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A Nevada regulator with computer savvy, Ronald Harris was one of the best at busting slot cheats. So good that for four years, he ran his own high-tech scam undetected.

Seth Bergen's methods, police said, were more common. Bergen is accused of wagering in casinos throughout the United States with counterfeit tokens that may have been made in his Florida home.

But Dennis Nikrasch outdid them all. He perfected a talent for rigging slot machines in his garage, then went on to mastermind two schemes that netted an estimated $16 million.

Ploys to beat the house have been around for as long as gambling has existed.

Although technological advances have revolutionized the casino industry, thieves have also gone high-tech, using methods that sometimes escape even the best surveillance teams.

"There are gangs that do nothing but cheat the slot machines," said Sgt. Gerald Stoll, a State Police detective assigned to New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement.

It's a problem so prolific that experts and regulators could not put a dollar amount on how much is lost each year.

Patrons have spilled everything from WD40 lubricant to mercury to the gravel found in casino ashtrays into coin slots in attempts to manipulate the machines.

Some have zapped them with electricity to shock coins into dropping. Others have tried to slip wires up the coin trays to block the beams that count coins as they fall out. And others slip counterfeit bills into the slot machines' bill slots.

"There are three ways to cheat a slot machine," said Richard Williamson, who heads the technical services bureau for the Division of Gaming Enforcement in New Jersey. "You can introduce a flaw into the (computer) program. You can use counterfeit bills or coins, which give you better odds because now you're playing for free. Or you can manipulate the hopper to think it's not paying out."

Rigging the computer

The first, introducing a flaw, is the most difficult. That's because inspectors run hundreds of tests on the machines before they place them on the casino floor.

Harris was one such inspector, until he went from protector of the public trust to its most high-profile violator.

According to testimony at his trial, Harris, who was convicted, took a computer program that checked to see whether the slot machines were functioning properly and rewrote it to cause the machines to hit a jackpot after a certain sequence of bets were made. Regulators inadvertently introduced the flaw while conducting random inspections.

Harris' downfall was his accomplice. In 1995, the man seemed to have done the unlikely while playing a keno machine in Bally's Park Place: He matched all eight numbers and won $100,000. The odds of guessing all eight are about one in 230,000.

The man drew more attention when he asked to be paid in cash and showed a driver's license that listed a different address than the one he gave when he checked into the hotel.

Investigators searched the man's hotel room. They found Harris.

Investigators ultimately traced nearly $50,000 in jackpots that Harris helped rig. But it could have been more because jackpots of a few hundred dollars were not documented.

Using fake tokens

Likewise, it is impossible to say how much money is lost to cheats who use fake tokens.

"Some (counterfeits) are so good," Stoll, the detective, said, "it's hard to distinguish them from the real ones."

What matters to the machine is the coin's metal content, size and density. Each casino uses different tokens. But that hasn't stopped the cheats. They just make more than one kind of counterfeit coin.

Bergen, the Florida man, is accused of manufacturing fake tokens similar to those used in four Atlantic City, N.J., casinos, the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut and casinos in the South. He was arrested last fall while allegedly betting with $10 counterfeit slot tokens inside the Tropicana Casino and Resort, and is awaiting indictment.

Investigators would not say what tipped them off to Bergen. But they have ways of spotting suspects.

"Games have patterns," said Division of Gaming Enforcement Director John Peter Suarez. "People have patterns. People have patterns when they're playing. People have patterns when they deviate from normal patterns."

Investigators can monitor the slot machines for payout abnormalities. If detected, they review surveillance footage during the time of the hit.

Photos of suspected players are scanned into a system that can match faces to pictures of known criminals by measuring the distance between a suspect's eyes, nose and ears. A criminal can change hair color and style, wear facial hair or shave, "but the only thing that doesn't change is the space between your eyes," Stoll said.

Fooling the coin counter

Leaders who are especially shrewd have made money by licensing their methods to other crooks. Investigators said Orville Durham was one who sold his expertise like a business sells franchises. He made money, police said, by charging others up to $60,000 to train them to use a "monkey wire" and then took a cut of the winnings.

A wire is stuck up a coin tray to block the beam that counts coins as they are paid out. So if someone legitimately wins 40 coins, the wire could trick the machine into emptying more - say 80 - while the machine still registers 40.

Slot manufacturers have changed the machines to make it harder to use the wire. But cheats have discovered a new tool: an optic device that blocks the beam.

Now, manufacturers are trying to modify the machines to prevent the optic device from working.

But it will probably be a matter of time before the cheats find a different scam.

"The ingenuity of the criminal mind," said Suarez, "is amazing."