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Thread: Station Casinos Slot Tournament Scam

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    Silver circuitp's Avatar
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    Station Casinos Slot Tournament Scam

    After black Friday I moved out to Vegas to figure out life. I had just started to shake off some terrible life tilt and was getting some good staking deals on Part time poker when in an instant, it was all gone. The only thing I could think of to do was to sell everything and move.So that's what I did.

    I had been out to Vegas a year prior but didn't know anyone living out there. I found a chick needing a roommate on some site and I packed up my 2007 Dodge Stratus with my chihuahua peewee , my clothes and my PC and $4500. I left Raleigh on June 6th and rolled into Las Vegas at dawn on June 9th.

    My new roommate didnt get off work till 5pm so I had all day to kill. I drove around town trying to get the feel of my new home. I took Peewee to the dog park behind the East Side Cannery and drove around downtown until I found Pawnstars.
    I was super tired midday so I rented a room in a really old motel downtown on Las Vegas Boulevard , right beside the Post Office. I tried to nap with my dog who was super hyped at any noise- I kept envisioning how many people had slept in the room so I made Peewee a blanket bundle and set out to walk downtown.

    I finally got up with my new roommate and settled in. I won several of the grand tournaments at the Golden Nugget, I crushed the Orleans Friday night and several of their dailies, I scooped the Aria daily and nightly. I was crushing off of a $4500 roll and then when the series was over, and everyone left town, I was still sitting with some residual life tilt from another period in my life. I needed to become a better people person and work through some issues, so I decided to work.

    I had never really had a job and I was 34 years old. I was lacking some things in my life that I knew to be a better person , I had to work on. So I brainstormed and decided that the best job that would make me great tips, allow a lot of personal freedom and set my own schedule was to deliver food.

    I set out to work two jobs, not just one. I had never held a job more than 90 days my whole life and I wanted to not only work one, but to work two and become a new person by hard work and immersing myself into a new situation 2200 miles away from bad memories.

    It was the best thing I have ever done! I got my first job at Jasons Deli , downtown , right there in the Southern Nevada water district building next to the IRS. They did a huge amount of catering to Zappos, The mayors office , The Smith Center, World Market - basically the whole east side to Flamingo and as far North as the Speedway ! Schools, hospitals- Ricks Restoration, Pawn Stars, Zuffa !!

    My 2nd job in the evenings was the east side Pizza Hut off of Sahara and Nellis. I chose that store particularly because it's delivery area is the edge of the mountain and a lot of local traffic instead of that crazy downtown traffic I was driving in during the day. I tried to set myself up to have success and I had so much of it.

    Anyway, it's at this Pizza Hut that I got invited to take part in a scam to steal money from the slot machine tournament at Sunset Station in Henderson. I applied and was immediately hired to be a driver and since I wanted to work nights, I was a good fit. The girl who hired me was from Ohio and she was around my age and 8 months Pregnant. She was dating a guy who worked at Sunset Station as a manager in one of the restaurants and after she came back from having their baby , he got her a position at Sunset, out of pizza hut. I didnt think anything else about her, I was there to work and do my thing , but some of the people that were there before me were close with her and would always talk about her and that they see her regularly. the usual work chit chat.

    Probably 4 months go by and out of the blue her best friend at the pizza hut, a guy named earl from chicago , starts calling my phone one day needing to talk to me really bad, so I stop by his apartment on my way to work .

    He begins to tell me that " donna" has been working at Sunset and has been in charge of the slot tournament and that if I wanted to , she could rig it to make sure that my card # was the winner of the slot tourney- the only catch was that I split the $2000 prize with her.

    I didnt tell anyone I worked with about poker. None of those people had any clue other than it was played in a casino. There was nothing i could gain from these people by talking about poker. But poker was the first thing I thought about. The embarrassment of moving to vegas to change your life , only to be caught up stealing 1000 from Sunset Station, I was fucking horrified.

    I held it in though. I was just gonna politely decline and go to work and thats what I did , but before I did, he told me all about it. However since she left Pizza Hut she was there and she got that job and immediately started rigging it- here's how it went-

    They have the slot tourney promotions- get a certain amount of points on a certain day and you qualify for the slot tourney. The slot tourneys are on special machines cordoned off just for the tourney- You show your card number, it gets validated for points. They sit you at a machine and give you the play and whatever points you total goes on a list and then a percentage of the list gets paid out- at 7pm the slot tourney winners list is posted by the cage- you go up and find your number and see if you placed in the money- it's all anonymous.

    He said that he did it for several weeks in a row and that he was scared to do it again. They had already used her mother in law, and some other person but now they needed someone new..... me


    LOLLLL you know what kept running through my head? How fucking insane it is to stroll up to that pay window pretending you won the slot tourney 3 times in a row when there are thousands that play it. I am dead ass serious. I was thinking of Russ Hamilton type undeniable cheating and this guys asking me to steal after they had already stolen so much.

    She moved back to Ohio and I never heard anything else about it except that earls car got repossesed for non payment. I guess he didn't bink anymore slot tourneys.

    This lesson taught me that cheating is so easy that people with no gaming experience were cheating hard core and didn't get caught.

     
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      FRANKRIZZO: interesting post true that

  2. #2
    Gold PositiveVariance's Avatar
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    Interesting.
    She probably got caught. Usually when people pull easy money scams like that continuously, they usually just don’t stop on there own.
    You would think the casino would have better safeguards in place to prevent whoever administers the slot tournament from rigging the outcome.
    The sad thing is, there will never be a shortage of people willing to go half’s on this type of theft.

    Also, if you were to get caught it would likely just be termination for the employee and loss of players card for customer. No one is calling the police. The publicity would be to much. The casino pays out 2k either way. So there is no financial loss.


    But hey, at least she wasn’t greedy and rig all the places. At least the first 3 places anyway.

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    Silver circuitp's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PositiveVariance View Post
    Interesting.
    She probably got caught. Usually when people pull easy money scams like that continuously, they usually just don’t stop on there own.
    You would think the casino would have better safeguards in place to prevent whoever administers the slot tournament from rigging the outcome.
    The sad thing is, there will never be a shortage of people willing to go half’s on this type of theft.

    Also, if you were to get caught it would likely just be termination for the employee and loss of players card for customer. No one is calling the police. The publicity would be to much. The casino pays out 2k either way. So there is no financial loss.


    But hey, at least she wasn’t greedy and rig all the places. At least the first 3 places anyway.
    I never considered that the police wouldn't be called due to publicity.
    I just assumed that if I were to participate and then was arrested in their investigation of it, Then I would somehow be banned from Caesars. I know now that this proabably wouldn't have happened since the casinos aren't connected but just the fear of it possibly happening was very intense at the time. I had been in Vegas maybe a year and being banned from the WSOP was something I couldn't even fathom. This whole situation actually changed they way I approached " work friends " in Vegas.
    As for Donna, she moved back to her home state with her husband and their son. She was never arrested as far as I know. I continued to work at that pizza hut and I never heard anyone speak of it or did I ever read of it in the media. I do know that not long after I was asked to play in the torunament , that Station changed that promotion. I was always waiting to read about them getting caught and it never happened.

    I would lie in bed at night theorizing how lax things have to be behind the scenes for a short term employee to have access to and then run the slot tournament , where cheating was so easy a person just getting to the job figured it out. If you agree in theory that the controls and procedures of running games are broken at this level , how many levels of brokeness are there before you reach competency?
    it's scary to think about.

  4. #4
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Interesting story.

    I've always been very skeptical of tournament promotions which involve some kind of contest or drawing.

    Not only are they open to direct rigging like the situation you described, but there are also "legal" riggings, such as drawings where the casino gives preferred players an insane number of "bonus" entries, which either virtually guarantees a win for them, or astronomically increases their odds.

    Often these riggings are done by the casino in order to make whales recoup some of their losses, and feel better about their "luck". If you lose $700,000, but win a $70,000 car in a drawing, it's easier to go back home not feeling as shitty, even though you lost over $600k total.

    This has gone on for a long time. In 2002, a contest at Venetian was rigged by a casino employee to help appease losing gamblers, and they were fined $1 million for it.

    In general, it is rarely smart to "play for a contest", as often your chances of winning aren't what they seem to be. With that said, I did once win a drawing at Harrah's Rincon to play some kind of plinko-like game, where I won like $500. However, in that situation it was a contest from points earned that day only, and I was one of the few in the casino hammering mid-stakes video poker hard for hours, so it made sense I won.

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    Silver circuitp's Avatar
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    You mentioning Venetian , I instantly think about that red BMW sitting on the slot bank right outside the poker room-

    everytime I walked by that car I wondered why hasn't anyone won it yet ! LOL

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    I'd bet money if she is caught there is no prosecution. The casino MIGHT ask for their money back and threaten but it has far too much of a chance being covered by media. The optics that people who played weren't rightfully given a chance to win money and a possible gaming fine.

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    I just realized that if the Venetian Casino Host rigged a drawing in 2004 when this article is from then, you must assume that other contests are rigged drawing the conclusion from this article and my own experience with the slot scammers.How many other drawings are rigged? How many games are rigged?

    If the Venetian and the almighty sheldon adelson can allow their in house man to cheat FOR someone, what are the odds they cheated AGAINST someone?

    this raises a lot of questions and possibilities.

    If the newly hired employee can rig the slot tourney, the possibilities are endless.

     
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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Casino contests are rigged for a few reasons:

    1) The law isn't as strict against this compared to rigging real-money casino games. There are many "legal" ways to rig these contests, and even if caught illegally rigging them, it's typically a fine and not any threat of loss of licensure. Furthermore, nobody goes to jail for rigging casino contests, whereas they do for cheating casino patrons.

    2) Relatively few people ever complain. Most expect to lose casino contests. Since they aren't entering them for direct real $, people just shrug their shoulders and move on. If someone believes they've been cheated in a game where they risked real money, then they're much more likely to go to Gaming.

    3) It's a lot easier for casinos employees to morally justify going along with rigged contests than actually directly cheating customers. This is because they see the contest money as "free money" for the winner, and they almost feel like Robin Hood, giving away promotional money to the whales who have lost the most.

    4) Often this rigging takes place by non-management employees, and as you saw in your story, it's far easier than rigging closely-watched casino games.



    I have said for years that I do NOT trust casino contests, even at casinos where I otherwise trust their games.

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    Silver circuitp's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    Casino contests are rigged for a few reasons:

    1) The law isn't as strict against this compared to rigging real-money casino games. There are many "legal" ways to rig these contests, and even if caught illegally rigging them, it's typically a fine and not any threat of loss of licensure. Furthermore, nobody goes to jail for rigging casino contests, whereas they do for cheating casino patrons.

    2) Relatively few people ever complain. Most expect to lose casino contests. Since they aren't entering them for direct real $, people just shrug their shoulders and move on. If someone believes they've been cheated in a game where they risked real money, then they're much more likely to go to Gaming.

    3) It's a lot easier for casinos employees to morally justify going along with rigged contests than actually directly cheating customers. This is because they see the contest money as "free money" for the winner, and they almost feel like Robin Hood, giving away promotional money to the whales who have lost the most.

    4) Often this rigging takes place by non-management employees, and as you saw in your story, it's far easier than rigging closely-watched casino games.



    I have said for years that I do NOT trust casino contests, even at casinos where I otherwise trust their games.

    BRO look at this thread just started on 2p2 about this scam- mentions Ukraine!!!!!



    https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...-scam-1805999/

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