- Wired Slot Machines Russians Take Over
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- Wired Slot Machines Russians Play
- Wired Slot Machines Russians Dispense
There are slot machines and card tables in every direction. Using the Panoscope method, Finlay compared the mental effects of classic casinos, with low ceilings and a mazelike layout, to those of. How One Man Hacked His Way Into the Slot-Machine Industry by Brendan I. Koerner (37.9 MB.mp3)Subscribe: Wired Features PodcastAs Latvia became more open and prosperous, slot machines.
ByWired Slot Machines Russians Take Over
Russian casino cheats engineered a software program which made American slot machines go haywire in June 2014, according to a report released this week by Wired. The software caused several slot machines in the Lumiere Casino in St. Louis to produce a “negative hold” over two days in early June 2014.
A negative hold is when a slot machine loses more cash than it holds, despite not awarding any major jackpots. While such an aberration is not impossible, it is highly improbable, so negative holds are a red flag to casino accountants. When Lumiere’s accountants noticed the statistical anomaly, they immediately assumed someone was cheating the casino.
Lumiere Casino in St. Louis
Accountants alerted the security team at the Lumiere Casino, who pulled up surveillance tapes of the slot machines during June 2 and June 3 of 2014. The tapes revealed a black-haired Caucasian man in a Polo zip-up. The suspect carried a square brown purse. What made him particularly interesting to security was the fact he did not tinker with the slot machines.
The slot machines were games like Pelican Pete and Star Drifter, older EGMs manufactured by Aristocrat Leisure out of Sydney, Australia. The suspect did target Aristocrat machines, while holding his iPhone close to the gaming screen.
How the Scam Worked
Even more interesting, the man would stay at the machine for a few minutes, then walk away. When he returned, that man’s lucky winning streak began. In his gaming sessions, the man could parlay a bankroll of $20 to $60 into a hold as large as $1,300. By targeting several such machines, he collected $21,000 in winnings over a 2-day period.
The most suspicious behavior the man exhibited was his propensity to hover his finger over the “Spin” button on the slot machine before tapping it. As a general rule, players click the Spin button repetitively, with little ritual. For a casino cheat, taking that kind of time between spins is particularly suspicious.
Missouri Gaming Commission’s Alert
After their investigation, the Lumiere Casino turned in their findings to the Missouri Gaming Commission on June 9. The gaming commission issued a statewide alert soon after. When the alert came, several other Missouri casinos learned that they had been hit by the same cheaters.
During their probes, the various casinos learned that a man held an iPhone near an Aristocrat Mark VI model slot machine shortly before he had a run of luck.
The Case of Martin Bliev
Law enforcement authorities tracked the man by his rental car transactions, because they could track him to the cars he drove into Missouri casino parking lots. Through that means, authorities learned he was Murat Bliev, a 37-year-old Russian citizen who lived in St. Petersburg, Russia at the time.
Further investigation showed that Martin Bliev had flown out of the United States on June 6, so he was presumed to be beyond the reach of American authorities. Unfortunately for Martin Bliev, the casino cheating agency he worked for soon sent him back to the United States for more scams, as they were unaware he had been identified.
Wired Slot Machines Russians Try
Four Arrested at Hollywood Casino
In December 2014, Martin Bliev returned to Missouri to scam casinos again. This time, he met with three other men: Ivan Gudalov, Igor Larenov, and Yevgeniy Nazarov. After the four men entered the Hollywood Casino in St. Louis, authorities arrested them. Federal authorities charged them with conspiracy to commit fraud, because their casino scams spanned several US states.
Martin Bliev, Ivan Gudalov, and Igor Larenov eventually pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 2 years in federal prison. Yevgeniy Nazarov, a Florida resident and a native of Kazahkstan, sought religious asylum and continues to await sentencing. Aristocrat Leisure told WIRED that Nazarov “continues to assist the FBI with their investigations”, so there is evidence he is working with authorities to help track the St. Petersburg ring.
More about Russian Casino Cheats
The WIRED story on Russian casino cheats details the wide scope of the scamming operation, including revelations from Darrin Hoke of the international scope of the crimes. Hoke, who was the Surveillance Director at the Lake Charles, Louisiana-based L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort’s former Director of Surveillance, tracked 25 casino cheats as far afield as Turkey.
As the story goes, Russian casino scams have been on the rise since 2009, when Vladimir Putin banned casino gambling in Moscow and most other parts of the Russian Federation. Putin thought a casino ban keep Georgian crime syndicates from scamming money from Russian casinos, but it also put the St. Petersburg casino cheat syndicate out of business. That syndicate instead began sending agents to foreign countries to cheat casinos.
The ability to do so required finding gaming machines and reverse engineering their software programs. By doing so, programmers for the syndicate could find ways to exploit the code in older electronic gaming machines like the Aristocrat Mark IV.
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I DID NOT WRITE THIS ARTICLE. IT WAS SENT TO MY SITE TODAY BY CDC GAMING REPORTS. I FOUND IT INTERESTING AND THINK YOU MAY TOO. THE ORIGINAL STORY WAS WRITTEN BY BRENDAN KOERNER. IT MAY EXPLAIN WHY SOME CASINOS DO NOT ALLOW FILMING FOR YOUTUBE -- SEE WHAT MISSOURI AUTHORITIES FOUND A 37 YEAR OLD RUSSIAN NATIONAL NAMED MURAT BLIEVE WAS DOING WITH HIS CELL PHONE WHILE PURPORTEDLY PLAYING PELICAN PETE!
Because the original article is 8 pages long, this excerpt is just part of what Mr. Koerner is reporting in his article. If you attended G2E, you may find the article in your mailbox. If not you can read it all here: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/russia...asinos-no-fix/ or on my Blogger site. The excerpt that follows begins about 2 paragraphs into the story…
…..”Unlike most slots cheats, he didn’t appear to tinker with any of the machines he targeted, all of which were older models manufactured by Aristocrat Leisure of Australia. Instead he’d simply play, pushing the buttons on a game like Star Drifter or Pelican Pete while furtively holding his iPhone close to the screen
He’d walk away after a few minutes, then return a bit later to give the game a second chance. That’s when he’d get lucky. The man would parlay a $20 to $60 investment into as much as $1,300 before cashing out and moving on to another machine, where he’d start the cycle anew. Over the course of two days, his winnings tallied just over $21,000. The only odd thing about his behavior during his streaks was the way he’d hover his finger above the Spin button for long stretches before finally jabbing it in haste; typical slots players don’t pause between spins like that….”
….”two of Bliev’s accomplices from St. Louis had remained in the US and traveled west to the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California. On July 14, 2014, agents from the California Department of Justice detained one of those operatives at Pechanga and confiscated four of his cell phones, as well as $6,000. (The man, a Russian national, was not indicted; his current whereabouts are unknown.)
The cell phones from Pechanga, combined with intelligence from investigations in Missouri and Europe, revealed key details. According to Willy Allison, a Las Vegas–based casino security consultant who has been tracking the Russian scam for years, the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.
“The normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, which is why they do that,” says Allison, who is also the founder of the annual World Game Protection Conference. The timed spins are not always successful, but they result in far more payouts than a machine normally awards: Individual scammers typically win more than $10,000 per day. (Allison notes that those operatives try to keep their winnings on each machine to less than $1,000, to avoid arousing suspicion.) A four-person team working multiple casinos can earn upwards of $250,000 in a single week…”
Read the whole story. Then ask yourself what the casinos are going to think about allowing YouTubers to film slot games after reading this.