The Morning Report
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The FBI just released a lot more information about the alleged casino fraud. An FBI’s press release announces that indictments have been handed up against 19 defendants in the investigation into racketeering at casinos around the country.
According to the FBI, the group targeted 18 casinos, including 10 run by American Indian tribes. The group allegedly bribed dealers to perform “false shuffles” on decks of cards, thereby creating what are known as “slugs” of unshuffled cards in the decks.
From the FBI’s website:
According to the indictment, after tracking the order of cards dealt in a card game, a member of the organization would signal to the card dealer to perform a “false shuffle,” and then members of the group would bet on the known order of cards when the slug appeared on the table. By doing so, the indictment alleges that members of the conspiracy repeatedly won thousands of dollars during card games n up to $868,000 on one occasion.
The indictment also alleges that the group used sophisticated mechanisms for tracking the cards as they were dealt, including hidden transmission devices and specially created software that predicted the order in which cards would reappear in some card games.
Again, from the FBI:
“The subjects arrested and indicted colluded with casino dealers and engaged in a sophisticated card counting scheme to cheat casinos out of large winnings,” said Assistant Director Kenneth W. Kaiser, FBI Criminal Investigative Division. “The FBI will continue to cooperate with its local, state and federal partners to conduct joint investigations of organized criminal activities with the goal of disrupting, dismantling and prosecuting criminal enterprises that threaten the American economy and society.”
The defendants face up to 20 years in prison.