Card-reading contact lenses, X-ray poker tables, trays of poker chips that read cards, hacked shuffling machines that predict hands. The technology alleged to have been used to execute a multistate, rigged poker operation sounds like it\u2019s straight out of Hollywood. <\/p>\n
And those were only some of the gadgets that authorities say were used to swindle millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims through rigged, high-dollar, underground poker games over more than five years. <\/p>\n
A sprawling indictment unsealed Thursday by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the NBA\u2019s Portland Trail Blazers, and Damon Jones, a former NBA player, along with members of the Mafia and dozens of other defendants, with being part of a conspiracy. <\/p>\n
The victims were \u201cat the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contacts lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big,\u201d U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of Brooklyn said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Cheating at poker is as old as poker itself. But today, wearable tech and nano-cameras are putting even upstanding poker players on their guard.<\/p>\n
The defendants used \u201cspecial contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards,\u201d Nocella said at a news conference announcing the indictments.<\/p>\n
He also showed a photo of an X-ray table that \u201ccould read cards face down on the table … because of the X-ray technology.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDefendants used other cheating technologies, such as poker chip tray analyzers, which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n And while marking poker cards so they are visible only with special eyewear is an old trick, new radio-frequency identification and infrared technologies have ramped up the sophistication levels. <\/p>\n Technically speaking, many of the devices involved in the alleged scam authorities detailed Thursday are relatively cheap to manufacture, said Sal Piacente, a gaming security consultant.<\/p>\n By the time they reach their customers, however, the cost of industrial shufflers or tables can easily approach $100,000, once distributors and middlemen are factored in.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could make a lucrative career buying this stuff,\u201d Piacente said.<\/p>\n Casino and gaming security consultants told NBC News that the alleged scheme was possible only because the games were underground. In backrooms, there was none of the surveillance tech that reputable casinos use to catch players cheating.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the features which made this scheme so successful would have been ID\u2019d a lot sooner, or very quickly, in a traditional regulated gaming environment,\u201d said Ian Messenger, a former U.K. law enforcement officer and founder and CEO of the Association of Certified Gaming Compliance Specialists.<\/p>\n More than any other tech, it was the reprogramming of the industrial card shufflers \u2014 identified in charging documents as Deckmate-brand machines \u2014 that authorities said was key to the alleged game rigging.<\/p>\n Deckmates are not sold directly to the public \u2014 though many used ones can be found for sale online. The ones at the high-dollar games cited in the indictment could read cards and predict which player had the best hand. Neither Deckmate nor its parent company, Light & Wonder, were implicated in any way in Thursday\u2019s indictments. <\/p>\n A spokesman for Light & Wonder told NBC News in a statement that the company was aware of reports about the charges against people but said they were not affiliated with the company. <\/p>\n \u201cWe sell and lease our automatic card shufflers and other gaming products and services only to licensed casinos and other licensed gaming establishments,\u201d said Andy Fouch\u00e9, the company\u2019s vice president of communications. \u201cWe will cooperate in any law enforcement investigation related to this indictment.\u201d <\/p>\n Reprogramming shufflers is not a new trick. In 2023, hackers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas presented research showing how to hack a Deckmate shuffler and use it to cheat.<\/p>\n The rigged shuffler machines would transmit information about the players\u2019 hands to an off-site \u201coperator,\u201d according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n The operator would then communicate the information to someone else at the table, dubbed the \u201cquarterback.\u201d The victim was known as the \u201cfish.\u201d <\/p>\n Here, the high-tech gadgets met the low-tech of a card game.<\/p>\n The quarterback might touch the $1,000 poker chip or tap his chin or touch his black chips to indicate who at the table had the best hand.<\/p>\n Text messages obtained by prosecutors also appear to show defendants concerned that a fish would leave the table if he lost too many hands. <\/p>\n \u201cGuys please let him win a hand he\u2019s in for 40k in 40 minutes he will leave if he gets no traction,\u201d read one text message released by authorities.<\/p>\n But according to Messenger, the consultant, it was not the tech that made the alleged scheme so successful for so long. What set it apart was the level of communication.<\/p>\n For example, he said, the card information had to be seamlessly passed from the dealing machines to an off-site operator and back to a person back at the table, all without alerting the fish.<\/p>\n \u201cThe piece that made this so successful was the coordination, not the technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Card-reading contact lenses, X-ray poker tables, trays of poker chips that read cards, hacked shuffling machines that predict hands. The technology alleged to have been used to execute a multistate, rigged poker operation sounds like it\u2019s straight out of Hollywood. And those were only some of the gadgets that authorities say were used to swindle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bondsandfonds.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}