Blackjack Dealer Scammer Goes Bust

For the average person, going to play blackjack is a game of skill and luck. However, there are both legitimate methods of counting cards that are designed to make the game more skill than luck. Taking this to another level and scamming the casino, however, is illegal and is a form of fraud. Recently, a ring of blackjack scammers was busted in Chicago, with a dealer being one of those arrested.

The group responsible for this blackjack scam is a group called the “Tran organization” and their system was able to take 50,000 dollars from a casino in as little as ten minutes. While intricate, this system was easily implemented. The key was finding a blackjack dealer that was willing to take bribes. For these unscrupulous dealers, they would be sent to a location in Houston, Texas to learn how to make it seem like they were shuffling the cards at the blackjack table when they weren’t.

The conspirator at the table would pay attention to the cards dealt and using a hidden microphone and a cellular phone, would relay the cards to another person who put them into a computer program. This program would then tell the conspirators how much to bet on specific hands, because they would know which cards were about to be dealt.

This group had successfully operated at ten different casinos across the country. The dealer that was arrested had himself been responsible for over three quarter of a million dollars in illegally taken winnings from the Chicago casino he worked for.

While successful, the people playing were undisciplined and would also loose large amounts of money over the course of an evening. They would bribe anyone they needed to as well to make sure they weren’t caught, from dealers to pit bosses as well as witnesses, casino security staff members and even law enforcement.