Man steals $33 million from Australian casino in 'Ocean's Eleven'-esque heist

I really doubt they had wireless wi-fi cameras. Any decent installer would never do that for such a large establishment with that many cameras. In fact, it would probably be more maintenance because they are not as reliable. It would be interesting to see how he got the feed but I really doubt they had wireless cameras in a casino.

sbarre2• 13 years ago

Yeah after reading some other articles, it really does sound like someone on the inside gave them access to the security system, as opposed to them hacking into it without help.

CamperBob22• 13 years ago

Hmm. They could still have used a wireless methodology. Somewhere there is a room with a lot of monitors for those cameras, where the security personnel watch the tables. That room is probably not exactly hardened to TEMPEST standards.

smoyer• 13 years ago

The whole reason casinos stay in business is because the house "skims" money from the players ... or in games where the player plays against the house, the house has more favorable odds.

The head-line says "steals", but the reality is that he was simply cheating. One is a crime but I'm not sure about the other. If I'm accomplished at counting cards, I can still beat the house because I've changed the odds. The casino may ban me (and I might forfeit the earnings for the day) but they can't charge me with a crime.

mistercow• 13 years ago

If by "crime" you mean "against the law", then yes, cheating is a crime, but it depends on the jurisdiction. Depending on how silly and/or archaic the laws in the jurisdiction are, just intercepting the surveillance signal might be a crime.

>The casino may ban me (and I might forfeit the earnings for the day) but they can't charge me with a crime

Counting cards has apparently been explicitly ruled not to be cheating in Canada, and while casinos generally call it that, it is not actually illegal. Other forms of cheating are, however. For example, in Nevada, cheating is a felony.

aprescott• 13 years ago

Not only that, in Ocean's Eleven they don't just place bets, they break into a vault, so the only similarity with the film seems to be that a camera feed was involved.

robomartin11• 13 years ago

One aspect of the ilegality, if you will, of card counting I don't yet understand is the fundamental idea behind it: using your brain to make intellectually sound batting choices is not legal.

I know the casinos would rather have people turn their brains down to "idiot mode" when they play. However, I can't understand why the law supports the idea that I am not allowed to use my brain, memory and deductive reasoning skills when playing.

Weird,

I don't get it.

andyakb2• 13 years ago

In the US, and likely most countries, card counting is not illegal. However, casinos can refuse to do business with anybody they want, so they can ban you for it. The exception is Atlantic City where you can't be banned for card counting, but if you are suspected of it, they will use other tactics to negate any advantage you may have (e.g. shuffling after every hand)

raldi3• 13 years ago

There's nothing illegal about counting cards. The law simply allows casinos to choose whom they allow to play, or to visit their premesis, and they choose to exercise this right when someone is playing several standard deviations better than math would predict.

It's really no different from your choosing to walk away from a table after losing a lot of money.

dsrguru• 13 years ago

This wasn't about card counting (which is an integral part of blackjack strategy and certainly should be legal in any jurisdiction that allows casinos to operate). Counting takes place in your mind. Breaking into the casino's surveillance feed to learn extra information is outright cheating (and therefore, theft). I'm curious to know what information the player obtained. I can't imagine there are cameras low enough to glimpse the dealer's hole card before it is set down. Perhaps multiple accomplices each watched a table, keeping count and waiting for the count to be high (meaning the chance of drawing a ten-value card or an ace was very high), and then told the player to move to that table?

jnsaff2• 13 years ago

The argument Casinos use is that they are in the business of "games of chance" and card counting is more like a "game of skill".

I still think they are full of manure with this, but that explains a little bit of their angle.

johnsoft• 13 years ago

Cheating probably isn't a crime, but I would imagine unauthorized access to someone else's network probably is. (I am not a lawyer, no less an Australian lawyer)

damian2000• 13 years ago

Rather than hacking the video feed, its far more likely remote access to the feed was given to a second accomplice by the casino insider (who later was sacked). This second accomplice then signalled to the gambler by some other method (either physical or electronic). There's a bit more detail here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/crown-casino-hi-t...

joonix• 13 years ago

Crown is poorly run with incompetent staff, not surprised and not sympathetic.

peterjancelis• 13 years ago

I think the chance of recovering the money is higher than zero, close to 1 in fact. All the casino has to do is store the tape and wait for facial recognition technology to take off on the web. In a decade or so we'll just be taping crimes and than the web will tell us which individuals have matching bone structures.

rescripting• 13 years ago

The title of the article is misleading. He didn't steal it, he cheated the casino out of it. This is an important distinction since in the eyes of the law the casino willingly gave him the money when he cashed out. The casino can catch you cheating and prevent you from cashing out, but once you're out the door you're pretty much free (although I probably wouldn't come back).

In fact the article actually says they've identified the man and banned him from the casino. If they had legal backing I'm sure it would have mentioned the manhunt, and not a "near zero chance of recovering the money."

rtwtlkj• 13 years ago

Or they are just making it up and using this as an excuse to never allow him to play in their casinos

rollo_tommasi• 13 years ago

Given that it's an Australian casino, its highly likely that the gambler is associated with a syndicate working out of Southeast Asia (see for example the recent soccer gambling scandal). The problem isn't identifying who took the money, the problem is a) prosecuting and b) identifying and recovering assets in a tangle of opaque foreign legal systems.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

"According to Barron Stringfellow"

With a name like that, you'll either grow up to be a Bond villain or a casino consultant.

Apocryphon• 13 years ago

Or both.

raldi3• 13 years ago

Better title: "Man taps into security camera system to cheat casino out of $33 million"

robomartin11• 13 years ago

Assuming this wasn't a case where an insider broke into security and installed a transmitter onto a specific video feed, isn't there an argument here as to who owns a presumably unencrypted RF signals?

Also, is there an implied Terms Of Service you agree to when entering a casino? I've been to many and have never seen anything even remotely resembling a TOS.

I was asked to stop playing roulette at a major Vegas casino a number of years ago. I wasn't betting big or making tons of money. I am what one might call a geek gambler: I enjoy devising ways to improve my odds. During my occasional trips to Vegas (example: Once a year for CES) I test the ideas with a couple of hundred bucks. It's purely for fun. If the goal was making money it'd be far more effective to spend four hours coding rather than gambling.

Anyhow, on this particular occasion I had memorized a betting pattern that improved the probability of my bets winning. On average it seemed effective. I got kicked out when I won thirteen times in a row. Fun while it lasted.

raldi3• 13 years ago

No. Most gambling locales have a law against the use of hidden electronic devices to assist play. It has nothing to do with airwave rights.

vincefutr23• 13 years ago

you cant' improve the probability in roulette with a pattern

robomartin11• 13 years ago

I didn't say I improved the probability of the game. I improved the probability of my betting decisions producing favorable outcomes. Huge difference.

Think of it as betting by considering the physics of the game vs. in complete ignorance. Betting single numbers, black, white, dozens, columns and rows is absolutely moronic once you stop to think about how the game actually works.

jacques_chester• 13 years ago

> Also, is there an implied Terms Of Service you agree to when entering a casino?

Yes, there is. It reads something like this:

"This is private property. When you are no longer welcome, you are a trespasser and if you don't leave, we will call the police".

trotsky• 13 years ago

The security you describe doesn't match current home automation standards let alone high end commercial practices. Casinos live and die by their monitoring systems to prevent in house theft - it's pretty much guaranteed that stuff is traveling on secured wired networks.

chrsstrm• 13 years ago

You got lucky 13 times in a row. It happens. And since you were only playing with "a couple hundred bucks" you were probably at a $5 or $10 limit table. The casino wasn't worried that you were going to break the bank, it's more likely you were asked to leave because of your behavior. The numbers on the wheel don't correlate to the numbers on the table, so there is no betting strategy where you can make multiple multi-number bet combinations to offset any risk. Not even with a single zero wheel. Did you consider a win as one of your numbers hitting or an actual net gain? Run your strategy over 5000 or 10,000 spins and you'll see it doesn't work. You got lucky in the short term and it wasn't due to skill. Put the money in your pocket and walk away, because streaks like that are rare.

robomartin11• 13 years ago

Are you implying I was behaving inappropriately? Sorry, I am not one of those idiots. I was the only player at the table. I was sitting across the way from the dealer betting. I was actually engaging the dealer in occasional chit chat while running the patterns in my head.

With regards to what would happen over 5,000 or 10,000 spins, yeah, of course, the odds are the odds.

That said, I went across the street to another casino and did just as well.

Will it happen again? Who knows? Probably not.

applecore• 13 years ago

Any idea what game he was playing? Was he playing against other players or the house?

shocks2• 13 years ago

Probably poker.

csense• 13 years ago

I'm guessing blackjack or roulette.

For blackjack, he could use the outside accomplice to count cards, then start playing at a table with favorable shoe.

For roulette, I think I've read elsewhere that precise timing of the spinning wheel allows you to model its physics well enough to figure out where it will land.

jpatokal• 13 years ago

Since the scam took place in the high roller room and the player was not Australian (read: most likely ethnic Chinese from somewhere in SE Asia), I'd wager baccarat.

droithomme• 13 years ago

Perhaps the words "steals" and "heist" are not the best choice given the man won the money playing cards and the claims that he must therefore have been using a second person to feed him information taken from video feeds is presented without any evidence.

dhughes• 13 years ago

> "Intercepting them [the surveillance signals] is simple as going down to a local Radio Shack," he told ABC.

Hunh? At my workplace the surveillance room, as in most casinos, is segregated from the rest of the building by a separate entrance. Surveillance staff are not permitted to socialize with other staff and can't work in any job in the casino other than surveillance. The room has restricted swipe access via thick steel double-doors aka a "man trap" with poured concrete blocks and reinforced metal plates in the walls, of course Pelco PTZ cameras covering the outside of the doors.

The camera system isn't accessible anywhere other than possibly in the ceiling of the gaming floor which would be pretty obvious having someone trying to splice in to a cable. Everything else goes to the surveillance room not to the server room other than maybe the corporate LAN and intrusion detection server but still that's a restricted access locked room but to get to that door there are several other steel doors you need to swipe through, not even the big boss has access to some of them, but I do ;)

Our surveillance manager was telling me he trained in Las Vegas at some guy's house who teaches surveillance techniques to people in the industry. This guy has a multi camera setup in his home and tables too. He cheats at cards while on camera then shows it to the trainees but even he can't see himself cheating on camera even though he did it himself and knew he was on camera.

Although I should add most times cheating especially Blackjack is from collusion between player and dealer. There is a reason why staff and patrons don't mingle or why staff can't use public washrooms when on-shift.

Now I wait for the men in black to come knocking at my door I've said too much!

triplesec2• 13 years ago

Good man, good hack. I have no sympathy for the casinos whatsoever.

Man steals $33 million from Australian casino in 'Ocean's Eleven'-esque heist

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