Five of the World’s Biggest Gambling Scandals Revealed
By
Jane Shaw
Senior Editor Updated: 03/01/2023
We count on Jane to inform our readers about the latest slot games in the US market. With her passion for video games and a degree in engineering, she’s our gambling tech expert. Jane’s also active in our blog section, where she tackles the curiosities and changes in the industry.
World’s Biggest Gambling Scandals
Over the years, numerous gambling scandals have come to light, and a near-unlimited number of fraudsters have done all they can to try and beat the gambling industry in an unethical way. Some of these gambling scandals have resulted in land-based casinos – and even online casinos – losing millions of dollars. However, for the most part, the fraudsters are caught – with some ending up with years in prison!
- Gambling Scandals
- The Top 5 Gambling Scandals
- The Monkey Paw
- The Biggest Craps Scandal Ever?
- MIT’s Infamous Blackjack Team
- The Cantor Gaming Scandal
- A Cashier That… Disappeared?
- Frequently Asked Questions
Gambling Scandals
Gambling scandals can include almost everything, whether it’s working with a croupier to get unfair payouts, physically stealing money from the tables, using semi-legal card counting techniques to get an edge on the game, or making cards. On this page, we’re going to look at some of the biggest gambling scandals to have ever happened – and they may just change the way you look at security systems in land-based casinos forever!
Top 5 Casino Scandals
Throughout history, there have been a wide variety of gambling scandals in sports and land-based casinos. However, in today’s post, we will look at the top 5 casino scandals. Some of these you may already be familiar with, while others may be brand-new territory for you.
The Monkey Paw Scandal
Tommy Glenn Carmichael was arrested in 2001 and ended up spending almost a year in federal prison – and three years’ probation – after he was caught by the FBI stealing millions of dollars from slot machines in land-based casinos. He managed this over the course of two decades, and while he had been using several different methods to achieve this, he primarily relied on the Monkey Paw.
The Monkey Paw was a special wire that Carmichael would insert into the payout chute of the slot machine. This wire would then trip a microswitch, which would trick the slot machine into paying out the top progressive jackpot. He managed this feat time and time again, making millions of dollars in the process.
In addition to the Monkey Paw, Carmichael also used a camera battery and a small light bulb that could blind the sensor of a slot machine. Again, this would trick the slot machine into paying out.
He was eventually caught – and some believe that he ended up working with slot machine developers to help them put safeguards in place to prevent this kind of cheating from happening in the future. Today, it’s virtually impossible to cheat slot machines found in land-based casinos. It’s also pretty much impossible to cheat online slots, regardless of whether you’re online gambling in WV, NY, or any other part of the world.
The Bellagio Craps Scandal
One of the biggest gambling scams in history occurred at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. In 2016, a craps dealer decided to work alongside his friends to cheat the casino out of approximately $1 million! The croupier, named Mark William Branco, would have his friends come to the table he was in charge of, and place some phantom bets on a specific dice combo being rolled. Regardless of what the actual outcome of the dice was, Branco would pay his friends out accordingly – and for a while, it seemed to be working well.
Between 2016 and 2018, Branco and his friends pulled off their heist 27 times! However, the casino started to get suspicious – and one expert calculated that if the group had won so consistently, the odds of them doing so without cheating would have been approximately 452 billion to one!
Branco and the two friends he worked with – Anthony Grant Granito and Jeffery Martin – were all arrested and charged. While little is known about the fate of the two friends, Branco is serving a ten-year sentence in Nevada State Prison.
The MIT Blackjack Team Scandal
The hit blockbuster movie from 2008, 21, captured the attention of gamblers from all around the world. The movie followed the life of students and ex-students from the highly prestigious MIT – along with Harvard and some other schools – and together, they employed very effective card-counting techniques to win millions upon millions of dollars.
The MIT blackjack team operated from the 1970s to the 1990s – and there’s still controversy to this day as to whether or not what they did was illegal. Generally speaking, counting cards isn’t illegal. The player is not getting any inside information that other players can’t get, and they’re not breaching any direct laws. However, a couple of states have brought in laws to combat card counting – much to the dismay of most of the gambling community.
However, land-based casinos also have their own ways of deterring card counters these days. Head to pretty much any land-based casino today, and you’ll notice that up to 8 decks of cards are used on the blackjack table. This makes it almost impossible to accurately count cards – and the casino’s floor staff are trained to spot card counters, too.
Bill Kaplan – the mastermind behind the MIT blackjack strategy – reportedly made more than $10 million for himself, and it’s reported that he trained up to 100 other blackjack players, so the amount of money lost by casinos is likely to be in the hundreds of millions.
The Cantor Gaming Scandal
Cantor Gaming was, at one point, quite a reputable and well-known sportsbook operator. However, in 2012, $2.8 million was seized by federal agents, and more than 25 arrests were made after it was uncovered that the firm had been running an illegal gambling and money laundering operation since 2009.
Michael Colbert – the director of the company – along with his members of staff were illegally taking massive bets from punters located outside of the state, and they then used two different bookmakers to launder the money – successfully, for a while.
Colbert agreed to plead guilty when he went to trial in 2013, and he was sentenced to serve five years in prison. To the astonishment of law enforcement officials, all charges were eventually dropped after Colbert agreed to pay a settlement. The company had to pay $22.5 million dollars to settle, but most people would consider that a pretty good deal to get out of spending any time in jail!
The Disappearing Cashier Scandal
Arguably the most interesting of all gambling scandals in sports and land-based casinos is that of the disappearing cashier. The Stardust Hotel – which no longer exists – was a popular destination for gamblers back in the day. It was, at the time, considered to be a state-of-the-art facility – and it relied on high-definition cameras which were pointed in every direction of the casino.
In addition to offering casino table games and video slots, there was also a sportsbook – and working at the sportsbook one night was a man called William John Brennan. During his shift, he stole a staggering $500,000 in a combination of cash and casino chips – and to this day, investigators can’t figure out how he managed to evade the cameras and get out of the casino undetected.
Now, this all happened back in 1992. The craziest part about this story? William John Brennan remains a free man – and police have been unable to locate him for more than 30 years! The case remains open – yet unsolved – and it’s said that there are still investigators working on catching the crooked cashier – although by now, he’s probably made his way to some luxury paradise where extradition to the US is unlikely.
