Thursday, June 10, 2010

Tanzanian Casino Cheat Team Working Singapore Casinos Much Bigger Than I Thought!

Last week I reported on a Tanzanian casino roulette cheating team and how they were trying monster cheat moves in Singapore's casinos. Two members of their team got caught trying to pastpost a $1,000 chip straight-up on a winning number. Naturally I assumed that they might have had success with this huge move earlier, but now it has been determined that they had successfully cheated the Marina Bay Sands out of $150,000, and the figure is probably higher than that!

Now I know that the team has at least four members as two more of them have been arrested at Resorts World Sentosa Casino, charged in what is being called the biggest casino fraud case since legal gambling came to Singapore. The first cheat, Kipuyo Lemburis Israel, a 34 year-old Tanzanian, was charged with five counts of cheating the Marina Bay Sands casino for $125,000. The complaint accuses him of making $1,000 bets on the numbers after the numbers already won. This craft is known as roulette pastposting. He was charged as well for being in possession of nearly $90,000 in casino chips in his hotel, which was not on the casino's property. Strangely enough, Singapore has a casino law making it illegal to remove more than $10,000 worth of chips out of the casino. Obviously, one part of casino-cheating strategy that was lost on this Tanzanian team is efficient cash-out procedure. One of the first commandments of a successful professional casino cheat team is "Thou shall not carry more casino chips than is needed for a cheating operation." In all, Israel is facing five years in jail and a $150,000 fine, about the amount he's accused of stealing from the casino.

He also faces charges for stealing $5 roulette chips from other players at the table. I imagine that this was due to his needing other players' roulette chips for camouflage purposes of the move. To see the mechanics of how this particular roulette pastpost move is done, click here.

The second Tanzanian roulette cheat busted is thirty-three year-old Sibongile Arthur Mgxashe. He is charged with the same two crimes as his partner, although for lesser amounts of money.

My take: These guys had lots of balls! And they were probably very good at the mechanics of these roulette pastposting moves. However, it seems that they lacked the fine-tuning of real thorough professional cheat teams that can go decades without running into these kinds of problems. In any case, I wonder if we will see some more Tanzanian or African casino cheat teams working South Africa's casinos during the World Cup football tournament. After all, the Sun City casino in South Africa has been one of the best casinos in the world to cheat over the past thirty years...not only by professional cheat teams but by their own employees as well!