So casino security was charged with taking things into their own hands. That was before specific laws related to cheating were in the books. He got beaten everyday, and then they threw him out into the street.” “I heard about a guy who stole chips-using a device that allowed him to slip them inside his dealer’s apron-being kept in a basement for three days, supposedly without water. If you stole a few hundred thousand, you might get chained to a wall and beaten. “Back then,” Rubin says, “if you stole a million-and-a-half dollars, you would disappear. Max Rubin, a gaming protection expert who works exclusively with the Barona Resort & Casino near San Diego, toiled in Las Vegas during the bad old days when “cheaters’ justice”-as the hand smashing punishment was so memorably described in Casino-was a way of life.

So anyone cheating was essentially stealing from the mafia. After all, many Vegas casinos were owned by the mob. Remember that scene from Casino, where a blackjack cheater gets his hand smashed with a sledgehammer? The sight of his mangled and bloodied digits, sounds of bones being crushed, and his blood-curdling wail of pain were hardly an exaggeration of what went on if you were caught doing the wrong thing in the wrong joint back then. While there’s high likelihood that at least three of the Bellagio cheaters will serve jail time, at least the accused perpetrators are still alive and retain usage of all 10 fingers-which may not have been the case if they got caught doing it in the 1960s and ‘70s. “Because craps is such a verbal game, numbers get called out as bets are placed down-it’s almost impossible for surveillance to catch a move like this one there has to be somebody turning the dealers in,” says Sal Piacente, president of Universal Game Protection, which consults with casinos around the world. “All you see is dice being rolled and chips getting tossed onto the felt. Cooper Jr., pleaded guilty last week to felony theft after ratting out his alleged accomplices. The craps conspirators reportedly got rich by making phantom “hop bets.” A hop bet is a one-time, high-risk verbal proposition in which a player wagers that a specific number will be rolled next. The high-stakes hustle involved two craps dealers posting bets to winning numbers after the dice landed, which authorities say defied 452-billion-to-one odds. When a cheating scandal recently unraveled at a Bellagio craps table in Las Vegas, three of the four accused participants were arrested, and one turned state’s evidence, in a scam that is said to have netted more than $1 million over two years.

Old school casino card player visor