Whatever happened to the East European casino mob accused of netting up to £1 million in a high-tech scam at the Ritz Club? Ben Beasley-Murray sheds new light on a very peculiar affair.
They say the wheels of justice turn slow, but heading backwards may be more apt in the curious case of three Eastern Europeans suspected of an audacious roulette scam at London’s Ritz Club casino that hit the headlines last Spring.
Despite arresting two of the supposed syndicate a week later at another classy casino after they made heavy wins in seemingly the same way, long months of policework and multiple court appearances have so far seen the trio charged with precisely… nothing. Nor do they look likely to be either.
Indeed, it seems investigations have been dropped in a hushed-up affair that has left Inspector Knacker and the gaming industry somewhat stymied while highlighting serious shortcomings in current gambling law.
The strange tale began when a Hungarian blonde entered the Ritz Club in March, accompanied by two Serbian men. She and her chaperones, the story went, held an enviable advantage against the house – microcomputer technology hidden in mobile phones, capable of calculating where on the wheel the roulette ball would land. Initial press reports even suggested the group used a laser scanner to track and predict the action. ‘I don’t know where that laser idea came from, but it’s just not true,’ says one person intimately familiar with what happened at the Ritz.
Instead, the trio are said by insiders to have noted the position of the ball at key points, as well as of the inner rotating wheel, and by inputting the times into their device before bets were placed (there can be anything up to about 20 seconds before bets are called) gained an idea of within what range of numbers the ball would land.
A matter of velocity
The theory is simple. There is a particular velocity, remaining constant on any particular wheel, at which the ball will fall off the track and onto the inner wheel. The ball’s rate of deceleration before reaching that point will be uniform launch after launch. If you can measure the ball’s precise speed, a computer can predict the time that will elapse before the drop point comes and thus where that drop will be.
To measure the speed you merely register on your device every time the ball passes a fixed point on the track. At the same time, the speed and deceleration of the roulette’s rotor are predictable. Have a computer work out both variables as measured against the same fixed point and, after some trial inputs, you’ll have a rough idea of where the ball will settle – rough because a roulette wheel has studs between the track and rotor which knock the ball off course, and because the ball will very often bounce about before falling into a pocket. To help to account for this, practitioners of the scam will call ‘neighbour bets’ – bets whereby the wager is that the ball will land on, say, 13 and three pockets either side. A one in 37 shot is reduced, so the theory goes, to about one in six although, of course, the premium on betting on the neighbours dilutes the payout advantage.
‘Clocking’, as this is known, is not a new idea at all, although there has been debate over how well it can work in practice – a debate muted by the obvious refusal of the gaming industry to talk about such schemes. In the now out of print The Newtonian Casino, Thomas Bass recounts how he and a group of friends in the Seventies (before the arrival even of the Apple computer) created computers that they placed in their shoes, operated by toe movements, to clock the ball and rotor speeds. Radio signals from the shoes of the ‘data gatherer’ caused vibrations in a confederate’s shoes. The latter gamer – who, unlike his colleague, did not have to stare at the wheel – would nonchalantly place hefty bets accordingly.
Don’t refuse the comps
‘Las Vegas was the most loathsome place on Earth back then and it still stinks to high heaven,’ says Bass, whose operation was not an unmitigated success but makes for a gripping and comic yarn. ‘It was formed by mobsters and, while they’ve cleaned up their act and acquired art collections, they’re still happy to wipe out old ladies in tennis shoes and foster ruinous gambling habits.’
Speaking of the allegations against the Ritz Three, Bass says: ‘Anyone that uses intelligence, ingenuity and the wonders of physics to reverse the odds and make the money flow the other way – I applaud them.’
Not everybody sees it this way.
It was on their second night at the Ritz that the Hungarian, aged 33, and the two Serbs, 33 and 38, had their collars felt by a detective from the gaming unit of the Metropolitan Police’s CO14 Clubs and Vice. Night one, they’d apparently taken £100,000 at the wheel. But on this evening, the combination of a win many times that amount (one well-placed source puts the figure at £600,000 although more extravagant figures have been suggested, which seem to conflate their winnings and other money later seized) and the gamblers’ reluctance to accept comps (perks offered to high-rollers) allegedly sparked suspicions among security staff.
Another casino source asserts alarm bells should have rung earlier. Million-pound gaming wins may not be unknown but, according to this security and compliance officer, at least one of the faces involved in the operation was known by casinos all around the world. He says that the team tried to enter one of his chain’s Middle East casinos but was barred as the woman, and possibly her colleagues, appeared in the ‘black books’ of Griffin, one of a couple of agencies that sell information and images of suspected gambling cheats.
Card-counters, thieves, sleight-of-hand practitioners all appear in Griffin Investigations’ gallery of rogues. A pitboss with suspicions surrounding a particular gambler can send an image to Griffin via the internet and get an instant judgment from someone expert at recognising the several hundred faces on the Griffin database.
What is cheating anyway?
When the gamblers were arrested, their mobile phones were confiscated and, after a search at the West London hotel where they were staying, the police seized a further several hundred thousand pounds.
But since then, Inspector Knacker appears to have been at an impasse. The three gamblers have been repeatedly bailed while an investigation is carried into allegations of ‘obtaining money by deception through gambling’. Meanwhile, whereas the arrests were made by Clubs and Vice, it is now Scotland Yard’s money laundering investigations team that are fronting the initiative, according to InsideEdge’s man about the nick.
What’s more, one senior officer at Scotland Yard, now retired and working in gaming security, concludes: ‘I’m struggling to see how the police will hang on to the money. They have a dilemma. I’d be surprised though if they’ll prosecute [the three] for theft.’
And, with the 1968 Theft Act’s ‘obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception’ charge notoriously difficult to prove, here’s the rub. Britain’s gambling laws, which remain substantially unchanged since 1845, are ill-equipped to deal with the proposition of people using computer devices to predict the outcome of the game which, ironically, was introduced to casinos in 1765 by a Parisian police officer who believed that it was uncheatable.
Julian Harris, partner in Harris Hagan, London solicitors specialising in gaming law, says of the reference to cheating in current gaming legislation (winning money at gaming ‘by any fraud or unlawful device’, described in Section 17 of the Gaming Act 1845): ‘It has long been established that the cheating must mean the actual play itself, and not in any preliminary or separate proceedings.
‘So, for example, there must be some interference in the game itself, or with any of the equipment used in the playing of the game, such as tampering with the cards, table or wheel. It is almost certain that it would not relate to where electronic devices that did not in any way interfere with the actions of the wheel or indeed in the game at all, enable a group of players in effect to improve the odds in their favour.’
He adds that the criminal burden of proof – beyond reasonable doubt – would apply and surmises: ‘In either case (theft or cheating at play to obtain money by false pretences) it does not seem to me that there would have been very much chance at all of securing a successful prosecution.’
In an unreported, later incident in the same week as the three Ritz gamblers were arrested, two more Eastern European men, allegedly linked to the Ritz gang, were arrested at The Colony Club in Mayfair, London, after police were called on the basis of a tip-off made to the casino.
The Colony duo was also bailed in connection with allegations that they had used an electronic device to cheat at the casino. However, despite claims that the pair had hit another casino in the days prior to the Colony Club visit for a ‘substantial’ amount of money, investigations were dropped. ‘Whilst we’ve dealt with them,’ said a Scotland Yard source, ‘there are still a number of issues which came out of that investigation which are currently live.’
Is it too great a speculation to suggest that, whereas the Ritz trio were allegedly found to have a stash of cash at their hotel that couldn’t be accounted for by their casino win, the Colony duo were saved further investigation by the lack of any money-laundering line of inquiry?
There are perhaps other factors. The head of security at one casino explains that ‘the point about these devices is that anything can be stripped down and converted into a cheating device – a Palm Pilot, a phone whatever… and the tiny peripheral devices (that can communicate between them) are amazing.’ He added: ‘Many can be reset at the touch of a button. Do that and everything’s wiped. Nothing can be shown at all.’
Devious devices
Which may explain why one source close to events alleged at one point of the Ritz debacle: ‘First the police were saying they had found a device. Then they were saying they hadn’t. Now they think they do have one.’
Whatever the truth, one casino executive concludes: ‘These things are very, very rare. When they happen we try keeping it quiet. At a time like now, when we’re trying to deregulate gambling in the UK, this is just the last thing we need.’
Perhaps he’s missing the point, though. Sure, the focus of press interest in the Gambling Bill, which may be introduced as early as this month and receive Royal Assent as soon as next March, has been on the possibility of Las Vegas-style casinos in the UK. But a key plank of the proposed legislation is Clause 30 of the Bill is a new offence of cheating – it’s widely drawn and relates to any interference in ‘the process by which gambling is conducted.’
Which, Harris believes, ‘would certainly catch the circumstances of the alleged Ritz matter, and numerous other, often unreported incidents over many years where people have sought to enhance the odds in their favour.’
In the meanwhile, it may appear that, until the legislation comes into effect, it is open season on the casinos. But before getting to work on a microcomputer that can be concealed in your cuff links, consider this: under the Gaming Act 1845, contracts or agreements by way of gaming are not enforceable in law. ‘A player cannot sue for his winnings,’ says Harris, ‘and the reason you will get paid if you win on roulette is that a club would very quickly go out of business if it did not pay its debts.’ So whether the gamblers at the Ritz will ever get to spend their winnings, even if it is not shown that anything was afoot, is arguably a moot point.
With that proviso, you have some time – perhaps until the start of 2006 when the new regulatory regime will likely be completed. Then will come the final rien ne va plus.
