- The daring duo were arrested late last month in the French region of Val-d’Oise.
A pair of gamblers have swindled a French casino out of hundreds of thousands of euros using cutting-edge technology that records cards as they are dealt, police have said.
The daring duo, arrested late last month in France’s Val-d’Oise region north of Paris, are said to be part of a criminal gang that has racked up huge profits in casinos across Europe thanks to their stealthy and highly technical approach.
In scenes reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster, the suspects – a 37-year-old Lithuanian and a 63-year-old Ukrainian – allegedly used two tiny cameras to capture the moment the dealer took the cards out of the shoemaker’s hand.
With one lens hidden in the body of a smartphone and the other taped under a shirt, players were able to take photos of each card from a low angle.
The images were sent live to an accomplice outside the casino, who quickly reviewed the cards and relayed instructions to the men at the table through a nearly invisible earpiece.
This complex plan allowed them to take over the French casino in Enghien-les-Bains for a whopping €200,000 in a single night, and investigators believe they had carried out similar exploits in several establishments across the continent.
The daring duo, arrested late last month in the French region of Val-d’Oise, north of Paris, are said to be part of a criminal gang that has racked up huge profits in casinos across Europe.
The Eastern European men were caught on the night of July 28 while relaxing at the Enghien-les-Bains resort, a decadent spa and entertainment destination of which the casino is part.
Police said they received a tip about his activities in June and spent weeks monitoring the players, who rotated between poker and blackjack tables, before finally making the arrest.
Stéphane Piallat, director of France’s Central Service for Racing and Gaming (SCCJ), told French media that the method used by the crew was until then “unknown in France and barely documented in Europe.”
“They are experienced players with meticulously studied methods,” Piallat said.
“They are not thugs who deal in drugs or pimping. They are clearly specialised in this type of crime,” he said, adding that the miniature earphones they used to receive instructions could only be removed with a magnet, underlining the sophistication of their operation.
“It seems like they’ve been moving from country to country, attacking casinos one after another, and then moving on to others. It’s every gambler’s dream: to win big every time.”
With one lens hidden in the body of a smartphone and the other taped under a shirt, players were able to take low-angle photos of each card as it was dealt.
None of the men arrested had criminal records, but searches of their persons and hotel rooms uncovered fake IDs and multiple casino cards, suggesting to investigators that they had likely honed their technique at several other casinos before being caught.
Now that the couple is in pretrial detention facing charges of “organized gang fraud,” investigators hope to uncover other gang members using the same techniques elsewhere.
“Now that we understand how they did it, we will be able to notify the casinos so they can take measures to prevent this type of cheating,” Piallat concluded.
Although the two players were arrested, the police were unable to identify their accomplice, who remains at large.
