The recent raft of gambling cheats being caught in the act has apparently had little effect on the ranks of those willing to tempt fate. Felony charges have been filed against four alleged casino cheats who were all seriously old enough to know better. The four men – each of whom is (a) over 70 years old and (b) carries previous casino cheating convictions – are accused of palming cards to rig a three-card poker game at the Canterbury Park racino in Shakopee, Minnesota last July.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, two members of the over-the-hill gang were the actual card-palmers while another man distracted the table’s dealer – presumably via a rambling anecdote that didn’t appear to be going anywhere – and the fourth positioned his body to block an overhead video surveillance camera. Within 45 minutes, the scam had netted the gang a whopping $200, which must buy an awful lot of early-bird dinners because the fearsome foursome bolted the casino shortly thereafter. Duane Rade, a 75-year-old Florida resident, was arrested on Wednesday but the other three remain on the lam.
A far more serious scam was recently uncovered in Vietnam. On August 15, police in Quang Ninh province arrested a man carrying four decks of playing cards that had been marked with radioactive material. The suspect, Bui Dinh Chung, told police that a sensor concealed on his person generated vibrations when the marked cards were dealt his way.
Thanh Nien News reported that the local nuclear watchdogs had examined the marked cards and found they generated radioactive levels 30x higher than recommended limits. A gambler told the paper that despite the edge a cheater could obtain via the cards, they weren’t all that popular, for one simple reason: “Gamblers can become very tired of playing for long with these cards. Sometimes, they’re too tired to stand up after the game ends.”
Amazingly, this isn’t the first time Vietnamese authorities have detected such cards. In 2006, Hanoi police arrested a gambler who subsequently revealed that his child’s hair had fallen out not long after he brought the cards into his home. In 2010, police in Xiamen, China caught a man carrying a set of dice with radioactive levels 150x above normal.
Chung has been charged with “stockpiling and trading radioactive materials.” The cards – believed to be made in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China – were reportedly used in illegal gambling dens. Vietnam has a number of small casinos but locals are (for the moment) not permitted to patronize these establishments. Police are investigating in order to determine how many other decks of glowing cards may be circulating.
