Casinos Caught Cheating - Casinos Who Were Caught Cheating

Do casinos get caught cheating? Short answer: yes.

When the West was wild, and Wild Bill Hickok was propping up the bar, casinos caught cheating were a regular occurrence. The players cheated. The house cheated. Everyone cheated.

Gamblers had their backs against the wall and their guns close by. Dispute resolution was often a violent affair.

Today, the West is a lot less wild. The dice unloaded, the cards unmarked, the roulette wheel tamper-free. The house and the players must play by the rules. Regulation, Transparency and Due Diligence are the new sheriffs in town and key at all the best safe online casinos here.

But… even though the odds are stacked in favor of the casino and the house always has an edge, for some casinos, it’s just not enough.

Here are ten true tales about casinos caught cheating, when the bets were distinctly off and the house went rogue.

Crown Casino: Melbourne, Australia (2018) – A Button Too Far

It’s all in the detail. In 2018, the Crown Casino was fined $225,000 for the crime of blanking buttons on poker machines.

Nearly 20 machines had betting option buttons removed; this reduced player choice, forcing them to make higher bets. You could either bet all 40 lines or just a single line; the five, 10, and 20 options were removed.

The actions increased the casino poker odds and house edge and were revealed by three whistle-blowers working at the casino. Crown Resorts should have got permission to alter the machines.

The Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation stated that: ‘Crown’s failure to obtain approval means it has contravened the Gambling Regulation Act 2003’.

At the time, the fine was the largest of its kind, issued by regulators in Australia and wasn’t as many people already ask are casinos rigged?

However, in 2022 the casino was handed a fine which makes the one above look like chump change.

Crown Casino was fined a record $120 million for failing to prevent gambling harm. Losing gamblers were given special treatment, freebies and some gambling sessions lasted over 24 hours, almost nonstop.

Golden Nugget: Atlantic City, New Jersey (2012) – The Missing Shuffle

When history repeats itself, you learn the lessons (theoretically). When a sequence of playing cards repeats itself, several times, and you’re playing mini-baccarat, at the Golden Nugget, in New Jersey, you raise the stakes – through the roof.

So it was, in April 2012, that 14 gamblers couldn’t believe their eyes when they realized the same sequence of cards was repeating itself.

Instead of betting $10 a hand, they quickly upped the stakes and started betting $5,000.
The casino security surrounded them. They could smell a rat but they could see no cheating.
After more than three hours, and 41 consecutive winning hands, the game was stopped.
The casino realized that the playing cards had not been shuffled.

The casino initially refused to pay the players the $977,000 it owed them, blaming the card manufacturer Gemaco for the error.

In the end, the Golden Nugget was not only fined $91,000 for the incident, it was also ordered to pay the full amount owed to the players.

A judge decided that the gamblers did nothing wrong; although they discerned a pattern, there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t change.

Are casinos rigged? In this case, the odds were stacked in the players’ favor.

Normandie Casino: Gardena, California (2013) – High Rollers Hidden

casinos caught cheating — Image: Brian Minami/Minami Pictures

High rollers are every casino’s dream. They bet big. Eventually, they lose big.

Casinos will go out of their way to keep these players at the tables; free penthouse suites, free shows, free everything.

And – in the case of the Normandie Casino, in Gardena, Southern California, the management will help you conceal more than $1.4 million in winnings from the IRS.

In 2016, the casino was caught cheating as the operators were fined $1 million for shielding several high rollers from federal reporting requirements.

The casino is legally obliged to report winnings of more than $10,000. Instead, casino staff broke down the payments into multiple smaller transactions, in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. The casino now trades as Larry Flynt’s Lucky Lady Casino.

If you’re a high-limit player, look no further than our safe and trustworthy high roller online casinos.

The Stardust: Las Vegas (1974) – The Big Skim

If you have seen the film ‘Casino’, with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, you already know what was going on at the Stardust Casino in the 1970s (in the film, the casino is The Tangiers).

The hotel was bought by Allen Glick and the Argent Corporation, but it was all a front for a syndicate of Midwest crime families.

For several years, the casino cheated everyone; skimming millions to the mob. In 1983, following years of investigation by the FBI, fifteen people were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. It was the end of the mob’s involvement in Las Vegas and the beginning of a new era for Sin City.

Under Herb Tobman and Al Sachs after the sale of the Stardust from Glick and the Argent Corporation, things got even worse.

The ownership faced $3 million in fines and was ordered to sell the business within 130 days.

Caesars Entertainment Corp: Global (2015) – Laundry Day Problems

One of the most critical issues for any casino is money laundering. Casinos are the perfect front to wash dirty money; you buy chips with ill-gotten gains and then cash them out. Money laundered.

In 2012, Caesars Palace took its eye off the ball, when it failed to file suspicious transactions, including large wire transfers from Asia. Caesars Entertainment Corp was fined $1.5 million at a hearing, before the Nevada Gaming Commission, that took only 15 minutes.

The commission chairman Tony Alamo Jr. said: “You shot yourselves in the foot with this one. We make mistakes, but let’s not repeat this one.”

Casinos caught cheating the system by not self-reporting or failing to recognize money laundering face some of the harshest fines in the business.

CGT: Global (2018) – Loose Bets

CG Technology was the business providing the backend support and software for sportsbooks at several Las Vegas casinos, including the Hard Rock Hotel, M Resort, The Venetian, Tropicana, Palms and more.

At the time, the business was operating as Cantor and GW Holdings. It was taken over by William Hill in 2020.

The business was fined $1.75 million, by the Nevada Gaming Commission. This was for:

Taking bets after events had concluded.
Taking wagers from out of state.
Making incorrect pay-outs to 1,483 bettors. Essentially, being caught cheating.
CGT was previously fined $5.5 million, in 2014, for failing to stop a top executive from making illegal bets.

It was also fined $1.5 million in 2016 when it shorted 20,000 bettors by $70,000.

The CEO Lee Amaitis was eventually forced to resign. The company said the errors were down to software miscalculating payments.

Monarch Casino: Black Hawk, Colorado (2022) – Proxy Bets

Remember when you were young and you’d ask the old man outside the liquor store to buy you some beer? Now imagine you work at the Monarch Casino in Black Hawk, Colorado.

Instead, someone asks you to make a bet on their behalf; only problem is they live out of state where sports betting is not legal.

Three employees were sacked for accepting bets totaling $61,000. The casinos self-reported, when it discovered what was happening, and was fined $400,000 by the Colorado Gaming Commission.

It’s a good deal they delf reported, as casinos caught cheating by taking outside-of-state bets can be more harshly fined.

Resorts World Casino: New York (2016) – The Lost Jackpot

Just imagine: you’re in Queens, New York, playing the Sphinx Wild slots. You’ve wagered 40 cents and suddenly the bells ring, the alarms sound.

The screen flashes up with the message that you have just won a jackpot worth $42,949,672.76. That’s exactly what happened to Katrina Bookman on August 28, 2016.

Good times? Sadly not. The casino apologized and told Bookman it was a glitch.

The machine was faulty and the jackpot was an error. At the most, it should have been $6,500. Bookman refused to give way and took Resorts World Casino to court, claiming the casino had been caught cheating.

Unfortunately, the court ruled against her, refusing even to give her the $6,500 jackpot she might have won. Instead, they offered her a steak dinner on the house.

Ritz Club: London (2004) – Laser Roulette

In a James Bond style combo of glamor and hi-tech, a confident trio breezed into the London Ritz in 2004; an ‘elegant and chic’ Hungarian woman, accompanied by two male Serbian friends.

They decided to play roulette. On the first night, the 32-year-old blond cashed in £100,000 in chips.
The next evening, the trio returned. This time they won £1.2 million.
The Ritz was convinced a laser scanner had been used to predict the roulette ball’s final landing spot.

Scotland Yard investigated but no scanner was ever found. The casino may not have cheated but it certainly wasn’t a good loser.

The trio in question were convinced the casino was caught trying to cheat them out of their winnings.

Casinos Caught Cheating: Verdict

While the house often wins fair and square, history shows that even casinos get caught cheating. From skimming schemes in the Stardust to slot machine glitches at Resorts World, these stories reveal how greed sometimes drives casinos to stack the deck against players—and even the law.

Each case highlights that regulators are watching, ready to hold cheating casinos accountable with record-breaking fines and forced sales. These tales of casinos caught cheating remind us that, while the odds favor the house, integrity is the ultimate high-stakes game.