Ida Summers Casino

• Ida Summers, better known as Vegas Vixen, earned her name for the bold cheating techniques that earned her thousands of dollars on a daily basis during the late 1960s until the early 1970s across the casinos of Las Vegas.
• The most famous of them is Ida Summers called Fox from Vegas. In the sixties - seventies of the twentieth century, she broke the bank in casinos in Nevada as deftly and cleverly as the mother fox.

Ida Summers was different; she certainly used her beauty and charm to distract pit bosses and dealers, but she also did the cheating herself. Back in the 1960s she became known as the Vegas Vixen for her ability to cheat Las Vegas.

For as long as casinos have existed, there have been people trying to cheat the system. Yearly, offline and online casinos around the world set aside resources to stop players from cheating.

Even with casinos spending so much time, energy, and resources, some players have managed to beat the system. Most were caught, but others got away with it. Below are some of the most famous casino cheats that mankind has ever heard of.

It’s clear to see, that they all follow the same patern.

Table of Contents

Tommy Glenn Carmichael – The Slot Cheater

Arguably, the most famous slot machine cheater, Tommy Glenn Carmichael cheated the casinos for years. He was eventually caught for his crimes but not before obtaining a substantial amount from his cheating methods. He started in 1980 by using a metal device. He inserted the device into a coin slot which triggered a sure payout.

The bigger casinos around this time started moving on to new machines and better security. Tommy realised that his device failed to work on the newer pokies.

He then moved onto smaller casinos still using the older machines.

He was caught and sentenced to prison. After being released from prison, he went back to cheating the casinos. The slot machines by then had surpassed the older technology. His older methods did not work anymore. He changed his methods to fit the newer machines. He developed a light wand. The device shines into slots that trigger sensors and cause a pay-out. The device is now called monkey paw or slider.

He not only used the slider for himself, but he started selling these devices to other cheaters. He was eventually caught again in 1996 before having the charges dropped. He was, however, arrested later in 1998 and 1999. And that time was sentenced to prison time.

ℹ️ Currently, he is banned from casinos but works with them building anti-theft devices for them.

Ron Harris and Reid McNeal – The Jackpot Cheat

The duo of Ron Harris and Reid McNeal cheated thousands from the casinos of Atlantic City. In 1995, Reid McNeal hit the jackpot at a casino resort for a staggering $100,000. The situation quickly became suspicious because McNeal showed no reaction. Furthermore, he requested to be paid in cash which increased suspicions.

Large jackpots need to be verified by the State gaming officials. Under the New Jersey laws, an investigation occurred which revealed another player in the scam. The man was Ron Harris. He was a computer programmer that had found bugs and flaws in the software. He found them through his work for the Gaming Control Board.

Harris used his position to access and make changes to the software to benefit himself. He altered the slot machines to gain substantial wins. He would modify the machines and McNeal would get the money from the casinos.

Harris also developed a program predicting the numbers in the Keno machine. Together McNeal and Harris stole thousands using illegal means.

They, however, got too confident in their ability and were caught after the Jackpot win and sent to prison.

Edward Thorp – The Father Of Card Counting

The father of the card counting system is called Edward Thorp. He had master’s in Physics and a doctorate in Mathematics. He hadn’t paid much attention and time to learn much about casinos. He was taken to Las Vegas during one of his holidays and became intrigued. There he developed a keen interest in card games like blackjack.

He discovered the possible application of math in it and developed the card counting technique. He used his university systems to develop a system that could predict stakes in blackjack. This was based on extensive research and time.

Thorpe was winning thousands every week. He couldn’t be accused of cheating because something like this hadn’t happened before. He found a way to beat the system and change the rules of the game. He did. Additionally, he didn’t stop there.

He added insult to the injuries suffered by the casino and wrote a book. He explained how he beat the system and the techniques he used. Moreover, since it wasn’t illegal then the casinos couldn’t touch him.

He would have been able to live off the royalties from his book alone. Instead, he took his winnings and beat Wall street as well. Edward Thorpe is still a prominent figure and one of the richest gamblers in the world. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie “21“? Edward is the professor that the movie is based on.

Richard Marcus – Savannah

Richard Marcus is very famous in the gambling world for his method called the ‘Savannah’. He cheated for years before retiring and writing a book on his exploits. That is likely why anyone knows about his cheats on the casino. Although his technique is quite simple in theory it takes skill to execute.

The technique was similar to older past-posting cheating methods with a single difference. The older method had a player put chips to winning bet using sleight of hand. Marcus reversed the process by removing chips from losing bets. Although, one might say he was helped along by his drunken act.

He would get to roulette tables acting drunk and put down a couple of chips. He would always use bigger chips hidden under a $5 chip. He would use sleight of hand to change out the bigger value chip with a $5 chip when he lost. He would then fling them at the dealer when he lost in ‘drunken rage’. If he won, he would exaggerate with his celebrations.

After the dealer would become a bit confused he would reveal a higher valued chip underneath the small one.

Even if the casino checked surveillance the security would be able to do nothing because at the end of the day he had complete right to place his bet and it was done legitimately. He easily cheated on his winning and losing bets.

More so, he cheated on the losing bets and turned the situation around to benefit himself. He managed to wins thousands of dollars on the winning bets but more importantly lost only a few on the bad bets. Throughout his ‘career’ he managed to avoid detection.

Now similar to Timothy Carmichael he works with casinos to help them detect the cheaters and how to avoid scams.

Ida Summers – Vegas Vixen

Looking over the scams on casinos, women have mostly been the distraction. While the served as a diversion their male partners would cheat on the casino and practically rob them blind.

Ida Summers was a different breed. She didn’t wait for a male accomplice to act as a diversion for. She was her accomplice.

She not only distracted the dealers but used the hand mucking technique to get away with cheating. This earned her the name of Vegas Vixen.

The technique involved sleight of hand. She would remove or add cards when needed. After success with this, she moved on to using the whole deck of cards. The deck was prearranged so the house would lose. These decks came to be known as cold decks or coolers.

Gaming officials eventually became suspicious of their consistent losses and alerted the FBI. After an investigation by the FBI, Ida Summers was caught and arrested. Yet, she received only probation instead of hard jail time.

Louis Colavecchio – The Coin Replacer

Another famous casino cheat, Louis Colavecchio also cheated the casinos using slot machines. Instead of directly trying to hack the slot machine, his skills were spent on manufacturing incredibly accurate replicas of slot machine coins. He used these casinos in American casinos with success.

However, his operation was on a grand scale and he was manufacturing thousands of coins. An operation that large was bound to catch the attention of authorities. This led to his arrest in 1998. Casinos had started to notice a myriad of coins in their inventory with their source being questioned.

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Authorities arrested him and seized any fake coins they found along with the tools used to make them. The extent of his operation was so substantial law enforcement had to rent out storage units to fit all the equipment they had seized.

Colavecchio was sentenced and then released in 2006. It wasn’t long before he was up to his old tricks again.

When he was caught again he decided to take a plea deal. As per his deal, he would have to teach the casinos how to avoid cheats.

Mr Colavecchio passed away earlier this year.

Monique Laurent – The Beautiful Roulette Champ

Monique Laurent is among the few women who managed to pull off one of the largest casino scams. The French woman along with her crew consisting of her family and friends managed to win $1 million from the roulette tables at Deauville Casino. However, it wasn’t luck that won them the money, that’s for sure.

Instead, she used equipment, a rogue dealer, and some help from family and friends. Considering the fact this scam happened in 1973, the equipment was very sophisticated for its time. They used a tampered roulette ball that would be affected by using a radio receiver.

Her savvy equipment gave her a 90% chance of winning. It made the ball land in a group of six numbers. Her crew would place bets and collect the winnings. Even though the casino sensed there was somehow cheating going on they could not pinpoint it. They checked the roulette wheel, the table, and the dealer.

The casino couldn’t understand how they kept losing money while Monique and her family kept racking up their wins. In the end, it was Monique’s beauty that became her downfall.

She caught the attention of the casino owner. After she rebuffed his advances he became upset. After he began to suspect she was involved because she was present at every roulette table that was costing them money.

After observing her, he found that she always had a cigarette packet in hand but never smoked. Moreover, this made him even more suspicious of her motives and her occasional bets. He casually asked Monique for a smoke and found that he was right. The gig was up and Monique, her co-conspirators, and her accomplices were caught.

Dennis Nikrasch – $15 Million Slot cheater

Another slot machine cheater was Dennis Nikrasch. He is even better known than Tommy Carmichael, the first slot machine cheater. At one point it was believed the whole slot machine industry was at risk because of him.

With his crew, Nikrasch made $15 million through his sophisticated methods. How he was caught and who exposed him remains a mystery and is subject to much speculation. Even Dennis himself claims to not know who or why the person exposed his operations.

He was arrested in 1998 while attempting to run the scam to win a huge jackpot in Las Vegas. He had been arrested once before for his attempts to cheat the casino through tampering with the mechanical slots.

He exchanged some secrets in return for a reduced sentence.

He went back to cheating after his release, upgrading his techniques to beat the now advanced slot systems. But was once again caught a while later.

Final Say

Edward Thorpe, in his book, wrote how the game was a mix of chance and choice. He considered opportunity as the cards that were dealt, and the decision was how to play them. All these gamblers on our list are notorious for their somewhat successful attempts at cheating the system.

However, as you read, most of them were also caught and had to serve prison time for those choices. These famous casino cheats were so ingeniously bad they were almost good. What should any casino lover take form this is sure some people get away but as a whole many have been caught.

Nowadays, casinos are smarter, and the former cheats are now working against what they were once before. Try your luck at the casino games; you might just win some or may even lose some. If you cheat, however, and get caught, it may have more consequences for you than you will be willing to pay. Online, however, there is no way to cheat. Or is it?

Check out the online casino games that can be played in Australia.

Everybody loves to hear stories about casino cheating players. Deep down, we all know that the casino wins in the long run, so stories about the big cheats and casino scandals somehow satisfy us. Even if they are flat robberies…

Well, today is your lucky day because we will tell you the world-famous cheating stories of 5 gamblers. These world-famous players used tricks, human psychology, devices, and all the other tools in a thief’s bag to claim victory, and some of them managed to get away with it. Unfortunately, none of these gamblers is from the United Kingdom – but we are sure that they “inspired” lots of UK players too.

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One final note before we start: the cheating techniques that are listed in this article (including devices) are no longer available. Casinos took the necessary precautions to prevent them, and you cannot use any of these “methods” anymore. Don’t even think about applying them if you want to avoid jail time.

Dennis “Slots Breaker” Nikrasch: The Locksmith

Dennis Nikrasch is the greatest slot-thief of all times. When someone says famous cheaters, his is the first name that comes to mind. He was born in 1941 and worked as a locksmith for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately, this is a profession with low-income, so he started to look for other opportunities.

In 1976, he found out that slot machines in Las Vegas casinos have “locks” too. Back in those days, most of these machines were running on cogs and reels, and they can be opened in case a repair is necessary. Well, Dennis Nikrasch decided to open the machine for himself. It took him only a couple of seconds to open the machine and rig the cogs in his favor. He spun the reels and voila, instant win.

Until 1983, he continued these slot machine cheats and made at least 10 million USD in total. Nobody knows how much he won exactly, but some sources claim that he managed to get 16 million USD. This was not a simple casino trick; it was a flat robbery. He got caught in 1986 and spent 5 years in prison. After he got released, he returned to Las Vegas and kept manipulating the machines. Once again, he was sentenced to prison for 7.5 years and released in 2004. He died in 2010, and most of his “tricks” are still unknown.

Monique “No Smoking” Laurent: The Femme Fatale

We all love to hear Las Vegas cheats, but it is not the only city that has casinos. There are other countries and other cities for casino cheats too. Monique Laurent is an excellent example of this. She ranks number one among the roulette cheaters. It all happened in 1973, in Casino Deauville, a famous French casino. A woman in a seductive dress approached the roulette table and started to play her cigarette pack., and 10 minutes later, another gambler on the table won thousands of francs. They left the casino together.

Monique Laurent continued to do this and “won” more than five million Francs in total. Her secret was the cigarette pack: it is actually one of the most famous casino cheating devices. The pack is actually a remote control which stops the ball on any number the user wishes. To pull the hacks like that, the croupier must be in it too, and this was the case. It was actually quite simple when compared to other robberies. Monique did not play, she just stayed near the table. She had two accomplices: the croupier and another player on the table. The player placed the bet, the croupier used the “magic ball”, and Monique stopped it on the right place. The player walked away, and they all divided the money.

Her mistake? Going to the same casino all the time, and playing at the same table. She had no other choice, as the croupier was a part of this scam. The casino owner got suspicious (naturally) and started to think about why this attractive woman who never plays keeps playing with her cigarette pack. The whole scam lasted for a week, and they got busted.

Ida “Cooler” Summers: The Hand Mucker

And now, it is time for a poker-cheating story. Ida Summers was an attractive woman who played in Las Vegas casinos. Her preference was poker games, but she was ok with all card games, actually. And she was a professional at “hand-mucking” technique. Have you ever watched Wild West movies where players hide some of the cards in their pockets and use them at the right time? Hand mucking is a similar gambling cheating method: You distract the dealer, steal one of the cards from the pile, and use it at the right time. Basically, it is a sleight of hand technique, and Ida Summers was an expert at that.

But changing a single card was not enough for Ida. She was, for the lack of a better word, “cocky”. After running this hand-mocking technique for months, she decided to do the impossible: stealing the entire deck and switching it with one of her own. Since she already knew the card order in the deck, she could win all of the games she played.

Now, sit back and think about this: we are talking about swapping an entire deck here. Two decks must be identical and the dealer must be really stupid – or distracted. Ida Summers hired dozens of “players”. Their job was creating noise and keeping the dealer busy, and this actually worked: Ida managed to switch the entire deck god knows how many times. She got caught after a couple of months and not because the casinos noticed what she was doing. She got caught because a former lover of her ratted Ida to FBI. To this date, Ida Summers ranks in TOP three in casino cheaters list. She is also the “creator” of best cheats around.

Richard “Savannah” Marcus: The Switcher

Richard Marcus is one of the famous cheaters who managed to get away with his winnings. Richard Marcus was cheating many Las Vegas casinos for many years! His love for gambling came from childhood when he loved to guess the car colours on the road before he saw them and playing craps at school. Now he earns money on his books and pieces of training on American Roulette that reveal answers to “how to win?”, “what strategy to use”, “best odds&bets”.

He never got a prison time even after casinos found out what he was doing. Well, he is lifetime-banned from all casinos in Las Vegas because of his casino tricks, of course, but this was the only punishment he got. Why? Because his technique was so simple, the casinos would look like a fool.

He worked in casinos for a long time so he already knew how tables were managed. He never used a cheating device, he never manipulated a croupier. He did not have any accomplices too; he was a “lone wolf”. What he did was simple:

• Pick a roulette game, any game, any casino.
• Place 4 red chips on a low-paying option. The chips are stacked and the first three are 5 USD worth. The last chip, which cannot be easily seen by the dealer, is 500 USD worth. The dealer won’t notice this because he will think you are placing a 20 USD bet on a “worthless” option.
• If you win, show the dealer your last chip was actually 500 USD worth. Claim the prize, which will be at least 1.000 USD.
• If you lose, quickly swap the fourth chip with a 5 USD chip, so you lose only 20 USD.

See? This simple and quick sleight of hand is the only thing you need. He managed to win hundreds of thousands of dollars with this technique. He “retired” in 2000 and currently is writing books about “how to beat the casino”, and his legendary technique is called “Savannah by Marcus”.

Tommy Glenn “Slider” Carmichael: The Master of All Slot Cheats

If you do a Google search for “cheating devices for slot machines”, you will see a lot of tools: monkey paws, kickstands, light wands… And you know who designed these devices? Well, we owe them all to Tommy Carmichael. He is the most famous “engineer” of casino cheating slot machines. He designed dozens of tools to hack the cabinets and to cheat the system. He is a true legend, and even casino managers respect him. If any of these stories deserve to become a Hollywood movie, then it is the story of Tommy Carmichael.

He was a TV repairman back in the 80s. One day, he bought a slot machine from a casino, just to entertain himself (casinos sell their merchandise after a while.) In order to keep entertaining himself, he decided to open the coin slot of the machine: he was wondering how the machine “knew” what kind of coin is inserted. The old machines used a light-beam to detect a coin dropping from the slot. He invented the “light-beam” tool to trick this system and started to play without inserting any coin.

Slot manufacturers designed new systems, based on microchips and advanced electronics. They spent tens of thousands of dollars for the R&D process. Tommy Carmichael beat them with a kickstand that is 5 USD worth. No matter what they threw to him, he managed to beat them all. This guy played slot machines for years without spending any money and kept collecting the payouts. At one point, he was winning 1.000 USD per hour.

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He finally got caught in 1998 and received a three years prison sentence. He is also banned from all Nevada casinos for life. He is living a normal life now, but cheaters still use his devices to trick slot machines – Tommy Carmichael is a true legend among thieves.

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Now you know about the most famous casino cheats in history, but please do not get inspired by these tricks since they simply will not work nowadays. The reason for them being used successfully by the cheaters is the significant drawbacks in gambling systems of that time which now are completely eliminated due to the sustainable research and development of this industry. Play responsibly and take care!