They aren’t called “smartphones” for nothing, it’s the smart tool that predicts the random gameplay on slots orchestrated by a Russian engineer and dozens of operatives. Russia has been at the epicenter of slot hacking since the government prohibited gambling in 2009. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (at the time) felt it would be instrumental in reducing organized crime in Georgia. Land based casinos there, sold their slot machines at bargain basement prices where some ultimately ended up in the wrong hands of those who were prone to analyze the machines’ source code for susceptibilities.
Throughout eastern and central Europe there was a pattern of casinos logging incidents in which slots created by the Austrian company Novomatic were paying out unusually large wins. The developers of Novomatic found no evidence to support that the machines had been altered in any way. This lead to the trepidation that somehow the unfathomable happened as hackers figured out how to predict the slots’ outcome so cleverly there is no way to fix or stop it from happening other than to catch them red handed.
In a statement to customers in February 2011 the company said:
“Through targeted and prolonged observation of the individual game sequences as well as possibly recording individual games, it might be possible to allegedly identify a kind of ‘pattern’ in the game results”
In the US suspicions first begin to unfold back in June 2014 at the Lumiere Place Casino in St. Louis when the accounting department noticed slot machines were paying off at an alarming high rate. Then on June 2nd and 3rd, assorted machines spilled out more money than it consumed and this was without any jackpots. In the gambling industry, this was recognized as an irregularity and had a negative effect on casinos house edge. The algorithms inside the machines aren’t inclined to erratic malfunctions without some sort of interference, therefore illegal corruption was implicated.
The casino eye in the sky reviewed security tapes, when they noticed a thirtyish man displaying peculiar behavior while playing Star Drifter and Pelican Pete. There was a pause between each spin in which he clandestinely held his iPhone close to the screen.
This process went on for a few minutes and then abruptly he’d get up and go to another machine, return and pick up where he left off with his strange series of movements. During the second session of play it revealed how $20 in bets gained $60 in profits and then into $1,300 at the point of cashing out. In a two-day period, the man collected over $21,000 in unlawful wins.
A statewide alert was issued after Lumiere Place collaborated with the Missouri Gaming Commission. Other casinos also detected questionable circumstances at the machines which determined it was an organized group involved in the corrupt activity. In every reported incident, there was an alternate violator seen holding a mobile iPhone close to the display screen at an Aristocrat slot machine before it began to payout substantially.
Authorities in Missouri pinpointed the Lumiere Place defrauder describing his identity as Russian national Murat Bliev, 37 years of age on June 9th. Unfortunately, they were unable to make an arrest because he already left the US and returned to his employer in Moscow. As new developments in the case unfolded authorities confirmed he was part of a St. Petersburg-based organization who make millions in cracking the gambling industry's algorithms. Within the organization dozens are employed and fully trained to manipulating slot machines across the globe.
Bliev returned to the US in 2014 where he met up with three operatives in St. Charles, Missouri prepared to scam Aristocrat’s Mark VI model slot machines. Security at Hollywood Casino in St. Louis recognized Bliev and the three men where they were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud.
Other members from the organization were operating in Singapore were apprehended and prosecuted by authorities there two years later. Among the arrested was Czech Radoslav Skubnik who confessed to the financial network of the group but wouldn’t reveal more than that.
Pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) considered fool proof in recognizing patterns, required an extreme exertion and effort on the part of the organization. The result of each gameplay is controlled by programs to produce incomprehensible results by design. Gambling regulators approve the integrity of each algorithm before it reaches each casino.
Contrary to what the gambling industry believes the numbers are not as random as one would think. The reason is, the codes are manmade created therefore the PRNG isn’t completely flawless. That is not to say that cracking the coding is an easy undertaking instead highly improbable. PRNG is a program that generates a sequence of numbers that in turn produce sequences of single digit random numbers. The code system is a complex string of signals that are random and extremely complicated. However, if a hacker identifies the sequences in the mathematical mixture, they can predict a PRNG’s output and having access to the inner mechanism of a slot machine makes the process an easier one.
But hold on, it is still more complicated because the inputs vary depending on the state of each machine which produce different results at different times. It means a full comprehension of how the PRNG works in the machine and the study of gameplay patterns.
The organization plotted a scheme that would reduce the amount of time spent at a machine and be less conspicuous. While at the casino they videotaped each slot spin and sent it directly to the team in St. Petersburg. This would explain why they would have periods of walking away from a machine so that the team could crack the PRNG and send the timing sequence to the operative’s phone through a customized app. Once transmitted the phone was placed near the screen where it would vibrate around 0.25 seconds before it was time to press the spin button which also explains hesitation between each spin.
At the World Game Protection Conference, founder Willy Allison reported individuals of this scam win more than $10,000 per day and a team rakes in $250,000 in a single week.
The techniques used in casinos have been changed to become less recognized. There have been no other operatives caught in the St. Petersburg organization since the Singapore arrests, however, Russian gamblers cheating on Novomatic Coolfire machines in as far away as Peru have been reported.
Sources:
“Russians engineer a brilliant slot machine cheat — and casinos have no fix”, lasvegassun.com
“Russian hackers find a way to outsmart slot machines and win money; casinos have no fix”, electronicproducts.com