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3 weeks ago
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ARTICLE AD BOX
A NOTORIOUS casino cheat who swindled some £30million has told how he was tailed by the FBI – but no one could work out his move.
Over the course of two decades, Richard Marcus would execute one of the most lucrative, yet illegal, cheating careers in gambling history.
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He spent years tricking the system with his famous ‘Savannah’ move
AFPHe didn’t have the money to compete with the whales on the casino floor, but he didn’t need to.
He made his mark not as a high-stakes gambler but as the man who tricked the system, and somehow never managed to get convicted for his decades-long cheating.
Marcus told the story of how a desperate man, down to his last dollar, built a career out of beating the odds – and the house.
Born and raised in New York City, Marcus had a fascination with risk and reward from an early age.
He told The Sun: “What drove me to cheating is as a very young boy, I was already gambling,” describing how he was cheated out of his baseball card collection by neighbourhood kids who dealt “second card”.
After a brief stint in college, he packed up and headed west, determined to try his hand in the gambling capital of the world.
He said: “I won like $20,000 when I was a 17-year-old kid… I threw it in the trunk and I drove out to Vegas… I wasn’t even old enough to legally gamble.”
During his heyday, Marcus indulged in the high life that Vegas had to offer, staying at some of the most expensive hotels on the Strip, particularly the Bellagio.
He said: “You walk in, and it’s like stepping into another world – one where everything is tailored for you.
“I knew I had to blend in with the high rollers. The key was to look the part.”
In the early 1970s, Marcus wasn’t yet a cheater.
He was a dreamer, betting on his skills as a gambler to make a living.
But as with many who fall prey to the siren call of Vegas, Marcus lost more than he won.
By the time he realised gambling wasn’t his ticket to riches, he was flat broke and living in the streets of Sin City.
For a while, Marcus found himself dealing blackjack on the very floors he had once hoped to dominate.
Being a dealer gave Marcus an intimate understanding of how casinos worked.
He saw the vulnerability in the system, the moments when human error could crack the casino’s armor.
He said: “I wasn’t gonna get involved in that because I didn’t want any problem… I just wanted to get $400 and go home.”
Dealers got distracted, pit bosses weren’t always watching, and sometimes, casino floors were chaotic enough that a well-placed move could go unnoticed, Marcus said.
These small observations planted the seeds of a much grander scheme.
It was during his time as a dealer that Marcus devised the plan that would change his life forever: the Savannah move.
Unlike other cheats who relied on card counting or technical sleight of hand, Marcus invented a psychological con that required nothing but confidence, timing, and the ability to manipulate human behaviour.
He describes it as “the greatest unstoppable casino cheat move of all time,” named after one of his partners.
The trick was quite simple; he would replace his small bet with the hidden high-value chips while the dealer and pit boss would be distracted Savannah or another accomplice.
Marcus explained: “When the bet won, I would just go, ‘Yes, I won,’… the dealer would take the chip off and see this [the $10,000 chip]… and they had to pay me $10,000.”
The swap was quick, subtle, and, crucially, timed during the few seconds when nobody was paying attention.
The brilliance of the Savannah move lay in its simplicity — it didn’t look like cheating.
Who is Richard Marcus?
RICHARD Marcus is a notorious figure in the world of casino cheating, famous for developing clever techniques to defraud casinos.
Born in New York in 1955, Marcus initially worked as a dealer before turning to gambling scams in the late 1970s.
He’s best known for his “past-posting” strategy, where he would secretly swap lower-denomination betting chips for higher-value ones after the outcome was determined.
This technique, often involving sleight of hand, was most effectively executed at games like roulette and blackjack.
His success and charisma attracted a team of accomplices, with whom he executed scams globally until casinos caught on.
Eventually, casinos started implementing stricter security measures and surveillance to counteract tactics like his.
Marcus later retired from cheating and authored books about his experiences, including American Roulette, providing insight into his exploits and the tricks he used.
Today, he’s a speaker and consultant, advising on casino security to prevent the kinds of cheats he once mastered.
Marcus appeared to be just another gambler cashing in on a lucky streak.
Like any great con artist, Marcus knew he couldn’t do it alone.
Over the years, he assembled a team of trusted accomplices, each with a role to play.
The group operated with one person placing the bet, another creating a distraction, and a third acting as a lookout, watching for any signs of suspicion.
They worked like clockwork, taking advantage of shifts in dealers and the natural ebb and flow of activity on the casino floor.
Marcus and his team took their operation global, targeting casinos in Europe, South America, and Asia.
His scams were so well executed that many casinos didn’t realise they’d been hit until much later, if at all.
By the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Marcus had built a small fortune, reportedly pocketing millions in stolen winnings.
He told The Sun: “I could never say I regretted having cheated at casinos all that time… it becomes an ego thing. And I just loved it.”
His success wasn’t just about the money; it was about outsmarting the system.
To Marcus, every con was a high-stakes game of chess, where the casino – his lifelong adversary – was always just one move behind.
The endgame begins
By the mid-1990s, Richard Marcus was a ghost on the casino circuit.
His name wasn’t yet known to the public, but it had become a whispered warning in back rooms and security offices across the world.
Casinos were tightening their security, using better surveillance systems and employing more sophisticated techniques to track potential cheats.
As his old tricks began to attract more attention, Marcus realised that his once-perfect con was becoming increasingly risky.
He started to scale back his operations, knowing the odds were slowly turning against him.
But in 1995, while running a routine con in a European casino, Marcus’s luck finally ran out.
Security teams, armed with new facial recognition technology and improved surveillance, caught on to his moves.
He recalled: “I knew the casino owners in the town wanted me out. I noticed I was being followed by them [the FBI].
“I knew it wasn’t just the Brooklyn detective agency or the Nevada Gaming Control Board, though they’d been watching me for a while, too.
“I was always careful. I had a house, but I took precautions.
“Every time I drove back to my house, which wasn’t in my name, I’d take a roundabout way to make sure no one followed me.”
But on one particular day, Marcus noticed the same car had been following him for several days.
He decided to confront them.
He said: “I’m at a stop sign, and I see this car behind me.
“I’ve seen this car for like three days. So I get out of my car, walk up to the guy’s window, knock on it, and he rolls it down.
“I said, ‘Look, I’ll save you some time. I’m just going to the Alberton food store, three blocks from here. Make a right’.
“At the time, I didn’t know I was talking to the FBI. I found that out later.”
What is the law with casino cheating?
CASINO cheating is illegal in virtually all jurisdictions worldwide.
Cheating in a casino is considered a form of fraud or theft because it involves deceptive tactics to win money or other rewards unfairly.
Many countries and states have strict laws against cheating in gambling establishments, and violators can face severe consequences, including fines, jail time, and bans from casinos.
Casinos invest heavily in surveillance and employ trained security personnel to detect and prevent cheating.
In some regions, specialised gaming commissions oversee and enforce fair play regulations to maintain the integrity of the gaming industry.
Laws vary, but the penalties for cheating are usually serious to deter people from attempting to defraud casinos.
The laws governing casino cheating differ depending on the country or state, but they generally fall under criminal statutes addressing fraud, theft, or deceptive practices.
Although most gambling laws are state-based, the US federal government has some jurisdiction.
The Illegal Gambling Business Act and the Wire Act don’t directly address cheating but apply to illegal gambling operations and wire fraud involving gambling.
However, federal charges can come into play if the cheating crosses state lines, particularly with online gambling or cheating schemes that affect multiple states.
Under Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS) § 465.070, cheating in a gaming establishment is classified as a felony.
It includes manipulating games, using devices to predict outcomes, and “past posting” (betting after the outcome is known).
Penalties can include fines and prison sentences.
Marcus continued to evade his pursuers, but it wasn’t just him they were after – they were also trying to figure out how he was beating the casinos.
He said: “They even started taking roulette wheels apart, disassembling them, thinking I had some kind of electronic or digital devices, which didn’t even exist back then.
“They couldn’t figure out what I was doing.”
The pressure was mounting, and after months of being followed and watched, the heat was finally too much.
Describing an encounter at the Golden Nugget Casino, he recalled: “One day, I made a $10,000 bet, and I won. But then, they called the game.
“A guy in a suit comes up to me, shakes my hand, introduces himself as the president of the Golden Nugget, and calls me by name. He says, ‘We’re not paying you’.”
That marked the end of Marcus’s career as a casino cheat, but it wasn’t the end of his story.
Rather than disappear into obscurity, he reinvented himself as an author and speaker, pulling back the curtain on the secrets of his trade.
Today, Richard Marcus operates on the other side of the table.
He consults for casinos, helping them tighten their security and sharing his knowledge of human psychology and the weak points in surveillance.
His book, American Roulette, became a best-seller, detailing not only the specifics of his most daring scams but also the mindset of a man who spent decades living on the edge.
In the book, Marcus is candid about his motivations.
He doesn’t shy away from the fact that his cons were illegal, but he also makes it clear that he viewed them as a personal rebellion against the casino industry.
He said: “I am probably one of the three most respected casino consultants in the world. I give conferences all over the world.”
Richard Marcus’s legacy is a complicated one.
To some, he’s a criminal who exploited casinos for personal gain.
To others, he’s a Robin Hood figure, outsmarting a system designed to prey on the greed of gamblers.
His cons, which relied on human error and distraction rather than high-tech gadgets or brute force, remain the stuff of legend in the casino world.
“I could never say I regretted having cheated at casinos all that time… It becomes an ego thing. And I just loved it,” he said.
But perhaps the most enduring part of Marcus’s story is the way he reframed the concept of cheating itself.
He didn’t just steal from casinos; he beat them at their own game.
And in a world where the house almost always wins, that’s a legacy that stands out.
English (US)