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UK
Casino Times
> Casino Cheats
04 October 2005
Casino Cheats - The Black Book Of
Shame
One
advantage online casino fans have over real-world gamblers
is that they never have to worry about bumping into the sort
of characters detailed in Nevada's List of Excluded Persons.
This nondescript-sounding title disguises a roll-call of
mobsters, racketeers and corrupt officials who face arrest
the moment they step inside a Las Vegas
casino.
Any number of books and
movies tell the stories of successful casino cheats -
glamorous fictional characters who take on the house with a
smile on their lips and their heart in their mouth, and walk
away with pockets bulging.
But there is one book that
tells the real-life story of the cheats who get caught, and
its matter-of-fact title hides a multitude of sordid tales
and not a movie deal in sight.
The List of Excluded
Persons published by Nevada's State Gaming Control Board,
more popularly known as the Black Book (despite its pale
blue cover), is a catalogue of gamblers banned from the
state's casinos for cheating.
As the growth of online
gaming makes old-school methods of cheating increasingly
redundant, the Black Book starts to look more and more like
a museum piece. But it is an effective one.
Anyone included in it
commits a criminal offence simply by stepping inside one of
Las Vegas's land-based casinos. And the rogues' gallery of
photos that stare out from its pages - and the
associated
website - are a
permanent reminder that there is nothing glamorous about
getting caught, even if you've a colourful soubriquet like
Anthony "Tony Ripe" Civella or Richie the Fixer.
It takes a great deal to
get included on this list - a lot more than just failing to
admit seeing the bottom card accidentally revealed by a
poker dealer. The 37 men and one woman currently listed
include mobsters, racketeers and at least one corrupt
official who was supposed to be preventing fraud but instead
indulged in it.
The list was first set up
in 1960 as a way of cracking down on the Mob, and one of
that initial class of inductees remains on the list almost
half a century later. Louis Dragna, whose first arrest was
in 1946, was thought to be the boss of an organised crime
group known as the Mickey Mouse Mafia in Los
Angeles.
Apart from Dragna, the
longest-serving members of the list are a pair of
jovial-looking Hawaiians, Alvin Kaohu and Wilford Pulawa,
who were added in 1975. From their photos, they look like
congenial company. Their criminal records - extortion and,
in the case of Kaohu, manslaughter - tell a different
story.
The list has been
criticised for being nothing more than a PR exercise
designed to demonstrate that the State of Nevada is doing
something - anything - about organised crime. And it's
certainly true that many members of the list seem to be
straight out of Hollywood central casting for
mobsters.
But in more recent years,
the list has begun to include people banned for cheating
rather than for their links with organised crime -
particularly the new school of computer whiz-kids who found
ways to make thousands of dollars by fiddling slot
machines.
The only woman ever to be
put on the list, Sandra Vaccaro, was convicted alongside her
husband John - also listed - of a slot machine scam that
cost casinos millions. And the most famous case of a
gamekeeper turning poacher, Ron Harris, was added to the
list in 1997. Harris was a 12-year veteran of the State
Gaming Control Board who devised a computer system for
rigging slot machines to pay fraudulent jackpots.
Membership of the list
also begun to attract a certain cachet over the years. In
1991 the dapper racketeer and loan shark Francis Citro
turned up for the hearing that decided to add him to the
list wearing a tuxedo. "I've never been invited to join
anything in my life," he told commissioners. "I wanted to
show the proper respect."
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