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."