> But the casino had been suspicious, and Kane didn’t collect the last win
Bad move!
This reminds me of Louis Colavecchio. He made quite a lot of money off Atlantic City casinos using counterfeit slot machine tokens. The casinos KNEW they were being ripped off by a counterfeiter, because their token counts at the end of the day were coming in consistently high, but they were stymied because they could not tell which tokens were counterfeit. That made it hard to even get started tracking their origin. Even the token manufacturers were not able to determine which of a set of tokens were authentic and which were counterfeit. [1]
Colavecchio's downfall came one day when he was playing a machine, and it jammed, eating his token. He simply moved to the next machine, and continued playing. That caught the attention of the guard watching that row of machines on the security camera. These machines were something like $10 or $25 per play machines. When a legitimate gambler has a token of that value eaten by a machine, they don't just let it go and move on to another machine. They report it and make a fuss until they get their money back. The guard realized that one person who would just move on would be the counterfeiter--he would not want to draw attention to himself by making a fuss, and psychologically would think of his tokens as only worth a few cents and so would not be upset at losing one.
With that lead, they were able to watch Colavecchio and get enough evidence to nail him.
[1] Years after Colavecchio was caught and convicted, his counterfeit tokens remained in circulation in Atlantic City casinos, because they never did figure out a way to tell which were real and which were Colavecchio's.
Though, that wasn't my reading of "Kane didn’t collect the last win." I read it as "the casino didn't pay him for the win because they suspected him of hacking/cheating."
It could be either one though. Now I'm not really sure.
Cool story. For the curious, "Sentenced to seven years, Colavecchio was released in 2006. He was re-arrested by the FBI only a few months later having resumed his activities, and release on a $25,000 surety bond"
Wow, while this may be acting on stereotypes but I am surprised and have to hand it to the security guard who worked through that train of logic on the fly.
I happened to know several security guards and bouncers when I was young -- a lot of them really are gifted when it comes to noticing anomalies in individual and crowd behavior.
Bad move!
This reminds me of Louis Colavecchio. He made quite a lot of money off Atlantic City casinos using counterfeit slot machine tokens. The casinos KNEW they were being ripped off by a counterfeiter, because their token counts at the end of the day were coming in consistently high, but they were stymied because they could not tell which tokens were counterfeit. That made it hard to even get started tracking their origin. Even the token manufacturers were not able to determine which of a set of tokens were authentic and which were counterfeit. [1]
Colavecchio's downfall came one day when he was playing a machine, and it jammed, eating his token. He simply moved to the next machine, and continued playing. That caught the attention of the guard watching that row of machines on the security camera. These machines were something like $10 or $25 per play machines. When a legitimate gambler has a token of that value eaten by a machine, they don't just let it go and move on to another machine. They report it and make a fuss until they get their money back. The guard realized that one person who would just move on would be the counterfeiter--he would not want to draw attention to himself by making a fuss, and psychologically would think of his tokens as only worth a few cents and so would not be upset at losing one.
With that lead, they were able to watch Colavecchio and get enough evidence to nail him.
[1] Years after Colavecchio was caught and convicted, his counterfeit tokens remained in circulation in Atlantic City casinos, because they never did figure out a way to tell which were real and which were Colavecchio's.