Dennis Nikrasch
Posted : admin On 8/3/2022Dennis Nikrasch is infamous for creating some of the most
elaborate cheating strategies which he evolved to match the
advancements in slot machine technology. Nikrasch personally won
over fifteen million dollars by orchestrating a group of elite
professional cheats to win various jackpots from slot machines
of which he was able to rig.
Dennis Nikrasch Death
The operation seemed to work flawlessly, as his team was able
to move to various casinos across Las Vegas without ever being
detected. However, controversies amongst team members led to the
team’s ultimate defeat.
A Broken Past
When Nikrasch used to live in the windy city of Chicago, he
would take advantage of his position as a locksmith to break
into various mansions and storefronts in the area. He was so
skilled at what he did that he could simply look into a keyhole
and replicate the perfect key from memory.
He certainly earned a name for himself and soon the Genovese
crime family recruited his help. They asked him to break into a
plethora of cars, homes, and jewelry stores, which Nikrasch did
successfully for quite some time before ever getting caught.
However, in 1961, he was caught and arrested for attempted
burglary and several accounts of burglary from the past.
Building a Reputation in Las Vegas
Jul 06, 2017 Dennis Nikrasch Nikrasch, who has been called the “mastermind” of the largest slot-cheating scheme in Nevada’s history used a simple slot machine key to defeat security. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nikrasch, and his buddies would make an imprint of a slot machine cabinet key while distracting the machine’s repairman. His name is Dennis Nikrasch, and his slots cheating concept remains a highlight in casino frauds history. Everything started in his garage when he bought a slot machine. He opened it up to figure out how does it work and what are its main flaws. Nikrasch found out that the computer chips inside the game are reprogrammable. Opinion for United States v. Dennis Andrew Nikrasch, 367 F.2d 740 — Brought to you by Free Law Project, a non-profit dedicated to creating high quality open legal information. Dennis Nikrasch, a former locksmith, startet his criminal career by breaking lock boxes and burgling houses. In 1961 he was arrested for the first time and sentenced to eight years in prison. After his discharge he moved to Las Vegas and specialized on manipulating gambling machines which worked mechanically back then.
When Nikrasch was released after serving ten years in prison,
he moved to Las Vegas and spent his days at the casinos,
realizing quickly he had the necessary tools and skills to
manipulate the slot machines. Nikrasch just had to use his
locksmith keys and magnets to manually make the machines produce
a winning jackpot combination.
Beginning in 1996, former locksmith Dennis Nikrasch used the “brute force” style of computer hacking to essentially break the machine’s payout sensors. Using a blocker to screen the surveillance cameras, Nikrasch took less than a minute to pick the lock, open the machine’s interface, and attach a device that manipulated the reels’ RNG.
He managed to score a couple million dollars before being
exposed in the early 1980s, having to serve another five years
in prison on those accounts. In 1991, he returned to Las Vegas,
taking a job at a local jewelry store. He eventually returned to
the casinos to find that their systems were much more
sophisticated than before.
Back to the Drawing Board
The machines were now controlled by computer chips that
Nikrasch had never seen before, but he was up for the challenge.
Determined to break their systems and realizing he couldn’t
accomplish this task on his own, he recruited his old friend
from the mafia, Eugene Bulgarino, an expert when it came to
computer software programs.
Bulgarino purchased two slot machines for them to experiment
on and Nikrasch spent many weeks studying the owner’s manual and
the blueprint of the machine, hoping to find some loop hole that
could help him beat the system.
He knew where every latch was, what triggers the alarms, and
all the weakest points of the machine. Nikrasch also discovered
that the jackpot payouts are controlled by a computer chip that
was located in the heart of the machine, which was the key to
overcoming the machine.
Nikrasch learned how to overwrite jackpot codes within the
chips and download his own, which he would have to install into
the machine. He had to be very careful during this process, as
the machines were thoroughly checked after jackpot winnings and
if there was any evidence of tampering, the jackpot would be
considered invalid.
After he learned to manipulate the machine, he had to focus
on avoiding security surveillance cameras to make sure he was
out of their direct view, but he got discouraged when he
realized that was ultimately impossible to do on his own.
He needed people to block the camera’s view of him while he
tampered with the machine and he needed people on lookout to
make sure security guards weren’t nearby. In the end, Nikrasch
had recruited around ten men and women that would help him
orchestrate one of the biggest slot machine scandals yet. “He
had the most sophisticated system we’ve ever seen,” said Keith
Copher, head of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
The Ultimate Slot Cheaters
On July 4th, 1997, Nikrasch’s team was ready to try out their
skills at The Harrah’s Hotel and Casino. It was very important
that they all walked in at different times, as to not raise
suspicion. When his team members were all in their assigned
positions, Nikrasch casually walked in with the tools he needed
being strategically placed underneath his shirt.
Nikrasch successfully shut the machine down, put it into
standby mode, hacked into the chip, and then entered the winning
jackpot code. Once these steps were complete, another team
member played the machine, instantly winning the jackpot on the
next spin. Their scheme had worked and the team successfully was
able to bring home $3.7 million dollars that night!
They were ecstatic, but unfortunately there was a lot of
controversy around how the funds were distributed. Seventy
percent of the final winnings automatically went to Nikrasch and
the other thirty percent was evenly distributed among the other
nine team members.
Despite the disagreements, the team stuck together and
traveled to several other casinos to execute the same plan.
After months of cheating the system, the team won seven cars in
total and millions more in revenue, but unfortunately jealousy
still was an over-riding factor that couldn’t be ignored.
Getting Caught
One woman on the team in particular was so fed up with
Nikrasch that she actually reported him to the police. When the
FBI followed up on the report, everything she had told them
added up to be true. The police wire tapped into Nikrasch’s
calls to Bulgarino, but he was careful not to relay any vital
info discerning the scam over the phone.
The FBI eventually put a wire tap in the Bulgarino household
after they discovered that Nikrasch had regular meetings there.
At their next meeting Nikrasch proceeded to tell Bulgarino of
the $17 million jackpot that he was planning to hit, completely
unaware that others were listening.
Later that evening they came to Nikrasch’s home and took him
into custody. In his garage, they found two slot machines and a
myriad of other devices he had used to break into the machines,
further helping them build a strong case against him.
Nikrasch pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, interstate
travel in aid of racketeering, money laundering, and interstate
transportation of stolen property. Due to his confession, he
only received an eight year sentence.
He was finally released in 2004, after serving his entire
term. Sometime during his time in prison, his name had been
added to the Nevada’s Gaming Control Board’s Blackbook, which
banned him from all casinos for life. Although we don’t know
what Nikrasch is up to today, we do know that he isn’t up to his
old schemes of cheating slot machines.
The secretive world of casino cheaters, the seedy underbelly of the gambling industry, is typically associated with poker and table games.
Cheats physically manipulate cards, dice, wheels, and chips to gain an unfair advantage over the house. But cheaters have long targeted machine games like the slots, too. Ever since the first “one-armed bandits” of old hit saloon floors in San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century, cheats have endeavored to trigger jackpots and payouts unfairly.
The earliest mechanical slot machines on the market accepted nickels, prompting cheaters to melt down cheap metal and fashion counterfeit coins known as “slot slugs.” These tricked the game into offering a free spin. When dimes became the coin of choice, they filed down pennies to the circumference of a 10-cent piece, thus “earning” a nine-cent rebate on every spin.
Slot cheats also liked to drill a hole through genuine coins. They would tie it to some fishing line, play the coin, and let it fall just far enough to trigger a spin. Then, they would pull it back out and repeat the process to play for free.
Eventually, slot machine manufacturers countered those efforts with a device called the “coin escalator,” which displayed previously played coins in a window for all to see. When the operator spotted slugs, filed down pennies, or an insufficient number of wagers in the coin escalator, they knew a cheater was in their midst.
As the mechanical three-reel slots of old gave way to electronic video slots, coin-based machines were replaced by those which accept cash bills or barcoded casino vouchers. Manufacturers also replaced the drum reel setup with complex random number generators (RNGs) that “shuffled” the reels into seemingly infinite combinations.
These technological advancements stemmed the tide of slot cheating for a while, but gamblers who try to get over on the house are relentless if nothing else. Cheaters found more creative ways, engaging in a back and forth crusade with the casinos that continues to this day.
In the past, I’ve taken the time to write up guides on the various ways to cheat casino games, including poker, blackjack, roulette, and craps. But I’ve also included very serious reasons why you should never try them. In this guide, you’ll find five ways you can cheat when playing slot machines circa 2019 and beyond, along with why readers should never attempt it.
Dennis Nikrasch Chicago
1 – Flashing a “Light Wand” to Fool the Machine’s Payout Sensor and Triggering a Jackpot
If you’ve ever heard of the “top-bottom joint,” the “kickstand,” or the “monkey paw,” congratulations! You know more about slot machine cheating than you probably should. But you probably also know about Tommy Glenn Carmichael, the so-called “Godfather of Slot Machine Cheats.”
Carmichael, a former television repairman who parlayed his technical skills into a career as a professional cheat, invented all three of those devices used to fool a mechanical slot’s sensors into unloading its coin hopper on command.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times conducted back in 2003, convicted slot thief Jerry Criner spoke of Carmichael in reverent tones:
“A legend. He’s the greatest mind as far as developing cheating tools.”
As for the man himself, Carmichael told the newspaper he was but a humble tinkerer who never said no to a challenge:
“Figure out how a machine counts money and then work your way into the machine. We got to playing around, and I could see where it was pretty easy to do. Give me a slot machine and I’ll beat it.”
When the electronic slots and their sensitive sensors used to detect lights and lasers became the norm, Carmichael wasted no time in purchasing an IGT brand machine for himself. Almost immediately, his ingenious mind went to work deconstructing the sensor array. Before long, Carmichael had developed his latest cheating tool, the “light wand.”
Here’s how Carmichael described his light wand epiphany, which occurred as he tricked a casino employee into providing access to an IGT machine’s inner workings:
“The second I opened it up, I knew how to beat it. He told me so much I thought he had called the law. I thought he was trying to stall us.”
Mark Robinson, the former manager of the Nevada Gambling Control Board’s Electronic Services Division, told the LA Times:
“The light would shine in there and be so bright that the sensor would be blinded, causing the hopper to not realize it was paying out the coins.”
Wielding nothing more than a camera battery and a miniaturized lightbulb, Carmichael went to work, bilking casinos from coast to coast out of $10,000 or more per day.
Why You Shouldn’t Fool the Payout Sensors
Like all swindlers, however, Carmichael’s refusal to walk away a “winner” led to his downfall. He was caught deploying a light wand to win jackpots in 1996 and again in 1998, before fleeing Las Vegas for Atlantic City. But his reputation preceded him, and private detectives employed by casinos there quickly spotted Carmichael and took him down.
The feds stripped Carmichael of every last penny from his ill-gotten gains, sentenced him to one year in prison, and placed him on extended probation. That’s reason enough to avoid the light wand “hack,” as is the method’s relatively outdated practicality in the modern age.
2 – Recording Spins on a Smartphone to Crack a Slot’s Randomization Pattern
This scam is so elegant and effective that casinos and slot machine manufacturers alike still haven’t been able to stop it.
During the 2000s, international slot makers Novomatic and Aristocrat Leisure began receiving disturbing reports from their respective casino clientele. Apparently, machines from both manufacturers had been observed paying out small to medium-sized payouts far more often than their preprogrammed odds should’ve allowed.
Comprehensive reviews and investigations were conducted to audit the machines in question, but engineers and analysts could find no trace of physical manipulation.
In 2011, Novomatic issued the following statement to client casinos to warn them about potential weaknesses in its slots “pseudo random number generators” (PRNGs):
“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.”
As it turns out, a slot’s RNG isn’t technically randomized because it relies on manmade inputs, such as the second hand of the machine’s internal clock, to generate its seemingly random results. From the average player’s perspective, the results will definitely appear random over both short- and long-term sessions.
But as Novomatic admitted in its internal memo, the “pseudo” nature of a PRNG ensures that detectable patterns can be discerned from the reels’ final alignment, provided a player knew what to watch for.
A professional computer hacker known only as “Alex” was one such player, a gifted mathematical mind capable of cracking convoluted coded algorithms in his head. After deciphering the codes behind a particular model of Novomatic slot machine, then the Aristocrat Mark IV model, Alex designed a computer program to predict exactly when players should press the “SPIN” button.
Alex formed a team of players and taught them to use iPhone cameras to secretly record a few dozen low-stakes spins. This footage was then uploaded to Alex’s computer, which crunched the patterns onscreen to determine, down to the millisecond, when the “SPIN” button should be pressed to trigger a winner.
From there, all Alex had to do was send an automated text message timed with a 0.25-second delay to his cheater’s phone, thus providing the average human’s reaction time as a window. A quarter of a second later, with the stakes now increased significantly, the player would press “SPIN” and watch the screen light up for a sizable score.
Why You Shouldn’t Crack a Slot’s Randomization Pattern
Both companies acknowledge that their machines are vulnerable to Alex’s version of slot hacking. But as he pointed out in an interview with Wired magazine in 2017, his scheme isn’t technically considered cheating because nobody physically manipulates the machine:
“We, in fact, do not meddle with the machines – there is no actual hacking taking place. My agents are just gamers, like the rest of them. Only they are capable of making better predictions in their betting… Yes, that capability is gained through my technology, it’s true. But why should it be against the law? On the basic level, it’s like using a calculator for counting faster and more accurately, rather than relying on one’s natural capacity.”
Alex himself was never caught, thanks to his identity concealing skills and Russian residency, but several of his “agents” have been apprehended all over the world. As for the mastermind himself, Alex failed in convincing Aristocrat to hire him on as a security consultant.
Today, he makes a living selling his tech for five-figures a pop on the dark web rather than resort to cheating himself.
So, unless you’re a savant like him with otherworldly math skills and the “Rain Man” ability to read PRNGs in your sleep, or have $20,000 to spend on a slot-cheating system, hacking the game isn’t a great idea.
3 – Using Computers and Advanced Tech Skills to Rig the Machine for Instant Jackpots
Another case of computer engineering knowledge becoming the cheat’s tool of choice involves a fair share of mystery more than 20 years later.
Beginning in 1996, former locksmith Dennis Nikrasch used the “brute force” style of computer hacking to essentially break the machine’s payout sensors. Using a blocker to screen the surveillance cameras, Nikrasch took less than a minute to pick the lock, open the machine’s interface, and attach a device that manipulated the reels’ RNG. Just like that, Nikrasch was gone like a ghost, leaving his blocker behind to play the game until an inevitable jackpot was triggered shortly thereafter.
Speaking with the Las Vegas Sun, former chief of the Enforcement Division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) Keith Copher offered begrudging respect when referencing Nikrasch’s scam:
“He had the most sophisticated system we’ve ever seen. We don’t know that he’s passed it along, and if he has, he’d better tell us.”
J. Gregory Damm, the assistant US Attorney who ultimately prosecuted Nikrasch for his litany of crimes, told the newspaper the use of a proxy helped hinder casino security systems:
“He would be in the casino a very short period of time. He would fix the machine, then leave. He wasn’t present when the jackpot was hit.”
Why You Shouldn’t Rig Slot Machines
Nikrasch absconded with more than $6 million in stolen slot funds before his run was cut short, sending him to prison for seven years.
Once again, the biggest reason to avoid this slot cheating method is impracticability, because Nikrasch took his tech secrets to the grave.
4 – Watching for Players Who Leave Money on the Machine So You Can Spin for Free
Whether you count this one as cheating is up to your own moral code, but what do you do when a neighboring player leaves a few bucks in the next machine over?
You see them take their Player’s Card, and even leave the casino, so you’re sure they’re not coming back for that last dollar or two. Do you slide over and play the free spins?
If you’re like Colorado resident and gambling man “Dan” (his last name hasn’t been made public), you take your shot at winning a jackpot on the forgetful player’s dime.
Why You Shouldn’t Use Other Players’ Money
While gambling in a Central City casino two years ago, Dan saw a fellow slot player leave $2 on a nearby machine. After playing two spins and winning nothing, Dan continued his own game for awhile before security arrived and escorted him to the dreaded back room.
Here’s how Dan described the scene to his local KDVR News station after the ordeal was over:
“There was no intent to steal from anybody. I had no idea. I go upstairs to the third floor into a dirty little room and someone tells me I stole $2 from the casino. They said they had it all on camera. I was guilty, I guess. You’re certainly not stealing it from the casino because it wasn’t theirs to begin with. There are certainly times where there are ‘laws,’ but they are not morally or ethically correct.”
Dan was charged under Colorado Statute 12-47.1-823(1)(c), which covers various forms of casino cheating. In this case, the casino claims ownership over any lost, forgotten, or unused funds in its facility, so Dan technically stole $2 from the house and not the other player.
He was arrested, charged with criminal conduct, levied with $250 in fines, forced to pay for FBI criminal background checks, placed on probation, and banned from all Colorado casinos for a full year.
And while Dan’s case might seem like an outlier, consider that Colorado charged nearly 1,000 players for stealing slot funds in 2017 alone. Similar laws are on the books in Las Vegas and elsewhere, so when you see a few dollars flashing on an unclaimed machine, think twice before trying to turn somebody else’s money into your life-changing jackpot moment.
5 – Counterfeiting Bills or “Shaving” Coins to Trick the Machine Into a Free Spin
I covered the concept of counterfeit coin slugs in the introduction, and nowadays, you’ll only find a handful of old-school coin-operated slots in Downtown Las Vegas. You can blame infamous counterfeiter Louis “The Coin” Colavecchio for that development.
Why You Shouldn’t Counterfeit Bills or Coins
During his reign as the East Coast’s preeminent slot cheat, Colavecchio used genuine steel dies from U.S. Mint printing presses to trick the machines. That ploy wound up resulting in a seven-year prison bid, leaving the formerly flush “Coin” Colavecchio penniless and out of options.
After his release, Colavecchio was forced to adapt to a brave new world of cash and voucher-operated slots. Predictably, he tried to expand his operation into counterfeit $100 bills, hoping to hit high-stakes machines for six-figure scores.
And just as predictably, the U.S. Secret Service swooped in to arrest the now 77-year old Colavecchio in 2018.
Counterfeiting is one of the most serious federal crimes imaginable, and when you add in casino surveillance, this cheating recipe just doesn’t add up.
Conclusion
Slot machines probably inspire so many cheating attempts simply because of the volatile gameplay they offer. When winners can come few and far between, and losing by session’s end is a statistical certainty barring a big jackpot, grinding the slots can get downright depressing in the worst of times.
Cheaters who refuse to accept the “boom and bust” dynamic of the slots will always try to gain the upper hand, but as these five entries make clear, casinos are always one step ahead of the culprits.
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