Classic slot machine cheats, some that have worked, some that have failed and some that have caused major problems or prison time!
Slot Machine Cheats Throughout The Ages:
The slot machines did not need electricity to run. Instead, these machines were manually winded by casino workers every few days. Cheating video slot machines will require you to time travel back to a time before the 1960(s) when everything was manual. The nature of the technology in the gambling scene allowed the manipulation of the slot machines. Not only did people use fake coins to cheat on slot machines, but there were also so-called cheating devices used to crack the slots, such as: Bill Validator Device Wrapped around a bill, it is used with an aim to fool the slot machine to think it is receiving a bill of $100 when it is actually accepting only $1. Flashing a “Light Wand” to Fool the Machine’s Payout Sensor and Triggering a Jackpot.
The shaved coin:
This classic slot machine trick involved shaving a small amount of the coins edge away so that the coin would be counted as a real coin, granting credits, but then rejected due to the small discrepancy of its size and weight.
The coin on a string:
This trick involved attaching tiny but strong string (or fishing wire) around a coin, entering the coin into the slot machine and then yoyo’ing it up and down at the point the slot registered the coin as credits.
The piano wire cheat:
In Atlantic City in 1982 a team of con artists used piano wire to control slot machine reels. After setting their desired slot machine up, they left the building leaving only the “player” who spun in a nifty 50k jackpot. Unfortunately for him, there was a police stakeout in progress and he was promptly arrested!
The fake coin:
Louis “The Coin” Colavecchio had the bright idea to ‘simply’ make his own fake coins. His pressing of the coins were almost indistinguishable from real currency and he enjoy huge success at casinos in Connecticut and New Jersey.
The coat hanger:
For a limited time some people figured out they could use a bent metal coat hanger to interfere with the mechanisms of slot machines and trigger payouts.
The top/bottom joint:
Once the coat hanger became obsolete the legendary fraudster Tommy Carmichael invented the top/bottom joint which was guitar wire and spring steel and which created an electrical charge which would trigger the payouts.
The monkey paw:
Tommy Carmichael ultimately spent 5 years in prison for his illegal activities and once he was released, the slot machines on the market were now immune to his top/bottom joint. So he bought a video poker machine and set to work trying to crack it. After 6 months hard graft he had invented the monkey paw which again was a metal device used to trick the slot machines into paying out. This is arguably Tommy’s most successful invention.
The light wand:
Slot machine manufacturers started using optical sensors for dispensing coins so with the monkey paw now redundant, Carmichael created the light wand which would interfere with the optical sensors, tricking the slots into paying out.
The bill in-validator:
This was a short lived device attached to dollar bills tricking the bill validator into thinking a $1 bill was in fact a $100 bill.
The Harris code:
Ronald Harris was a slot machine programmer in Nevada who ingeniously added his own code into 30 slot machines. The code was there to recognise a very precise combination of coin inserts and trip the jackpot. The coins would be inserted like a morse code and Harris’ team made huge gains from the system until ultimately insider information brought the gang down.
Replacing the chips:
Some programmers went a step ahead and created new chips for slot games which they would have to break into a slot machine to attach. Dennis Nikrasch was the king and he and his crew reportedly netted over $5 million during their peak!
Accidental glitches:
There have been numerous reports of slot machines and video poker machines having glitches built in (by accident?). Many slots even have fairly obvious supposed cheats built in on purpose but these are more to fool the player into thinking they have a way to beat the machine, when in reality these little tricks are actually already factored into the return to player!
Online slot cheats:
The CryptoLogic casino hack.
Back in 2001 a hacker hacked one of CryptoLogic’s gaming servers. They programmed it so that every roll o the craps die and every spin of a slot reel turned up a winning bet. In the space of a few hours, the two CryptoLogic casinos using this server lost just under two million dollars to the 140 users who were online at the time. The number could have been far worse had it not been for a couple of honest punters who reported to the casino customer service that they found it strange that every single spin was winning them a good amount of money. The server was shut down but due to the fact that nobody was able to trace the hacker and that the customers who were online at the time were clearly found innocent of any involvement, the players were in the end allowed to keep their winnings with $1.3m being recovered through insurance and the remaining $600k being footed by CryptoLogic themselves.
Casino hacking
The CryptoLogic story is not the only one of it’s kind. Online casinos are continually being attacked by either hackers trying to break in and steal money, break codes or by DDOS style attacks used to try an extort money from the casinos. This is par for the course for the online industry and is something they employ security experts to try and combat.
Other casino cheats and slot cheats
We have covered a whole range of other slot cheats and casino cheats elsewhere on this website.
Cheat slot machine bill acceptor
Wow we are getting a lot of you doing google searches for phrases like slot machine bill validator cheat device and that sort of thing. We have to advise you against actually trying to cheat a bill validator, slot machine or otherwise. Unless you like the taste of prison food and don’t mind having some brief encounters in the showers! Casino cheats beware!
Best Casinos to Play:
Cheating at Slots 2020
Cheating at slots is often frowned upon but it is certainly an interesting subject. There are many stories of people who have successfully attempted cheating at slots.
Reading about various methods used by these people to cheat slot machines may be exciting, but you should definitely be cautious when you give it a try in real life. Modern slot machines are highly advanced and very difficult to take advantage of.
There are as many as 3 million slot machines in brick and mortar casinos across the world. Slots are often one of the biggest contributors to a casino’s revenue. As much as 80% of a casino’s income may come from its slot machines. So slot cheats can do some serious damage to a casino’s business.
According to estimates, gaming establishments in Nevada alone have had to bear a loss of millions of dollars every year as a result of slot machine cheating. This is one of the reasons why modern casinos have surveillance cameras covering every inch of the place.
Various Slots Cheat Methods
A big casino can have around 5,000 slot machines or more and continuously monitoring all the machines may not be possible. This provides an opening for slot cheats to try their luck. Slot machine cheaters have tried a number of different techniques in an effort to make big money, these include:
Cheating with coin and string or yo-yo method
This was one of the oldest methods used by cheaters to trick slot machines. The concept was simple. Cheaters used to attach a string to a coin before inserting it into the slot machine. After the machine registered that a coin has been inserted, the person used to simply pull out the coin using the string taped to it.
This enabled the person to use the same coin over and over again to add to his/her credit without investing a single penny. Because of the yo-yo like action of dropping the coin and pulling it back up, this method is also called yo-yo method.
Some cheats have tried using this same trick with bills as well. They would attach a string to a bill instead of a coin before dropping it into the slot machine and pull it out once the money was registered.
The problem with this method was that it involved a visible string coming out of the coin slot, which would be difficult to justify for the fraudster. Since the discovery of yo-yo method, the slot machines have been modified to ensure that the coins once dropped into the machine can not be pulled out.
Cheating with devices like the monkey’s paw
Devices like the monkey’s paw, which was a foot long flexible steel rod bent into the shape of a claw, were also a popular method of cheating at slots. The device was inserted into a slot machine through the payout outlet and used to tamper with the coin counter to cause overpayment.
The monkey’s paw was one of the early devices used by slot cheats. Since then other devices that can tamper with a slot machine’s coin comparator have also been invented and used. Such devices, when inserted into the machine, could generate fake signals so that credit would be registered without any coins being inserted.
This enabled the cheater to play without making any payment or make money simply by cashing out. Today most casinos use highly sophisticated machines that cannot be tampered with such devices.
Cheating with shaved coins or tokens
This was another popular method of cheating at slots used by fraudsters in olden days. The cheats realized that if they shaved off a tiny bit of a coin and dropped such coin in a slot machine, the coin would be registered, but it would be rejected and discharged.
How To Cheat A Slot Machine 2016 Game
This meant that the person could keep using the same coin again and again to add credit just like the coin and string method, but without the disadvantage of a visible string sticking out.
Gas Station Slot Machines Cheat
In order to avoid such cheating, many casinos started using tokens instead of coins in their slot machines. But cheaters have tried the same trick with tokens as well i.e. using shaved tokens to cheat slot machines.
With hundreds of cameras surveying every inch of modern casinos, a fraudster is sure to draw attention, if he/she tried this method. Moreover, the sophisticated machines used today ensure that the rejected coin/token is not registered in the credit.
Cheating with foreign coins
Fraudsters have even tried cheating casinos using foreign coins. They used foreign coins having a close resemblance to the US currency, but a very low value. The value of these foreign coins would be as much as ten times lower than the American coin it would be mistaken for.
This resulted in a significant loss for the casinos. But it is almost impossible to fool the advanced slot machines of today with such a trick.
Cheating with fake money or token
The use of counterfeit money is not exactly a slot cheating method, but slot machines are often used to launder fake bills. Good quality fake bills can closely resemble the real ones and the electronic sensors on slot machines may not be able to catch the difference.
This means that there was no way to catch the cheat as he will be long gone by the time the machine is opened and fraud discovered. Some cheats have even tried producing fake tokens that resemble the ones offered by a particular casino.
The disadvantage of these methods is that producing fake bills or tokens is not so easy. Also, producing counterfeit bills is a very serious crime and the cheater can end up spending many years in jail. Counterfeit token are also taken very seriously by casinos and cheaters can expect strong action.
Cheating with mini-lights – Slot machine cheaters have even tried blinding the machines. They made use of mini-lights, which is a small battery operated light emitter, to tamper with the optical sensors of slot machines, which are used to count coins to be paid out. This sometimes resulted in overpayment. But the modern slot machines come with safeguards against such devices.
Cheating by a casino insider
In the history of slot frauds, there have been a few cheaters who have made ambitious plans of introducing errors in the slot machine program before its installation in a casino, so that it paid out on pressing buttons in a particular pattern.
The success of such a plot is impossible without the help of a casino insider and a real programmer. Majority of such plots have ended up in failure with the fraudsters serving long jail terms.
As slots machines become more and more sophisticated, cheaters are also coming up with advanced techniques of cheating. But with the introduction of hi-tech slot machines that accept only cards, not coins, the future of slot cheats is bleak.
One of the most famous fraudsters in the history of slot cheating
Tommy Glenn Carmichael is a slot cheating legend. He is probably the most famous person in the field. Although a cheater, Tommy’s mechanical genius can’t be denied. He started his slot cheating career using a device called a ‘top-bottom joint’. The initial success encouraged him to close his shop and leave for Vegas. But soon he was caught and sentenced to prison.
Five years of jail time could not change Tommy. On getting out of the prison, he realized that slot machine technology had changed. He soon educated himself and came up with the famous monkey paw device mentioned earlier. As the slot machine technologies kept changing, Tommy kept coming up with newer devices to cheat them.
When slot machines started using the optical sensor technology, Tommy invented a light wand that could blind these sensors. He managed to overcome the slot machine safety device called the actuator arm with his ‘hanger’. According to records, he took 7 cruises within 6 months in 1995, winning huge amounts of money in casinos at these ships.
The following year Tommy was arrested, but the charges were dropped. He still did not mend his ways. He was arrested once again in 1998-99 and in 2001 he was sentenced to a year in prison, 3 years of probation and prohibition from entering casinos.
He is listed in the Nevada black book, which lists various casino fraudsters and the methods used by them. Slot cheats account for about 27% of the entries in this book.
Tommy has finally changed sides and is now working with casinos to develop an anti-cheating technology to prevent people like him from cheating. He now aims to make a fortune by selling products that prevent cheating, as opposed to earlier days when he was known for his inventions that helped fraudsters to cheat at slot machines. He has also been featured in “Breaking Vegas’ series on the History Channel.
Rather than cheating and ending up on the wrong side of the law, strategic gaming can help you win big legally. If you get rid of the misconception that gambling is all about luck, you will realize that strategies do play a role in winning at any casino games, including slot machines.