Two men exploit bug in video poker machines, defraud casinos

Two men have been exploiting a bug in video poker machines that took them from Pennsylvania to Las Vegas. Crossing state lines makes it a federal crime, and because of that they’re up for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The criminal complaint (PDF published here on Wired.com’s site) states that John Kane and Andre Nestor “knowingly and intentionally defrauded gaming machines” to the tune of $429,000 over 60-some wins, all within a couple months in 2009.

It isn’t known how they discovered the bug.

It’s the stuff of urban legend seen in movies and TV where a sequence of button presses on a slot machine will net a big win.

According to the document, Kane and Nestor would pose as high rollers, having casinos enable an International Game Technology video poker machine with double-up (an even-money feature that allows players to essentially flip a coin to double their win or lose it all – the feature exists in some but not all VP and even slot machines). They would bet 1 credit at the lowest denomination until achieving a win. Then they’d change to a high denom.

The document is silent about specifics, perhaps to prevent others from exploiting the same VP games (if any), but reading between the lines, we speculate that the glitch in the software allowed a denom change before the double-up.

We don’t know specifically if this is how it went down, but as a simple example:

Change denom to nickel.
Bet 1 nickel until getting a win, let’s say 2 pair for 2 nickels (credits).
Switch to $5 denom. You now have $10.
Make the double-up wager. Lose, and you lose your original 5 cents. Win, and you win $20. (Machines in the high roller area go up to $25 denom or higher, which would mean an instant $100.)

It could also be that the same glitch allowed automatic wins in double-up. Double-ups in VP are usually limited to 4 or 5 (if you win 5 in a row, that would be $320). But it could also have been set to unlimited until a jackpot ($1200 or more) was won.

We suspect a flurry of casinos are busily scouring their floors removing the double-up games. Just in case.

And if you were thinking about trying the same thing, well, Andre Nestor was arrested with 650 felony counts to his name.