Two Men Arrested for Exploiting Design Flaw in Video Poker Machines

[tipo]

Two men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud after they exploited a software glitch in video poker machines to increase their payouts artificially.

John Kane, 52, of Las Vegas, is believed to have discovered the design flaw which through a combination of button allows players to change the bet and therefore the payout of a winning hand.

For this exploit to work a feature known as "Double Up" must be activated on the video poker machines.

The player can then play at the minimum bet until they hit a hand and then use the trick to look as if they won it at the maximum bet.

After testing his find on his own, Kane called his friend Andre Nestor, 39, from Pennsylvania, and together starting hitting casinos around Vegas in the summer of 2009.

Returned home, Nestor continued to practice what he learned at the Meadows Racetrack and Casino near Pittsburgh on a Draw Poker machine made by International Game Technology (IGT).

He first had to convince a technician to open the machine up and enable the "Double Up" feature, which he apparently did by posing as a high-roller.

In two months, until late August, Nestor's winnings amounted to $429,945, which attracted suspicion from gaming authorities, which investigated and uncovered the scheme.

Nestor was charged in Washington County, but as he was preparing to go to trial this Monday, federal authorities showed up with an arrest warrant and took him to Las Vegas.

It's not clear how Kane learned of the vulnerability, but Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, told the Las Vegas Review Journal, that some cheats manage to buy machines and test them at home.

"If you have a machine and you have long enough to experiment, you might be able to find a glitch like this," he concluded.

That's actually a reasonable explanation. Security researcher Barnaby Jack demonstrated serious flaws in ATM machines at last year's Black Hat security conference after inspecting several models for around a year.

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[myidisbb]

how the heck does he get anyone to open up a machine??? come on. as soon as the tehc open the machine p the cameras should be on it.

[Peace_Angel]

The real question is how do you accuse someone of cheating when actually the software is doing something it should not. The software company that designed the software for the machines should be the culprit!

What happens tomorrow if the lotto (6 balls jackpot) machines wrongly send 7 balls. so what? They wont pay anybody because there cannot be any winner. Sure there can be a draw again, but...

And casino are alarmed because of winning half a mil? These suckers make millions a day and still they feel it's wrong to pay up 0.5 mil. I say these guys are the worst leeches on this planet!

Peace.

[myidisbb]

The real question is how do you accuse someone of cheating when actually the software is doing something it should not. The software company that designed the software for the machines should be the culprit!

What happens tomorrow if the lotto (6 balls jackpot) machines wrongly send 7 balls. so what? They wont pay anybody because there cannot be any winner. Sure there can be a draw again, but...

And casino are alarmed because of winning half a mil? These suckers make millions a day and still they feel it's wrong to pay up 0.5 mil. I say these guys are the worst leeches on this planet!

Peace.

actually they do pay for a ball. they had it ahppen before last year.

because they person had to access the inside part of the machine to flip/switch a lever/button it made using that machine illegal. gaming laws also in states usually say if you are cheating you are doing fraud. remember the states collect money on the winnings of the house too. these stupid guys got greedy. using the same few machines and therefor going into the same few places. they should did it a few times with no biggie wins and go back later. there was one story on a tv show about these type of cheats. this guy would put a certain coinage combition and then win no mattter what. he work on the machines so he fix them. they say they never found all the machines.