Gamblor’s World

For another similar case (with a much different outcome) google Alberta’s "ZUES YAGHI" or go to http://www.citizenvoice.ca/

and check the forum on gambling lawsuits.  The "Easter Eggs" forum on www.citizenvoice.ca describes one way VLT technology can be corrupted.

But don’t tap into the system like this

By CHRIS LAMBIE, Halifax Herald Staff Reporter, Friday October 27, 2006

A university dropout who bilked the Atlantic Lottery Corp. out of $250,000 by figuring out a way to predict the winning outcome of video lottery games suspects there are other people out there doing exactly the same thing.

Over two years in the late 1990s, the self-taught math wizard used a flaw he discovered in the game software to gamble his way to a small fortune.

"The odds are I’m not alone," said Jean-Guy, who spoke on condition his last name not be published.

"Somewhere out there, there’s some computer programmer, plus a gambling machine, plus the determination to figure it out. There’s got to be. There just has to be another one."

The 34-year-old, now a legitimate computer consultant in Ottawa, got his start servicing illegal "grey market" video lottery machines.

"I was able to actually obtain the same equipment that was in the bars," he said.

Through reverse engineering, Jean-Guy designed a computer program that allowed him to predict when jackpots were coming.

"I could go into a bar, take two snapshots of a VLT screen with a camera, feed that information into a computer and within 20 seconds I could tell you anything you wanted to know," Jean-Guy said.

Using family and friends as accomplices, he would equip them with a hidden camera and cellular telephone or two-way radio with an earpiece and send them into a bar. They would sit down at a terminal and start playing, with Jean-Guy giving them computer-aided advice from a van parked outside.

"I would tell the person when to bet low and when to bet high," he said. "I could see the screen of the VLT because the camera was looking at it and transmitting the image to a video receiver I put together in a van. It was like spy stuff."

When odds were bad, he’d tell the player to bet low, but when the jackpot loomed, they’d gamble the maximum.

"I was just turning the machine into my own personal little bank machine."

But Jean-Guy and his associates got greedy and started going for back-to-back wins.

"That’s what really got us nailed," he said. "Most people would take their winnings and say, ‘Yeah, I won,’ and walk away. But I’d be like, ‘Hey, you know there’s another one in 150 spins.’ That’s where we fouled up."

Jean-Guy figures if he’d been stealthier, the streak might have lasted longer.

"If I’d toned it down a bit, I’m sure it would have survived indefinitely until the equipment was phased out," he said.

But in 1998, a suspicious bartender at a Sydney hotel tipped off authorities to the scam after Jean-Guy and his cohorts won one too many jackpots.

Jean-Guy doesn’t believe he broke the law. Even Mounties were puzzled over what charges he should face, he said.

"Nothing in the Criminal Code actually covered what I did. But they needed blood."

He eventually pleaded guilty to unlawful use of a computer. Jean-Guy got to keep the money — most of it had been spent on home improvements — and he walked away with a slap on the wrist.

As part of the plea bargain, he cut a deal with the Atlantic Lottery Corp.

"I basically cut a deal with them and said, ‘I’ll tell you what the problem is and how to fix it,’ " Jean-Guy said, adding he was "paid pretty well" for the contract.

"I got to meet a lot of interesting people, too. They flew a mathematician up from Australia the night I was arrested from one of the leading laboratories to meet with me."

The Atlantic Lottery Corp. has made a lot of security changes since Jean-Guy was caught, said Mike Randall, the Crown agency’s vice-president of communications.

"The ability to do that today is much more difficult than it was then, and the risk factor back then was deemed so low that he might be one in a million or one in a hundred million that he could have ever done what he did," Mr. Randall said.

One expert isn’t convinced.

"I would not think it would be too difficult for a very determined person who might have some connections to find ways to access the very latest of technologies in order to do precisely what hackers do, which is to figure out how to defeat that technology," said John McMullan, a sociologist and criminologist at Saint Mary’s University who studies gambling.

"The suggestions being made by people running the gambling industry that somehow or another their products are secure is not believable."

There’s a "reciprocal relationship" between criminals and security experts, he said.

"It’s almost a kind of a dance," Mr. McMullan said.

"The technologies improve. The people who are interested in defeating those technologies figure out how to do it and they excel beyond the existing technologies. The technology of security responds to the technology of crime and you’re locked in this ever-moving dance.

"Those people in the security industry who are concerned with the product they’re putting out on the marketplace obviously want to assure the public that everything is safe and secure. But the truth of the matter is those assurances have to be taken with a great big lump of salt because there are all kinds of cases where those technologies have been defeated."

( clambie@herald.ca)

© 2006 The Halifax Herald Limited