French authorities have apprehended a 63-year-old Ukrainian and a 37-year-old Latvian on allegations of orchestrating a sophisticated, high-tech poker and blackjack cheating scheme in casinos across Europe. The arrests occurred at the Casino Barrière Enghien-les-Bains, located in the suburbs of Paris, on Monday.
The suspects’ modus operandi, as described by law enforcement, was unprecedented in France and scarcely documented in Europe. Acting on a tip, police installed special surveillance equipment inside the casino after receiving information about certain players exhibiting “abnormal results.”
During the surveillance, police discovered one of the men at the poker table was using an exceptionally tiny earpiece, which had to be extracted from his ear using a magnet. Reports indicated that the earpiece was so minute that it was virtually invisible to the naked eye.
Additionally, the suspect’s mobile phone had undergone a sophisticated modification, integrating a side camera angled slightly upward, enabling it to discreetly capture the undersides of cards dealt by the dealer to other players. Commissioner Stéphane Piallat, head of the Central Racing and Gaming Service at the national directorate of the judicial police, characterized the phone modification as complex.
Meanwhile, the suspect’s accomplice sat in a car in the casino’s parking lot, watching the live stream from the modified phone and relaying information about opponents’ cards through the earpiece.
The two men were arrested by police around 1 a.m. on Monday, and subsequent searches of their hotel rooms and vehicle uncovered numerous access cards to various casinos throughout Europe. Authorities suspect the duo is part of an East European cheating syndicate that has been defrauding casinos and poker players of tens of thousands of euros each night they played.
Commissioner Piallat described the cheating system as both unique and paradoxically, largely undocumented in France and Europe. He called on casinos to take preventative measures to ensure such sophisticated fraud could no longer occur.
The two men have been charged with organized gang fraud and placed in pretrial detention as part of a judicial investigation by the Pontoise prosecutor’s office. Investigators are looking to identify further members of the cheating network.
