How Card Hackers Said to Enable a Mob Poker Scam That Rocked the NBA

Poker player and House of Cards owner Doug Polk previously told WIRED, “If there’s a camera that recognizes the cards, there’s always some underlying threat. The customers are basically at the mercy of the person who’s running the device.” “If you show up at a private game and there’s a shuffler, I say run for the hills.”

According to prosecutors, the Deckmate 2 hack was just one of several fraudulent techniques used by the mobsters, although they are described in more detail in the indictment. The charging document also claims they used cards with invisible markings, electronic poker chip trays, phones that could secretly read the card markings, and even specially designed glasses and contact lenses.

Sal Piacente, a professional fraud consultant and president of Universal Gaming Protection, said that while the details of the schemes were not disclosed by prosecutors, they are all well known in the world of casino security. For example, cards can have hidden barcodes on their edges – printed invisibly, such as with infrared ink – that can be decoded by a reader hidden in a chip tray or in a phone case on a table. In other cases, cards are similarly marked on their backs with ink that can only be seen with special glasses or contacts.

“This type of equipment is used more than you think,” says Piacente. “When you go to a private game, there are no regulations, no commissions, no rules. Anything goes.”