Limassol Casino of Cyprus Discovers a Scamming Dealer

The C2 Limassol casino, located along the Mediterranean coast in southern Cyprus, has arrested a roulette dealer after CCTV footage showed him tampering with the online casino roulette wheel. Police are taking the incident very seriously as they believe that the dealer helped a player defraud the casino out of €5,800 in no deposit casino bonus winnings.

The dealer’s partner, who collected the €5,800, was able to evade police surveillance and escape. The police are presently searching for him.

18 Incidents

The manager of security at the C2 casino identified the suspected conspiracy and fraud and alerted the police. Between February 6th and March 2nd the casino’s security staff detected 18 incidents of tampering at the roulette table which resulted in the dealer’s suspected partner making off with €5,800 in winnings.

C2 Casino in Limassol is owned by Melco Resorts and Entertainment, a Hong Kong-listed casino operator. Melco Resorts and Entertainment is gearing up to launch two more Cyprus casinos. It also has plans to develop an integrated casino resort in Limassol.

Melco debuted C2 last June. The plans are that the temporary casino will remain open until the larger resort with the main casino floor opens in 2021.

Roulette Cheating

Cheating at the roulette table is an old story. In Limassol’s C2 Casino, the dealer was arrested based on the suspicion that he colluded with the player and favored the player with winning spins. Casinos try to convince both players and dealers that, with today’s advanced technology, it’s impossible for a dealer to successfully collaborate with a player to effect a roulette cheat but the Limassol event shows that it still happens.  In Limassol, the scam was detected but could it be that there are other, more sophisticated scams going on that haven’t yet been detected?

Most casino advisors say “yes.” The odds of winning in European roulette are 2.36% in the house’s favor with each spin of the wheel giving each player a 1 in 37 chance of predicting the final landing place of the ball in the wheel’s numbered pockets.

There are a few things that a casino dealer can do to turn the odds in a specific player’s favor.

One of those involves “section shooting.”  That happens when the dealer spins a wheel in a certain way so the tossed ball avoids the sections of the wheel that hold the most bets. If a player knows that the dealer is spinning the wheel in such a way, he can make his wagers accordingly and will experience an advantage.

Wheel reading is another way in which players and dealers collaborate in a scam. If a dealer comes to believe that a wheel has a certain bias, he can inform his partner and the partner can bet on that wheel accordingly

One thing that is certain – these scams occur only in land-based casino venues. Online casinos are completely dominated by video roulette games and those games are not vulnerable to such tactics.