Blackjack Cheating Dealer Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison

Mike Waseleski, one of the six defendants charged for cheating at the blackjack tables and winning around $800,000 back in 2009, has been proved to have illegally assisted Tran Organization to win $1.5k at the blackjack tables of Resorts East Chicago Casino. He has been sentenced to $250,000 fine and 5 years imprisonment.

According to the trial records at the court, the arrested belonged to Tran Organization that was formed in 2002 in California. They trained blackjack dealers to pretend to be shuffling cards at blackjack and mini baccarat games. The act of pretend shuffling enabled them to memorize the order of the cards. The members of the casinos would specially request the dealers not to shuffle the cards and use this knowledge while wagering. Allegedly, Waseleski took such a training course at Houston, Texas.

The US department of justice says that the cheats also used secret software and hardware to win thousands of dollars at a time. The gang cheated at the blackjack tables of around 27 casinos.

In March 2009, Phuong Quoc Truong, who belonged to the Tran Organization, was sentenced to 6 years federal imprisonment after making illicit wins worth $868,000 in just 90 minutes at the Resorts East Chicago Casino.

This blog entry was posted on Thursday, January 6th, 2011 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Blackjack News.