What is your favorate con artist segment? Specifically the ones where lonely women are the victims. I love these segments and even kind of admire some of these guys. Does that make me a bad person?

I have a fascination with con men also. For some reason segments like that, and also the thefts like bank robbery, don't bother me too much as long as no violence was used and no one pulled a weapon or made threats. I often found myself rooting for the person to get away.

I guess my favorite was the segment with the cheap coins in New York, convincing the person to pay the bum a relatively low amount for them. It had greed and deception on both ends, since the only reason the guy is doing it is to make a big score on his own behalf. I loved it when such simple things tripped them up, like wondering how coins with such low face value could be worth so much, and being sent to the same hotel time after time and no one there by that name. No doubt many more people fell for that scam than ever came forward to admit it.

This town is king of the hustle. I've seen plenty of them. I've had guys try to sell me worthless sports tickets. "Hey, could you give me $80 for this? It's worth $105 but I need the money now and I don't have time to go downtown." Then I'll look at it and it will be a ticket from the previous game, one the team didn't cover the spread. The spread will be the same, or virtually the same, from the successful performance in today's game, and the guy is trying to slip it past a sucker. I'll pat them on the head and say nice try. Then I'll go to the sportsbook manager and point them out. Stuff like that has happened many times. It's not as easy to dismiss it and root for the guy when he's trying to con you.

Here are some other ones:

* Guys in this town love to pass worthless casino chips to prostitutes, pretending they are big money denominations

* "Hey, could you give me a few bucks for gas? My car broke down and I've been walking trying to find someone to help me out." Meanwhile, there's no sight of a car because a car doesn't exist. Sometimes the guy will be carrying a gas can as a prop.

* One black woman runs a scam all over town, claiming she just lost her purse and wallet which contained a bus ticket to go see her ailing son. She's frantic and hoping someone can help her. She does this outside of major casinos, in spots where people walk back to their cars. She tried it on me so many times, or I saw her do it to others. I finally would wave her off beforehand and say, "Don't tell me about a wallet." The last time she said, "Okay, you know my game. So what?" Not much later I saw her pull it outside Caesar's Palace on the Strip and I ran across the street to O'Sheas to call police and turn her in.

* Desperate guys use the bonus machines to scam tourists here. They call it creating. They put a woman on a bonus machine and lie about the playing characteristics of the machine. They have her play it to a certain level, at the brink of the bonus, then tell them the machine is no good and recommend a machine elsewhere. Then their cohort, who is sitting at a nearby machine, swoops in and finishes off the bonus. I've called that in at one casino after another when I've seen it. The guys who do it have threatened me so I do it from a distance, going to a security phone and describing the situation and location. It hurts me because the casinos take those machines out because of the lowlife creators. Luckily the security and gaming commission is becoming increasingly aware of it and doing stings, with some of the guys going to jail.

What is your favorate con artist segment? Specifically the ones where lonely women are the victims. I love these segments and even kind of admire some of these guys. Does that make me a bad person?

I don't think that makes you a bad person. On the upside, the guys you are referring to were probably likable and definitely had skills with the ladies (always a cool quality to have). My favorite "con" would have to be Jack Lutter - the airline pilot who who had numerous wives and girlfriends all over the country. He maintained this "lifestyle" for almost ten years until the airline changed his route and his world and existence literally came crashing down. A movie was made about his life a few years later, and to the best of my knowledge, he was never apprehended, so he never had to answer to or be held accountable for anything.

What is your favorate con artist segment? Specifically the ones where lonely women are the victims. I love these segments and even kind of admire some of these guys. Does that make me a bad person?

I think it makes you a terrible person and a menace to society :lol: Nah, your all right.

I like the one where the "mother and daughter" move in with that Korean lady, convince her to take a holiday, then bugger off with her jewellry and used her house for satanic rituals.

I also find interesting that lonely girl that was duped by a female fortune teller. It's the one where the guy dressed up as the chick and tried to book a holiday to London or somewhere. They found the lonely chicks body near a river.

Moral to the story? Never trust something that bleeds for a week every month, and doesn't die.

I have a fascination with con men also. For some reason segments like that, and also the thefts like bank robbery, don't bother me too much as long as no violence was used and no one pulled a weapon or made threats. I often found myself rooting for the person to get away.

lol...a little off topic, but I used to watch the Care Bears and root for Beastly.......

As for con segments........the one I remember is Carlos Garcia, he was charming one lady while he bilked people out of money by posing to do their investments/taxes and stealing their identities......

lol...a little off topic, but I used to watch the Care Bears and root for Beastly.......

Hey, I don't even know who Beastly is but that sounds like great handicapping!

Reminds me of Mr. Drysdale on the Beverly Hillbillies, appropriately rooting for the Boston Strong Girl to trample pathetic Rebecca of Donnybrook Farm.

It's just like all the tourists in town for the NCAA basketball tournament. I get sick of these saps rooting for the underdog. Screw that. They're underdogs for a reason. Kick 'em when they're down. :bash:

It is annoying when the people taken for a ride are people who can not afford to lose money but when it is people who think nothing of giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to people they barely know just because they are greedy then it is hard to have too much sympathy

I don't know what that meant but it gives me an excuse to use that great smilie again. :bash:

Actually I did root for one underdog today, USC ousting Texas as partial payback for that Rose Bowl nonsense.

And these are reserved for all the commentators who say Southern Cal instead of USC. Specifically Digger Phelps who botches it every time.

:bash:


:smash:


:bash:

I take it you haven't seen the Karate Kid.

To summarize the 2 hour long movie in one paragraph, life is going great for 17 year old Daniel Larusso until his mother has to take a higher paying job in L.A. to make ends meet. So he is forced to leave his comfortable surroundings in Jersey and he and mom make the trek to L.A. Initially things go well for him there as well, but he quickly runs afoul of some toughs known as the Cobra Kai, particluarly a group of 5, who take every opportunity to beat the tar out of him. He encounters the help of a wise janitor (Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, in an award nominated performance.), who teaches him not only karate, but about life. Daniel (who is not quite as big as his opponents) enters a karate tournament and manages to win the thing, beating two time champ Johnny Lawrence (played by the typecast-as-bully William Zabka.) in the finals. He wins the respect of Johnny Lawrence (who, with the rest of the Cobra Kai, turn on their hateful sensai at the beginning of the first sequel). A nice tale about an underdog winning it all through perseverance, and learning alot in the process.

so stop knocking underdogs. :)

Have you seen The Karate Kid lately....it's shocking!!
I used to think No Retreat No Surrender was good... OMG!!! One cameraman the entire movie :eek:

Have you seen The Karate Kid lately....it's shocking!!
I used to think No Retreat No Surrender was good... OMG!!! One cameraman the entire movie :eek:

Actually, I was a tad surprised. The smarter move IMO would have been to have Daniel do well in the tournament, maybe quarterfinals or seminfinals, but not win it. This way, he does well enough so that his confidence is boosted, but the Cobra Kai can still pester him. Everyone keeps their heat that way. They would book pro wrestling matches in a similar way, book a disqulification or count out loss to keep the heat on everyone. Then in the sequel, they could have put Daniel over and just have him winning the whole thing. But they put all the best stuff in the first one, so the subsequent ones lacked a bit. The second one was ok, but the third and fourth were so pedestrian they could have walked out into the middle of the street and cars would have stopped for them.

Hey, I don't even know who Beastly is but that sounds like great handicapping!

Actually, Beastly worked for No-heart. Beastly and No-heart were the Care Bears opponents in the show and the Care Bares would always win(of course).......then, Beastly had a cousin 'Shreeky' who sometimes worked with Beastly as the villan and 'Shreeky' was always belittling Beastly.

I wanted to see Beastly win just once even.......but it didn't happen! :D

Nope, haven't seen Karate Kid, whatever that is.

Not interested in underdogs, late bloomers or overachievers. Most boring tales of all time. The story never changes. A team full of those types will always flop since they are natural regulators.

:bash:

I've heard of Karate Kid and their sequals, but never seen them.........might pick them up, someday.......

As for other con segments, Pidgeon Drops 1 and 2 were intriguing. Sad for the elderly victims, of course. Someday the con they did will come back to haunt those people who did it.......

Nope, haven't seen Karate Kid, whatever that is.

Not interested in underdogs, late bloomers or overachievers. Most boring tales of all time. The story never changes. A team full of those types will always flop since they are natural regulators.

:bash:

Whoa, where were you in the 80's friend? That was one of the classic movies of that decade.

Yes as I admitted, the sequels to the Karate Kid were pretty formulaic, but the original is a favorite among sports movie fans. To say "always" is not a good idea, since upsets do happen.

if you're going to keep bashing me, you're going to get it back in spades. :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash:

WOW. I can't believe I've been overlooking SUCH a cool thread. :) How can you not know the Karate Kid?!?! :bash: I played a fun drinking game to that movie the other night... anytime you saw feathered hair or heard a cheesy line, you took a drink. We were drinking ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

The Karate Kid is one of those movies that, in my opinion, defined the 80's in the way that another movie was said to do in the late 1970's.... :starwars:


But, since we're bashing here... did anyone see the bashing that Robot Chicken did on the Karate Kid? Flash to a scene of an animated Daniel LaRusso, standing in the infamous crane position on a stump on the beach. The 80's power ballad is playing in the background. A passerby happens along this scene, stops and observes Daniel LaRusso, and in one quick movement, and kicks Daniel's leg out from under him. :rofl: AWESOME.

The Karate Kid is one of those movies that, in my opinion, defined the 80's in the way that another movie was said to do in the late 1970's.... :starwars:.

I know it's your opinion but I don't know about comparing Star Wars from the 1970's to Karate Kid from the 1980's and say they are defining that decade. Star Wars is the second highest grossing film of all time (taking inflation into consideration) and Karate Kid, well..... stinks!

I'd tend to agree. I was born in 1978, grew up watching all the kids stuff in the 1980s, and I have never seen The Karate Kid. Moreover, looking back on the 1980s, I don't think there are too many people who would claim that movie is a generation-definer. For one thing, I would argue that Star Wars is as much as if not more of an 80s thing than a 70s thing; the second movie came out in 1980, and while a solid argument can be made that 1980 is really still part of the 1970s (numerologically speaking, this is undoubtedly the case; culturally speaking, 1980 looks more like 1977 than 1985, I grant you), the third movie didn't come out until 1983. As a kid, I remember more Star Wars related toys, bed spreads, footy pajamas, Halloween costumes, and the like, than I remember Karate Kid junk. I guess the way to say this is that, as a phenomenon among children, Star Wars still held incredible amounts of sway well into the 80s. I don't think there ever was a Karate Kid action figure line, for example.

If you want to look at pop culture through the eyes of contemporary teenagers/adults, maybe Star Wars was burnt out shortly after the release of Return of the Jedi, and maybe there were still seven solid years left in the decade, but I don't think the Karate Kid was particularly meaningful to that crowd. When I think about teens/young adults, I start thinking about The Breakfast Club (I don't know why --- smarmy, stupid movie if you ask me --- but people loved it, and it was definitely trying to be the voice of that generation) and St. Elmo's Fire, etc. I don't know. The 80s is neat to look at (and laugh at it), and lord knows I have a decent amount of nostalgia for some of its fads (He-Man, G.I. Joe, Cyndi Lauper), but I always kind of think of that decade as mostly a cultural dumping ground. Film in the 1970s reached some sort of apotheosis (look at the Oscar nominees, year to year, throughout the 70s as opposed to any subsequent decade --- even the nominees are all memorable, great movies) that it has never really touched since. There was a brief Renaissance in the early 1990s (triggered in part by the nostalgia for the 1970s generated by people who were kids in the 70s but were part of the art and culture producing machines by the 1990s --- Quentin Tarantino, for example), but this decade has more or less sucked.

I'll get off my soapbox now. I wonder what will happen in the middle of the next decade, when people born in 1988-1991 start getting their hands on the "means of production," and we start seeing the nostalgia for the 1990s as part of the popular culture moment that we saw for the late 60s/70s when I was in high school and the 80s now? Will it finally be cool to wear my Beck t-shirt again?

anytime you saw feathered hair or heard a cheesy line, you took a drink. We were drinking ALL. NIGHT. LONG. AWESOME.

Yeah, there are some awesome cheesy lines in that movie. My personal favorites are: "You're a creampuff, Johnny" (you have to listen real closely to hear that one at the end fight scene) and "Better get him a bodybag, yeah" I can do a pretty good impersonation of Bobby. Wonder why he didn't get more acting roles.

Karate Kid was definitely a huge movie. Pat Morita acted for several decades, yet people know him best for that role, and he almost won an award for it. People probably know him more for that than his Happy Days stint. It was definitely Ralph Macchio's career highlight. And too many people might not know, but i believe this was one of Elisabeth's Shue's first flicks.

Wow this thread has kind of lost focus, huh? :lol: Well I guess you would consider this a conartist segment so one of the most sickening would be the one of Melvine Aprile. This one hasn't been on Lifetime but is on the volumes so I'm sure a lot of you have seen it. She not only left her husband after taking practically every cent they had but also took his two children. Her husband had even been in very fragile health while a lot of her schemes must have been going on. The good news is there was an update and she was found along with the two children hiding out in Costa Rica I believe. Jimmy Aprile was reunited with his two children and Melvine was sent to jail.

Wow this thread has kind of lost focus, huh? :lol:

I've wondered before about us having our little own chat board. I know there's a main chit-chat one here, somewhere.. but most of us have little contact with members who don't post here. Just a thought I guess.

How do you guys know that I wasn't comparing KK to Star Wars in order to use the smilie? :starwars: Because seriously, that's a cool one. :) Way cooler than bash. :lol:

In all seriousness, though, the worst con artist, at least to me, is Andolita Gonzales, I believe her name was. She was the lady who robbed the poor old judge blind. And then when they finally apprehended her, the judge died shortly thereafter and the case against her was dropped. :mad:

In all seriousness, though, the worst con artist, at least to me, is Andolita Gonzales, I believe her name was. She was the lady who robbed the poor old judge blind. And then when they finally apprehended her, the judge died shortly thereafter and the case against her was dropped. :mad:

Going along with that sorta theme, how bout Dan Mareno? He and his mates conned that old guy into some sort of home repair scheme, robbed him blind and waited for him to hopefully die. I remember gritting my teeth watching that.

Any story where old people are taken advantage of really grinds my gears. It's just mean --- an extreme example is the case where the old person was thrown in a steamer trunk and left in Harper's Ferry national park. Most are obviously not as bad as that, but people who pick on the defenseless or elderly are total scum.

That said, that gold coin guy has always impressed me, the way he was able to pose as a doctor inside a hospital, get an enormous credit line through some bank maneuvering, etc. Very clever.

if you're going to keep bashing me, you're going to get it back in spades. :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash:

I didn't even know that was called bash. It's what I want my teams to do when I get ahead, that's why I love it. But if posters think I'm bashing them, that works too. :lol:

There should be a left handed bash. I'm a lefty, in more ways than one.

I always root for the bank robbers. my hero is the whiskey robber, Attila Ambrus. I'm so sad he was caught :(

I always root for the bank robbers. my hero is the whiskey robber, Attila Ambrus. I'm so sad he was caught :(

I love bank robbers!

Also I really like Jesse James Dad, Jack Hollywood, I think he's a cool guy and I don't fault him at all for helping son escape a life in prison or a death sentence. I would do the exact same for my child too. So would most of the people who talk about how evil he is for helping his son.

Yeah cool hey :rolleyes:
I wonder how "cool" you'd find it if it were you who had a gun shoved in your face or if it's your kid abducted and murdered.

I used to work in a bank, I always wanted a robber to come in, make things exciting cause that job was BORING! What do I care? It's not my money, it's the government's.

as for the other, of course the boy's family deserved their justice. however i don't fault the father on the other side for trying to save his son, i would do the exact same for my child. So would 99% of others.

as for the other, of course the boy's family deserved their justice. however i don't fault the father on the other side for trying to save his son, i would do the exact same for my child. So would 99% of others.

..but to say he is "cool" is quite tacky.

Again, speaking from someone who's had a gun in her face... I could do without THAT kind of drama for the rest of my life. Just sayin'.

LOL. I know for a fact that if I committed a crime, my FAMILY would be the first to sell me out. And my family and I are close. ;)

How disappointing it was to learn that a few of you root for the con men to get away. I suppose in that case, if YOU ever got scammed out of a lot of money, you would say "Huh, that's a clever ruse" as opposed to "Let's get that punk."

Actually, I saw a friend of mine get scammed for $86,000 in the early '90s. It wasn't cool. A guy asked him to invest in a startup upholstery business and he didn't do enough research on the person and said yes at the last minute. He just gave the guy cash and didn't get anything in writing. I know that sounds impossible but this is a cash town, especially among guys who bet sports, which my friend did to come up with the $86,000 and beyond.

The guy conned him and admitted it by laughing in my friend's face when he demanded his money. "It's gone." My friend belted him and opened a cut on the guy's head. Police arrested my friend a little while later after the con man called him in.

The con case went to court a couple of years later and my friend won a judgment for nearly the full amount, but it's been similar to the O.J. civil verdict, no threat of reimbursement. My friend won his case because the judge said he looked at every piece of paperwork and my friend's story had remained exactly the same while the other guy was all over the map, changing major details depending how it looked at the time.

Actually, one time I was conned and consider it one of my best investments ever. One person I met here shortly after moving to Las Vegas was a major pest. He had a sharp sports opinion but I heard from others he was a shady character. I was trying to sidestep him. But one day he told me he had a great new machine, an early form of bonus machine.

And let me tell you, this guy played the con very well. He had me drive all the way out to Showboat, where one of the machines supposedly was. We got there and all of a sudden he said we had to bolt. He pointed to a slot floorman who he said he knew, and if the floorman saw him playing a machine he would throw us out. So he told me the same machine was at Ballys. We drove there and sat for more than an hour, watching a woman who was playing the supposedly goldmine machine. Finally she got up and we walked briskly to the machine. My friend asked for money to get silver dollars. I handed him a $20 bill. He snapped, "Is that all you've got? This is a dollar machine. Give me a hundred."

So I pulled a hundred from my wallet and handed it to him. I sat at the machine and looked at it. It seemed like a normal machine, no threat of any type of newfangled bonus setup. Then within a few minutes it dawned on me and I got a little smile on my face. My buddy wasn't coming back. He had my money and was already out the door. Like an idiot I actually got some coins and blew them in the machine while checking it out.

I saw him a few weeks later. He grinned and walked right past me. I considered it a buy out, money well spent. Years later I found out he got involved in big cons, to use a term from The Sting. He was actually flying cross country with his marks, to and from Atlantic City setting up scams in the tens of thousands, if not more.

wow. that's just....sad really.

I guess it's one thing to wish that on yourself, but I imagine you weren't the only one working at the bank, so to wish that on your fellow employees is quite disturbing. Also, there's the possibility they could take your wallet, your car or even your life, not just the "government's money." Perhaps if you were robbed, you might change your position on that.

While there is no doubt a fair percentage of people who would help their relatives escape jail/prison, I don't think it's at 99%. In fact, there are alot of cases where family members ENCOURAGE their relative to turn themselves in to authorities.

some of my buddies at work laughed and agreed with me, we were so bored most of the time. others just called us crazy and rolled their eyes. by the way your scenarios in a bank robbery such as the robber taking my wallet or my car is laughable. Even the dumbest bank robber that ever lived knows that you have a maximum of two minutes and you better be outta there. yeah the robber is gonna spend time finding my car keys and then searching for where my car is parked. Same goes for my wallet, we never kept our wallets and stuff in our pockets, they were in the back somewhere. Again, the robber isn't gonna spend the very limited amount of time he has to check my wallet with 6 bucks in it hahahah. As for losing my life, well of course but I'm not talking about murder, I said bank robbers, not murderers, or homicide.

I mean I'm not talking about some guy pistol-whipping somebody just to make a point, I don't like any of that, no violence.

As for con men I would never be so stupid to get conned, at least not for a large amount of money. Awsi really isn't stupid at all because it was only a hundred bucks, big deal. If the guy asked for a thousand, he would've wised up. See I bet he fell for it because the whole con probably took at least a couple of hours. For $100? Not even worth it to me, that's not very much. Sounds like a waste of time. Plus Awsi's not a pansy, he's a player and tipped his hat to the guy, give credit where credit's due.



by the way as far as helping your fugitive family member, encouraging them to turn themselves in is not the opposite of helping them, that's the middle ground.

1.help them

2.encourage them like you say to turn themselves in, but don't turn them in and don't tell cops anything, basically remain neutral and tell them they can't stay with you and you can't help them and they need to go. that's obstruction of justice. the above is aiding and abetting.

3.turn them in.

Zuh?

Point 1: Watch the Michael Scott Martin segment. the person that gets robbed not only gives over the money in his cash drawer, but has his car stolen as well.

Point 2: Can you prove that you will never be conned?

Point 3: I never called Awsi stupid. That would be bashing and I would have probably gotten banned if I had said something like that. Had you looked at what we wrote carefully, you would have noticed that.

Point 4: I kind of resent you saying that I should give credit to the conmen. Admittedly, yes, some of these scams are crafty, but their illegal, so I am not going to give props to them.

Point 5: If somebody commits a legal act and I am a witness to it, I'm calling the authorities. I don't care if it's a relative, a neighbor, a stranger, a coworker, a friend or whoever. Wrong is wrong, period.



1.sure it's happened before, but that's very rare, getting your car stolen in a bank robbery hahaha. besides i said bank robbery, not people robbing individuals.

2.sure, I can prove I won't be conned, i have no money to give anybody hahaha. no i won't ever get conned for a large amount, it's possible maybe a small amount like $100 or less, but no I'd never just give anybody a bunch of money. if I did get conned, i would find them and get it back. But I'm not gullible, naive. Did you watch Dateline last night? They tracked down some of those 419 Nigerian scam guys, you know when you get an email saying that if you just send them some money (like $10,000) they will give you millions in return when they get their inheritance? hahahhahahhahahhahahahahhahahahahaha sorry but if you fall for that you are AN IDIOT. Yes I can guarantee nothing like that will ever happen to me.

3.I didn't say you called Awsi stupid. I was just making it clear I could see how he fell for that weak scam is all. $100 bucks for 3 hours. Big effin' deal

4.I also didn't say should give credit to conmen. All I ever said was I can appreciate a professional or a clever con. doesn't mean I don't want them to get caught or I wish they weren't in existence.

5.oh so you would rat your own brother, etc out? Okay that's cool, not me but everyone it's a free country. How about this, what if your loved one claimed they were innocent and it wasn't so clear whether or not they were guilty. then what would you do?


I'm retiring from this thread as it's become obvious I'm not going to change people's minds and for some bizarre reason it appears as if I have stirred up a lot of controversy.

So you were only posting here to change people's minds? that's what the above implies. You're not gonna change anybody's mind on a message board. And who cares if you stir up controversy. That's a good thing. What's so fun about everybody agreeing with each other all the time. Every post would be like this.

"Agree!"

"I'm With you!"

100% agree!"

great post, Agree!

"I concur"



zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Funny, I was at Frontier tonight and ran into a friend of mine named John. In the middle of our conversation he brought up the guy who conned me in the '80s, without me mentioning him at all. Turns out he had lunch with the guy within the last few days. Claims he is a decent guy right now, having overcome physical ailments in the past few years and that's changed his outlook. No thank you. I still consider that an excellent investment of $100. Not only did it rid me of his shady shadow, but it was a quick hint what this town could be like. I've dodged every con attempt since then, and been very careful who I've had any dealings with.

The reason I fell for that con is I never suspected for a second he was conning me. That's been a theme on the con segments on UM and I can definitely relate. Money never came up. He never said anything like, "we'll have to use your money to play the machine." That might have turned on my antenna. For all I knew, he was loaded and we would use his cash.

And for anyone who knows Las Vegas geography, consider the route he took me on. He saw me at the Stardust sportsbook. We took my car and he directed me down Sahara to the Showboat, several miles from the Strip. After supposedly encountering the wiseguy floorman there, he shuffled me to Ballys, another drive of many miles. Then instead of picking out any machine he plants us to wait for a specific one. I guess it just happened to be one where a woman would play for more than an hour. He had no way of knowing that. But he knew he had to isolate a specific machine ahead of time or I would get suspicious and impatient.

Money never came up as a topic until we got to the machine. At that point I was so transfixed on the machine after pulling up a chair that I barely cared about giving him the $100 bill. And $100 was a perfect amount to ask for. At that point they sold $100 racks of silver dollars at the cage and change booths. People who played dollar machines were always walking around with $100 racks. I'd only played one dollar machine to that point and it indeed took about $100 to get the bonus.

wiseguy182, no need to depart from this thread. You didn't stir anything up, at least not in regard to me. I sit here late at night looking for any reason to depart from my monotonous Excel spreadsheets and your posts were a convenient excuse to detail the old con tales.

Way off topic, but I just have to ask this...

AWSI - I really get a kick out of some of your stories. Partly because I love Las Vegas and try to go twice a year if possible. I'm not a serious gambler by any stretch (aside from the occasional slot/poker machine and black jack). I usually bring a couple hundred bucks with me for gambling and lose it all. I'll admit I'm probably a part of that tourist demographic that the casinos love so much.

But, I wanted to ask - I thought most of the newer slot machines were computerized so a person's chances of winning were totally random. I have heard stories that the slot machines of yore were electromechanical and had to pay out after a certain number of spins, so watching someone repeatedly lose at a particular machine and then continuing the game after they left would be advantageous. Is this still true today, or do you have to seek out older machines?

Way off topic, but I just have to ask this...

AWSI - I really get a kick out of some of your stories. Partly because I love Las Vegas and try to go twice a year if possible. I'm not a serious gambler by any stretch (aside from the occasional slot/poker machine and black jack). I usually bring a couple hundred bucks with me for gambling and lose it all. I'll admit I'm probably a part of that tourist demographic that the casinos love so much.

But, I wanted to ask - I thought most of the newer slot machines were computerized so a person's chances of winning were totally random. I have heard stories that the slot machines of yore were electromechanical and had to pay out after a certain number of spins, so watching someone repeatedly lose at a particular machine and then continuing the game after they left would be advantageous. Is this still true today, or do you have to seek out older machines?

Justin, I really don't know much about the mechanics of slot machines, now or then. The machines are set to pay a specific percentage over a period of time, let's say 90% or 95%. But over a given period of an hour or day it can substantially deviate from that, in either direction.

You hear all types of theories regarding when to play. Some like to jump on a hot machine, others use the old theory you mentioned, to wait until someone else got raked.

I look for advantage so I've never played slot machines at random. I've played poker machines where you have an edge with high pay table and optimum play. Sometimes the casino will intentionally set a machine like that at 101% or 102% payoff, confident that players won't hold the correct cards and therefore forfeit the edge. That edge can be higher if you use a players card, especially if it has a cash payback. But the casinos find out if you put in a bank like that the word spreads and only local wiseguys play. I've had the casinos close down a row of machines and kick us all out when they see only locals playing, rapidfire and holding the correct cards. They shut down the bank and reset it to lower payoff, eliminating the advantage.

In terms of reel slots I only play bonus machines, the so-called Vision series:

http://www.igt.com/GamingGroup/Games/base.asp?pid=5.274&bhcp=1

Those machines are all but gone now. At one point they were such a windfall that people were quitting high paying jobs to play slot machines full time. That was primarily late '90s and early this decade. They are called Vision machines for a basic reason: you can see how close the machine is to paying the bonus. It's not random, a bonus feature showing up when all the reels have the same character, for example. You build toward the bonus, like filling out a column of 10 diamonds, or a cherry pie with six cherries in each section. All you needed to know was when the advantage kicked in, in other words when to play it. Then you hoped a tourist would abandon the machine on the verge of the bonus. At one point there were hundreds and hundreds of machines so you could walk into virtually any major casino and find a play that fit the criteria. Then finish that play and find another one.

One guy wrote a book called, "Robbing the One-Armed Bandits," that described it. He was thrown out of the Bellagio while averaging $500 per day. Earlier he was intimidated by the bonus crew at the Tropicana who wouldn't let him cut into the action when the Piggy Bankin' machines were in their heyday there. I'd walk in to check the sportsbook odds and crack up. There would be two dozen guys there, leaning on walls or next to the machines, while tourists played the bank up to 50 or 60 coins, sometimes much higher, then nonchalantly walked away from the machine. The author of that book was so ticked he wrote an article that was published in the Las Vegas Review Journal, describing the situation at the Tropicana. The hotel was so upset at the publicity that it almost immediately started removing the pig machines.

Guys who never had money were making easy cash then blowing it on the typical temptations or pitfalls in this town. They knew they could make it back the next day. I really should have been playing the machines more than I did, but that was also the heyday of the aggressive sportsbook managers in this town so I prioritized that aspect.

I had an edge with the Vision series because I ran some simulations via software I found, and it revealed that some of the conventional wisdom was wrong. Guys were playing at the wrong level or prioritizing the wrong machines. The diamond mine machines were so simple that many guys didn't pay any attention to them. That was moronic. They had short time expenditure and occasional huge payoffs, with very little risk. They weren't glamorous machines, so most of the time your net wasn't great but it added up and there were hundreds of them with little competition.

My friend Larry Mathews, who was murdered (Kathy Hobbs thread) really ticked me off before I got to know him. He was the only other guy prioritizing the correct machines. He was playing Double Diamond Mine and Kool Kat, the same ones I had determined were the best plays, among the ones you could get frequent plays on. All the other guys would head for the cherry pies and other garbage, but when I saw Larry ahead of me I knew he was aiming for the diamond mine machines. I was more than annoyed. He beat me out many times. I called him, "Tan Man," because of his appearance and I'd tell my friends in the sportsbooks that Tan Man just beat me out to another great diamond mine play. Finally I met Larry and he was a cool guy. He was great at math so he'd figured out the same things I had, but strictly off the top of his head, no fancy software. Turned out we had all the same ideas in sports analysis also. The one thing he did that I don't do is count cards at blackjack. There's no way that should be frowned upon but the casinos will zap you in a hurry if they spot it. Larry had been booted from playing blackjack at many casinos in the months before he was killed.

There's one machine on that list that survives and I use your theory about waiting for someone to lose a big amount. It's called Good Times. Doesn't take much to get the level to the top. It moves up one level on a spin with nothing on the center line, all blanks. When it gets to the top and someone blows a lot of money without getting the Good Times winning spin, I'll jump in. But that's a dangerous play. You can lose big or win big. I much preferred the machines like diamond mine where you might lose a few bucks or win many, many times that.

Two years ago on the Alaskan cruise they had about 20 Vision machines on the Norwegian Star and I feasted on them minus any competition. I don't think casinos are allowed on the Hawaiian Islands cruises since you're not in international waters. :crying:

Actually, I was a tad surprised. The smarter move IMO would have been to have Daniel do well in the tournament, maybe quarterfinals or seminfinals, but not win it. This way, he does well enough so that his confidence is boosted, but the Cobra Kai can still pester him. Everyone keeps their heat that way. They would book pro wrestling matches in a similar way, book a disqulification or count out loss to keep the heat on everyone. Then in the sequel, they could have put Daniel over and just have him winning the whole thing. But they put all the best stuff in the first one, so the subsequent ones lacked a bit. The second one was ok, but the third and fourth were so pedestrian they could have walked out into the middle of the street and cars would have stopped for them.

Whatever! Man the third one kicked much assage! Terry Silver and Mike Barnes "Karate's Bad Boy" were the bomb the way they tricked Danny Boy ... Terry teaching Daniel the "sweep technique" and "Quick Silver" ... ah, memories. One of the best films ever made, KKIII.

HAH SAAAAAAAAAAIIII!! -- Terry Silver

Hahahahahahahaha. I love it. I just remember my friends beating the crap out of me after we rented that movie when I was 8 or 9... I had so many bruises.

Little girls can be so mean. ;)

Karate Kid III is the best movie EVER!

I love Terry Silver, they should do a spinoff with him as the main character.

"With conviction Mister LaRusso!"

hhahahahah

"Extreme situations call for extreme measures"

and lets not forget the coolest guy ever Snake! hahaha remember Snake?

"YOU KNOW IT!"

Of course, Terry said, "Snake's the guy to know if you wanna be a bad boy in the city" or something like that. Man, Snake, Mike, and his buddy Dennis sure did a number on Myagi's ghetto Bansai shop.

"Hey Daniel ... make a wish!"

haaa-saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaih!

Again, this is totally off topic, but do any of you guys remember "Bloodsport"? I watched this numerous times when I was a wee bit of a thing. It was my first exposure to Van Damme. I saw the Karate Kid and all the sequels too, but for me, Bloodsport was the quintessential eighties fight flick. Kind of like an eighties "Fight Club".

AWSI - I'm a junkie for all those Travel Channel shows that talk about Vegas and the best ways to hit it big on the slots. I remember them saying something along of the lines of the evenings being the best time to play as more people are in the casino and the machines can be "programmed" (by casino administration) to pay out more. So, passerbys in the casino see others winning and feel compelled to play. I always wondered though, how can the casinos "program" the machines to pay out more at certain times. I was under the impression that modern slot machines were simple random number generators. If a casino exercises any control over this, wouldn't the NGC be concerned?

I've seen jackpots in some unexpected places. A few years ago, I was playing slots at an airport slot machine (yeah, bad idea I'm sure) and the woman sitting next to me won $300. When I was lurking in the TI bar this past January I got into a conversation with an older woman who was playing a poker machine and she got a royal flush. I about fell out of my chair.

AWSI - I'm a junkie for all those Travel Channel shows that talk about Vegas and the best ways to hit it big on the slots. I remember them saying something along of the lines of the evenings being the best time to play as more people are in the casino and the machines can be "programmed" (by casino administration) to pay out more. So, passerbys in the casino see others winning and feel compelled to play. I always wondered though, how can the casinos "program" the machines to pay out more at certain times. I was under the impression that modern slot machines were simple random number generators. If a casino exercises any control over this, wouldn't the NGC be concerned?

I've seen jackpots in some unexpected places. A few years ago, I was playing slots at an airport slot machine (yeah, bad idea I'm sure) and the woman sitting next to me won $300. When I was lurking in the TI bar this past January I got into a conversation with an older woman who was playing a poker machine and she got a royal flush. I about fell out of my chair.

I think it is random generators, within a specific payoff percentage for the machine. But again, I'm mostly guessing when it comes to all of that. I've heard that machines are set to higher percentage at strategic places like near the buffet line and on the end of rows, so people can get a glimpse of machines paying off and get hooked on the idea of playing, but I have no idea if it's true.

The airport is a horrible place to play. Those machines are set much lower than a casino. Just look at the basics: those machines get very little play and they have to pay the salary of the slot woman who is always there, so the only way to justify the space allotment is to make sure the machines rake it in when they are played.

The first royal flush I hit was an ultimate shock. I was experimenting with the full pay video poker machines at the old Aladdin in the early '90s. It was smack in front of the casino check-in line. A couple was watching over my shoulder and asking how to play. I started to explain it to them and all of a sudden the machine DEALT me a royal flush in clubs, on a progressive bank for over $1600. I stared at it briefly in disbelief before turning my head to them and saying, "THAT'S how you play." :D

Since this is the con artist thread and you mentioned TI, I'll detail a scam I heard about recently from an undercover guy I know at TI (Treasure Island). He told me the casino was suspicious of a group of Hispanics who were playing roulette at all hours and seemingly winning big. The undercover guys noticed they were pocketing chips while playing low denominations early in the morning. So they put an undercover guy who spoke Spanish to follow them. They went into the gift shop and he overheard the Hispanics arguing, one of them basically calling another one a chickensh**. Then he stood near them at valet parking and heard one say they were going to make up for today's failings by switching a much higher amount than normal the next day.

Turns out they had a brilliant plan. They played roulette frequently and had discovered a flaw in the system. When a shift change was made late at night when it was busy, they could easily dump more chips on the table at the high amounts they were playing for. So what they did is play the same colored chips for $1 in the morning and pocket a bunch of them, then return at night and play that same colored chip for $100. When the sloppy shift change was made, they would quickly place the chips they had pocketed into play, turning $1 investments into $100 chips. The undercover guys busted them and the casino took steps to make sure it couldn't happen again. I asked for a loss estimate and they said the casino didn't know for sure, but one estimate I heard put it in the $100,000 range.

One case that made me mad regarding con artists was the hispanic men who conned this elderly man into getting his roof redone. The poor guy didn't really agree to any of the service I don't think. I think he just went outside one day and there they were fixing the house. Then itgets "better". The con's family began to take over the poor guy's house, opening his mail, eating all of his food...all the while demanding more money. Finally, I think the poor man's doctor got involved and got in touch with police. They did a sting and busted the con guy and his sleezy brother, but I don't think the jerk ever went to trial because his family managed to cough up enough money to spring his good-for-nothing butt out of jail...and the creep of course split town. I saw this eppie on one of the dvds CrystalDawn made. I felt so sorry for the elderly man this happened too. Sadly he died without ever seeing justice against these fools who conned him.


As for me, I got conned during high school. I was a cashier at a supermarket. It was a busy night and I had a line of customers that seemed to be going on forever. This lady and a guy came through my line and the lady was pretty nice to me. She only had a magazine in her hand. I rung up her magazine and she paid me with a 5 dollar bill. As I was giving her change back, she asked me to give her a change for a twenty (which I did)....then she started asking me for more change and how she was going to the casino and had to get rid of some of her big bills. There were a lot of people in my line and not wanting them to make a scene, I kept complying with her. I was trying to hurry and get her out of my line. The guy who was with her said to just give her the $50 bill in my drawer so they could go because they saw how crowded the store was getting. Without thinking, I did it. I tell you it all happened so fast. I realized I had been shortchanged when they left and when I looked down and saw the lady haad left the magazine behind. I felt like such a sucker. I tell you...there's nothing like the feeling you get when you realized you've been "had". I was more angry with myself than with them though at that time. My supervisor was so cool about it though because she said people like them case the store for new cashiers (which at the time I was). I had t give a written statement as to what happened and tell my story to the corporate HR folks as well as the police. The bad thing is, a friend of mine who started not long after I did, got scammed by the same couple. It's been over 9 years since I worked at that store but I can still remember that feeling of being scammed to this day.