The Great Shoe Computer Casino Fraud

06.16.2008 | 10:21 am | News, casinos

The casino industry is littered with attempted frauds, con artists and crooks who continue to try and beat the system even to this day. But few of the groups today can have made quite the same impact as the so called Eudaemons who attempted to get to the very heart of the roulette industry using a specially made ‘shoe computer’. This early age system saw the movement defraud casinos out of thousands of dollars during the 1970s.

So who were the Eudaemons and what was their trick?

The Eudaemons was created by graduate physics students J Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard from the University of California Santa Cruz. They got together in the 1970s and formulated a way of controlling the spin of the roulette wheel using a complex computer device which was hidden in two different shoes.

One of the shoes had a special heel fitted which allowed the wearer to place pressure on the heel to activate a computer which would tamper with the spin of the roulette wheel. The system was then able to predict what slot the ball would fall into and pass the prediction to the actual player, situated at the table with a computer receiver in their shoe.

However, as time progressed a number of flaws appeared with electric shocks and burns on the soles of feet common occurrences, until finally the scam was rumbled by the authorities. The payback had been in the region of 44c for every dollar, something which would be impossible in open play.

The casinos of today are very different and have the latest high-tec surveillance equipment fitted to intercept radio waves, communications and any other kind of scam you could imagine. However, where there is a will there is a way and the fraudsters are always on the look out for new methods in this constant battle of wits.