The Trio That Plucked The London Ritz At Roulette!

A trio of players pocketed 1.3 million pounds (over 1.8 million ) in roulette at the Ritz in London thanks to an ingenious scanner system coupled to a mini-computer, all hidden in a phone portable, and this legally, we learned Sunday from Scotland yard.

[Nov 2004]

“The three people arrested were free on bail and had to appear before the police at the beginning of December where they were then informed that no follow-up would be given to this case,” a spokesperson for Scotland told AFP. Yard.

At the end of an investigation which lasted nearly nine months, the three players, a 32-year-old Hungarian national and two 33 and 38-year-old Serbs, therefore recovered their earnings, which had been frozen, and are now free. to start their tour of the British capital’s green carpets again.

The Ritz had filed a complaint on March 16 after these three players managed to pocket their jackpot in just two evenings, via a rather unusual cell phone.

Hiding a laser scanner connected to a mini-computer, this device actually allowed them to measure the speed of the ball during the croupier’s throw.

Then, in a few seconds, the information read by the scanner was transmitted to the computer, which only had to calculate, according to the other information available (point of fall of the ball on the roulette wheel and speed of rotation of roulette ) the likely arrival point of the ball at the end of its travel.

Once this calculation was done, the result was displayed on the screen of the cell phone and the three players only had to place their bets on the designated range of six numbers. All quite quickly, however, as betting is prohibited after the third complete round of roulette …

Having increased their odds of winning from 37 to 1 to 6 to 1 , the three players first scooped 100,000 pounds (around 145,000 ) on the first night, before winning 1.2 million pounds (1.74 million ) on their return the following night. Attracting the attention of the Ritz management and the intervention of the Scotland Yard team specializing in gambling scams.

This scam has in fact turned out to be legal, the regulations in force only prohibiting intervening on the physical functioning of the device or slowing down or accelerating in any way the speed of the ball.