![]() You could leave a whole room empty.”īut the slider’s effectiveness didn’t last long, running its profitable course by about 1991. Carmichael to bank about a $1,000 an hour. That fooled the hopper, the bucket holding the quarters, into spitting out its payload. He eventually beat it with a slider, built with spring steel and guitar wire, which essentially snaked its way into the machine through the payout chute and tripped a microswitch. Carmichael returned to Las Vegas and bought IGT’s Fortune One video poker machine. The new machines also made it harder to cheat. “It went from a machine to a computer game,” said Frank Legato, an industry expert who writes for gambling trade publications. Carmichael found a technical revolution sweeping the industry.īeginning in the early 1980s, the leading manufacturers, Bally and International Game Technology, rolled out new high-tech slot and video poker machines. They agreed to find each other after their release.īut when freedom came in May 1987, Mr. Carmichael also met Mike Balsamo, who would help form a slot cheat gang. You either get straight or get better.”īehind bars, Mr. “You think about what you did and the mistakes and how to correct them. “In the penitentiary there’s not a whole lot to think about,” Mr. Carmichael’s rap sheet now included his first cheating blemish to go along with two small-time drug convictions and some juvenile mischief. He claimed it was used to start his car.Īt 35, Mr. Inside his pocket was the top-bottom joint. Moments later police slammed him against a wall and searched him. on July 4, 1985.Īfter drinking a cup of coffee, Mr. The Denny’s Restaurant just west of the Strip was practically empty at 3 a.m. “You are thinking you are going to have yachts and cars,” he said. He first bilked a 5-cent machine at a casino near the Las Vegas Strip, strolling out proudly with pockets bulging with $35 in nickels. Carmichael’s knack for cheating had been discovered. “I could see where it was pretty easy to do.” Ming had a Bally’s slot machine and a “top-bottom joint” – the Cadillac of cheating tools 20 years ago. ![]() Carmichael is sitting in his Tulsa television repair shop called Ace TV Sales and Service when in walks his old friend, Ray Ming, then living in Las Vegas. “He’s the greatest mind as far as developing cheating tools.” “A legend,” convicted slot cheat Jerry Criner calls Mr. Along the way, he fooled casino security as easily as he duped the machines. Carmichael designed tools – the kick stand, the monkey paw, the light wand – that enabled him to bilk slot machines across the United States and Caribbean. Authorities have anointed him one of the best, a master inventor who conspired with an elite group of thieves to steal millions from casinos.įor almost two decades, Mr. “Give me a slot machine and I’ll beat it.” ![]() Standing in front of the machine is 53-year-old Tommy Glenn Carmichael, who boasts a unique and lucrative talent: In the back of a strip mall workshop, a slot machine sits on two green milk crates, its electronic innards exposed. ![]()
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