How Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam That Rocked the NBA

“If there’s a camera that knows the cards, there’s always some kind of underlying threat. The customer is basically at the mercy of the person setting up the machine,” poker player and House of Cards owner Doug Polk previously told Wired. “If you show up at an individual game and there’s a shuffler, I’d say you should run for the hills.”

According to prosecutors, the Decmate 2 hack was one of several cheating tactics the mobsters allegedly used, though it is the most detailed in the indictment. Charging documents also claim they used invisibly marked cards, electronic poker chip trays, phones that could secretly read card symbols and even specially designed glasses and contact lenses.

While the details of the schemes have not been spelled out by prosecutors, they are well known in the casino security world, said Sal Piacente, a professional fraud consultant and president of Universal Game Protection. For example, the cards may have bar codes hidden on the edge – printed invisibly, such as with infrared ink – that can be deciphered by a reader hidden in a chip tray or a phone case placed on a table. In other cases, cards are similarly marked with ink on their backs that are only visible with special glasses or contacts.

“These types of tools are being used more than you think,” says Piacente. “When you go to a private game, there are no rules, no commissions, no rules. Anything goes.”