While winning at casinos may come down to chance, more expert players would know of strategies that could help them trump others. A crime syndicate, however, adopted an illegal method of using a ‘formula’ to record dealt cards at the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) casino.
The group reportedly created a formula in Excel to maximise their chances in the card game of baccarat.
In Dec 2022, they executed their plan, successfully winning a total of S$433,730 in only a few days. The MBS casino grew suspicious and arrested one of the members.
The rest of the group then fled Singapore, though two more members also got arrested. The court sentenced one of them, Malaysian Tan Kian Yi, to three years and four months in jail.
35-year-old Tan Kian Yi met a couple from Taiwan at a casino in the Philippines in Aug 2022, reported TODAY. The woman, 24-year-old Hung Yu-Wen, knew Tan had an interest in card counting and had attended a class to learn the skill as well as the details of a shuffler machine.
Therefore, she prodded him for his interest in winning money from a game of baccarat.
In Oct 2022, Tan allegedly agreed to join Hung in Singapore’s MBS casino to observe how the game was played there.
Source: Marina Bay Sands
A month later, the group gathered in Manila again, according to Channel NewsAsia (CNA). There, Hung revealed to Tan that she had a formula to help them win the baccarat game.
Her “teacher”, a man known as “Kelvin”, whom Tan recognised from the 2019 class, developed it in an Excel spreadsheet.
Hung gave Tan a set of codes, referring to the cards’ values and suits, to memorise. Someone would reportedly transfer the info to him, and he would key the codes into the Excel sheet.
Thereafter, the formula would predict and generate the game’s next outcome.
Hung also agreed to let Tan’s friend Chai Hee Keong join the syndicate, promising the two Malaysians a 20% cut.
The four arrived in Singapore in Dec 2022, where they met another Taiwanese couple, Hung Jung-Hao and his girlfriend Chou Yu-Lun, who were part of the syndicate.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Each member of the group played roles in the scheme. Tan and Hung Yu-Wen took turns playing the “marksman”, who stayed in the MBS hotel room. They would receive info on the machine shuffler’s rotations and dealt cards and input those into the formula.
The marksman would then inform the “sorcerer” on how to bet. Hung Yu-Wen and Chou Yu-Lun took turns being the sorcerer, as their long hair hid Bluetooth earphones.
With the info, the “sorcerer” would relay to the “tank” stationed at the game table, who would place the high bets accordingly. Tan’s second role was as the syndicate’s tank.
Each of the group started with S$100,000, which were converted to casino chips.
The group executed their plan from 16 to 23 Dec 2022. In that time, they reportedly won a total of S$433,730.
However, MBS casino staff discovered the scheme through CCTV footage on 24 Dec, when Hung Jung-Hao went there alone to gamble.
Casino security detained him and police later arrived to arrest him. They also found casino chips worth S$790,000 in the MBS hotel room, stated 8world News.
Source: Hotels.com
When the rest of the group could not contact him, they suspected that police had caught him. On Hung Yu-Wen’s suggestion, they fled to Malaysia by car at 2am on 25 Dec.
On 3 Feb 2023, Malaysian authorities arrested Tan at an airport when he was intending to travel to Taiwan. Malaysia extradited him to Singapore.
Tan initially denied the claims, but police confronted him with messages in the syndicate’s LINE group chat. Faced with this, he confessed to his involvement.
Tan pleaded guilty to four counts of conspiring to record cards. The judge took seven other charges into consideration as well.
This case was notably the first prosecution for the offence of using a device to count and record cards in a casino game.
The prosecution sought 42 to 48 months’ jail for Tan. The Deputy Public Prosecutor argued that the syndicate leveraged technology to illegally tilt odds in their favour.
In doing so, they “struck at the heart of Singapore’s engine for growing tourism”. As such, he stated that the sentence should discourage potential offenders from trying it.
Tan’s lawyers instead requested 12 to 18 months’ jail. They argued that the offence was different from cheating at play.
Furthermore, they stated that the court documents did not set out the workings of the formula, and argued that Tan did not understand how it worked.
“It is thus impossible to determine whether the effect of the formula would have been to change the odds of a game beyond that envisage by the casino,” they said, further contending that using a formula was not cheating at play or fraud.
Furthermore, Tan’s partner gave birth while he was remanded. The defence pointed out that he hadn’t seen his own child yet.
The judge agreed with the prosecution’s request, but reduced Tan’s sentence for pleading guilty immediately.
On 22 Nov 2023, the judge sentenced Tan to 40 months’ jail, or three years and four months.
According to TheStraits Times, Malaysian police arrested Chai Hee Keong in June 2023 and extradited him to Singapore.
The cases for Hung and Chai are pending.
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