The first slot machines were invented in the late 1890s and it
probably wasn’t very long after those machines appeared that somebody
had the brilliant idea of trying to cheat them. Yes, times may change
but, unfortunately, greed is here to stay and there will always be
people looking for a fast way to make a buck with a slot machine.
Here’s the true story of one of those people who probably had the
most ingenious method ever used.
On January 14, 1995 Reid Errol McNeal should have been one of the
luckiest men on earth. That Saturday afternoon he went to the keno
desk at Bally’s Park Place Casino Resort in Atlantic City and bought
$100 worth of keno tickets: 10 tickets at $10 each with eight numbers
picked on each card.
Defying odds of 230,000-to-1, McNeal hit for eight-of-eight on one
of the tickets. The winning payoff of $100,000 was the highest amount
ever won on a keno game in the history of Atlantic City and naturally
caused quite a stir in the casino. According to published reports,
however, McNeal hardly seemed like the typical winner of a once-in-a-
lifetime jackpot. Not only was he unemotional about his big win, he
also had no identification on him and he demanded to be paid in cash.
Needless to say, officials were a little suspicious, or as one casino
executive said, “ this just didn’t pass the smell test.”
New Jersey law requires that any jackpot of $35,000 or more be
verified by state gaming division officials and when they arrived
they were accompanied by a couple of state troopers assigned to their
department. The troopers went with McNeal to his hotel room at
Bally’s where they found a friend of McNeal’s who identified himself
as Ronald Harris.
At this point the troopers were simply making an investigation into
the oddness of the situation and left Harris in the room while they
took McNeal back downstairs for some further questioning. It was then
discovered that McNeal’s friend was an employee of the Nevada Gaming
Control Board, which is responsible for regulating all of the gaming
devices in that state. The troopers returned to the room to speak to
Harris, but he was gone. They searched the room and, according to
state police spokesman John Hagerty, found “ computer equipment,
computer chips, notes and books describing changes in Bally’s machine
and describing how to possibly scam or beat the machine.”
Police theorized that as a computer technician in Nevada’s Gaming
Control Board, Harris had access to a highly confidential “source
code,” which allowed him access to the programming in the keno
machine’s random number generator. Harris then used his computers to
duplicate the calculations of the random number generator in Bally’s
keno machine and thus, was able to determine the outcome ahead of
time. McNeal was arrested in Atlantic City and Ron Harris was
arrested by Nevada authorities at the airport in Las Vegas. Both were
charged by New Jersey police with computer fraud and attempted
cheating. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that all charges
against McNeal were dropped in return for his agreeing to testify
against Harris. And according to Keith Furlong, Public Information
Officer for New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, “Harris
pleaded guilty in July 1998 to attempted theft by deception.”
Shortly after his arrest Harris was fired from his $48,000-a-year
job with the Gaming Control Board where he had worked for 12 years.
Officials there also began their own investigation into his past work
for the Board and five months later he was indicted, along with his
ex-wife and two friends, on charges of rigging slot machines in three
northern Nevada casinos.
As part of his Gaming Control Board duties Harris was responsible
for testing slot machines at casinos throughout the state. He and his
co-workers would go into casinos and randomly test machines to make
sure they only contained computer chips that were previously approved
by the state agency. These computer chips are also known as EPROM’s
(erasable programmable read only memory) and control the payback
percentages on slot machines. The key words here are erasable and
programmable because authorities alleged that Harris erased the
memory on the chips and substituted his own programming, which forced
the machines to pay out a jackpot whenever coins were inserted in a
certain sequence. For example: if someone inserted 3 coins, followed
by 2 coins, then another 2 coins, then 1 coin, then 3 coins, then 5
coins, the machine would automatically pay out the maximum jackpot.
Not wanting to win the jackpots himself, police charged that Harris
used his accomplices to collect a $9,000 jackpot at Fitzgeralds in
Reno, a $5,000 award at the Crystal Bay Club in North Lake Tahoe and
another unspecified amount at the Comstock in Reno. According to a
story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the attorney general’s office
later went on to charge him with rigging at least 24 jackpots
throughout the state. In September 1997, Harris pleaded guilty to
racketeering charges and was sentenced to seven years.
After these problems occurred authorities in both states took
precautions to prevent them from happening again. New Jersey now
requires that any electronic keno machines used in Atlantic City have
a “source code” different from the same machines used in other
states. Also, in Nevada the chairman of the state’s Gaming Control
Board, Bill Bible, ordered a review of its safeguard measures with an
independent firm and now requires staff electronics employees to
check each other’s work.
Obviously, Harris was brilliant with computers but evidently he
wasn’t too smart with people. Just imagine how much money he would
still be making if his friend had only been carrying some ID with him
in Atlantic City!
