14 DAY TRIAL // Two men were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud after they exploited a software glitch in video poker machines to increase their payouts artificially.
John Kane, 52, of Las Vegas, is believed to have discovered the design flaw which through a combination of button allows players to change the bet and therefore the payout of a winning hand.
For this exploit to work a feature known as "Double Up" must be activated on the video poker machines.
The player can then play at the minimum bet until they hit a hand and then use the trick to look as if they won it at the maximum bet.
After testing his find on his own, Kane called his friend Andre Nestor, 39, from Pennsylvania, and together starting hitting casinos around Vegas in the summer of 2009.
Returned home, Nestor continued to practice what he learned at the Meadows Racetrack and Casino near Pittsburgh on a Draw Poker machine made by International Game Technology (IGT).
He first had to convince a technician to open the machine up and enable the "Double Up" feature, which he apparently did by posing as a high-roller.
In two months, until late August, Nestor's winnings amounted to $429,945, which attracted suspicion from gaming authorities, which investigated and uncovered the scheme.
Nestor was charged in Washington County, but as he was preparing to go to trial this Monday, federal authorities showed up with an arrest warrant and took him to Las Vegas.
It's not clear how Kane learned of the vulnerability, but Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, told the Las Vegas Review Journal, that some cheats manage to buy machines and test them at home.
"If you have a machine and you have long enough to experiment, you might be able to find a glitch like this," he concluded.
That's actually a reasonable explanation. Security researcher Barnaby Jack demonstrated serious flaws in ATM machines at last year's Black Hat security conference after inspecting several models for around a year.