One of the biggest misconceptions about casino scams is taken from movies, where you have a huge crew of skilled thieves who outsmart the casino owner and their security and take huge amounts of money. Real scams happen every day, but they are not over the top, and nothing like you saw in the movies. They usually look like routine play, nothing that forces a dealer or a supervisor to stop and ask questions. That is why the most damaging incidents in high-stakes casino history were not spectacular moments caught on camera, but a set of actions that felt ordinary while they were happening.

Richard Marcus understands this better than almost anyone. He is a famous casino cheater turned security expert who was never caught.  He exploited casino weak points with precision, and later returned as a consultant tasked with closing the same gaps he once relied on.

In this article, we will present you with three of his scams that were used by Marcus and his crew. The false shuffle that drained baccarat tables, the chip switch that exploited dealer trust, and the manipulation of baccarat’s third-card rules.

The False Shuffle: How Baccarat Tables Were Drained in Plain Sight

Baccarat Scams

 

This scam did not rely on speed or sleight of hand in the way people usually imagine casino cheating. It relied on something far more dependable. Routine. Baccarat dealers shuffled cards dozens of times per shift, often following identical motions, under pressure to keep the game moving smoothly. Once that rhythm was established, the shuffle stopped being examined and started being assumed.

Richard Marcus has been explicit about his role in this history. In his own account, he explains that he used the false shuffle scam in Las Vegas in the late 1970s while dealing baccarat. The premise was simple. A dealer would appear to mix the cards thoroughly, while secretly preserving a known sequence.

Baccarat was uniquely vulnerable to this method. Unlike many table games, baccarat outcomes can be predicted with high confidence if the order of the cards is known. When a dealer controls that order, the house edge collapses. Large bets placed at the right moments become mathematically correct and always win. Over time, casinos discovered that some losses could not be explained by variance.

The impact of the false shuffle was huge. Organized groups refined the technique, coordinated betting patterns, and used trusted insiders to maintain access. The most famous cases later associated with large-scale baccarat manipulation forced casinos to rethink how much trust could reasonably be placed in any manual process, no matter how experienced the dealer appeared to be.

What made the scam especially effective was that it did not look like cheating. Surveillance teams were trained to spot unusual hand movements, hidden cards, or suspicious signals between players. A dealer performing a shuffle did not trigger alarms.

The response to this vulnerability reshaped how casinos tackle shuffling today. Automated shuffle machines removed the dealer from the most sensitive part of the process. Once cards passed through an automated system, preserving order became practically impossible.