Fixed jackpot

Two Russian nationals in a criminal group operating slot machine scams in casinos in the United States, Europe and Macau were arrested in Singapore, The Strait Times newspaper has reported.
Accused of using advanced technology to record play patterns of certain slot machines to predict the next payout, Russian Vladislav Logachev and Andrei Egorov have been sentenced to prison for 45 months and 30 months, respectively.
Last year, Singapore authorities arrested Czech national Radoslav Skubnik, who was accused of being an accomplice of the two in a scam that garnered S$108,995(MOP625,793/US$78,160) from slot machines in the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) and Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore last May, according to the news outlet.
The group’s modus operandi involves the use of devices to record the play patterns of targeted slot machines, whilst a ‘master’ – or team leader – would upload the information to an unknown server for analysis and decoding whereupon team members as players would make use of the information to obtain payouts from the machines, the report said.
As much as 20 per cent and 10 per cent of the earnings would be distributed to the team leader and members, respectively, whilst the remaining amount would be taken by the syndicate.
According to Singapore authorities, all the earnings obtained by the group in the country’s casinos have been recovered.
Replying to Business Daily’s enquiry, Judiciary Police say they do not have any record of similar scams having taken place in the city.