History Channel Presents 'Breaking Vegas'

2 February 2005

LAS VEGAS – (PRESS RELEASE) -- Everyday, Las Vegas casinos attract hundreds of thousands of gamblers from around the world -- and more than their fair share of cheaters. The new series BREAKING VEGAS on The History Channel(R) looks at some of Las Vegas's most notorious high-stakes cheaters and the various tactics they've used to fleece casinos in the gambling capital of the world. BREAKING VEGAS premieres on Tuesday, March 1 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT with new episodes airing on Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.

Cheating in Las Vegas casinos has taken a wide variety of forms over the years. There have been inside jobs, the use of digital equipment to spy, the creation of gadgets to predict outcomes in roulette and blackjack -- plus: various legal -- but shady -- card-counting schemes involving entire teams of people. BREAKING VEGAS episodes combine recent and historical footage, dramatizations, factual background, and interviews with those involved, including some of the schemers themselves. Viewers get a behind-the-scenes look at the methods used and the casinos' constant efforts to counterbalance them.

Episodes Include:

THE ULTIMATE CHEAT (airing Tuesday, March 1st at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT) Imagine the ultimate cheating move of all time -- so outrageous, so audacious, so brilliantly simple that it takes the best of the casino's investigators to even come close to catching the genius behind it. This is the story of a daring, devious kid from New Jersey -- Richard Marcus -- and how he took the craft of past-posting to amazing new heights, vowing to cheat casinos out of $5 million and never be caught. As riveting as the bouncing ball on a roulette wheel itself, The Ultimate Cheat is the roller-coaster adventure of one brilliant cheat who managed to evade security at every move and ultimately discovered the move that could never be caught on tape.

SLOT BUSTER (airing Tuesday, March 1st at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT) Casino worker Ron Harris was a technology whiz employed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to stop technology-related casino scams. Then, disillusioned by his employers' lax approach to stopping cheaters, he became one himself, using inside knowledge to reprogram computer chips, predict numerical patterns, and collect millions in cash. But how long could his act last?

PROFESSOR BLACKJACK (airing Tuesday, March 8th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT) In 1961, when Las Vegas was under heavy mafia influence, a young MIT math professor devised a revolutionary and completely legal card-counting scheme that had the potential to make him a fortune. A mob slickster approached the young professor and the two forged a partnership that would change the casino industry forever.

THE GADGET GAMBLER (airing Tuesday, March 15th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT) Keith Taft, a straight-laced family man with an affinity for electronic gadgetry, happened upon a casino one day and developed an obsession with beating blackjack. He used LED eyeglasses, laser beams, satellite dishes, TV monitors, and even his children to execute a variety of scams that earned him the label "mad scientist" ... and eventually brought about his demise.

CARD COUNT KING (airing Tuesday, March 22nd at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT) Tommy Hyland turned card-counting into a team effort that he considered legal -- but the casinos disagreed. His phenomenal success led to the arrest of members of his team in a Canadian casino, and a titanic court battle that provoked furious debate over the legality and fairness of card-counting.

BREAKING VEGAS is produced by Atlas Media Corp. for The History Channel.