Part III: Slot Machine Cheating · Electronic & Digital Cheating Methods · #6.6

Ron Harris EPROM Backdoor Injection

How it works

Ron Harris exploited his position as a Nevada Gaming Control Board technician to manipulate the very equipment used to audit slot machines. He rigged the NGCB’s field laptop computers: instead of legitimately reading EPROM chips and comparing them to manufacturer master software, the laptops were reprogrammed to automatically overwrite new cheating code onto the chips during routine inspections. Harris embedded hidden code that altered machine firmware during these authorized testing sessions. The modified machines would pay out jackpots when a predetermined sequence of coins was inserted. This was particularly insidious because the cheating was perpetrated by the regulators themselves, with the cheat installed during what appeared to be routine regulatory testing.

Where it appears

Slot machines in Nevada casinos, including Fitzgeralds in Reno and the Crystal Bay Club at Lake Tahoe

On the record

Harris and his accomplices collected rigged jackpots in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe between about 1993 and 1995; reported totals vary, and his lawyer put Harris’s own take at $15,000 from Nevada casinos, including a $9,000 jackpot at Fitzgeralds in Reno in September 1994 and a jackpot at the Crystal Bay Club at Lake Tahoe. The scheme was uncovered when his accomplice Reid McNeal drew suspicion at Bally’s Atlantic City during the keno scheme.

Published as a detection reference for surveillance, compliance and gaming-operations professionals. Thresholds and tuning are set by the property. Nothing here is instruction: the method is described so it can be recognised.