Part II: Table Game Cheating · Roulette Cheating Methods

Scam #22: Dealer Overpayment (Dirty Stacks)

How it works

A dishonest dealer deliberately overpays a confederate player’s winning bets. The overpayment can take several forms: paying winning bets at incorrect higher odds (e.g., paying a split bet as if it were a straight-up bet), adding extra chips to the payout, paying losing bets as if they were winners, or creating “dirty stacks” — stacks of chips where a high-value chip is concealed under lower-value chips so the total payout appears correct but the actual value is inflated. The dealer may also deliberately miscalculate complex payouts in the player’s favor. These overpayments are typically small enough to avoid immediate detection but accumulate significantly over a shift. The dealer and player split the proceeds after the shift or through prearranged meeting points.

Where it appears

All roulette variants

On the record

Dirty stack payouts are among the most common forms of dealer-player collusion because they are the hardest to prove as intentional cheating. A dealer can always claim simple human error, making criminal prosecution extremely difficult.

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.