A rather simple and yet clever casino scam in Australia earned the fraudulent group several years in prison. An Australian citizen and four Chinese nationals stole a legitimate playing card from Jupiter's Casino in Gold Coast and used it to manipulate games of Mini-Baccarat in the casino's high rollers room.
The four Chinese residents, Haibin Shao, 40, Zhigang Liu, 35, Jianwen Liu, 40, Songtao Zhao, 35 and Wei Shan Liu, 43, who is an Australian citizen but also resides in China, managed to cheat the casino out of $765,000 in 50 minutes.
They deliberately lost some games, and then rigged others to allow them to win. Police were notified of the scam when a senior casino surveillance officer picked up on it while monitoring video footage.
They were playing cards while waiting at Coolangatta airport when police arrested them. The group was found guilty by a District Court jury in Brisbane of committing fraud on May 17 last year.Today, the four men have been sentenced by Judge John McGill to four years in prison and will be deported once they are released on parole, which, under Queensland law, is possible after they had served half of their sentence. Wei Shan Liu received a three year sentence.
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