The last defendant involved in a $1 million cheating scheme involving craps at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas has now been sentenced to prison.
As per the report released by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, ex-craps dealer James R. Cooper, had earlier pleaded guilty to a single count of theft, and has now received a prison sentence of 2 to 5 years. In response to this, his attorney has asked for him to be sentenced to probation instead for the same period.
Cooper was among the four of the men who were charged for this scheme which involved some phantom bets. The scheme ran between 2012 and 2014. Cooper has also helped the state of Nevada prosecute all of the other men involved in the scheme.
Another former dealer called Mark Branco had received 4 to 10 years, while a couple of gamblers, Anthony Grantio and Jeffrey Martin both received 3 to 8 years from the state of Nevada.
Martin had played some minor league baseball as part of the Kansas City Royals, Cincinnati Reds, and the Pittsburgh Pirates between 1995 and 2002. It was after this that he turned to casinos and started earning a living of them.
The casino has also determined that all of the men who defied the odds of 452 billion: 1. Martin and Granito had won a hop bet which was paying out at 15-1. They also won 19 times out of 230 rolls in just one session as per the casino. As part of their winning streak, they would have been expected to lose a total of $712,029, but instead, they ended up winning $1,086,400.
The scheme had been discovered once a dealer had alerted the casino regarding this suspicious activity in the casino. It was only a short time after this before the arrests were made.
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