Mihai Lacatos, a Romanian national has been cheating casinos across the country out of tens of thousands of pounds. Mihai would sit at casino tables for hours deftly by making the marks in the cards and managed to swindle the Playboy Club in Mayfair, London out of £43,400 in less than one week. Mihai is 61 and unemployed, but still he managed to lie his way into casinos across the country he had been banned form by producing fake ID cards and driving licenses and swindled them out of thousands.
Lacatos committed the frauds during a six year spree in which he was living at different locations in the UK.
He tried to flee the country after his sleight of hand was discovered but was arrested as he got to the departure lounge of Luton Airport on November 20, 2014. He was found with around £3,000 and admitted to 14 fraud offences and four further charges of possessing false ID documents which date back to 2008.
He is one of the first people to be convicted for a specific cheating technique called ‘card marking.’ Lacatos used sleight of hand to subtly bend and dent cards at the poker table and was so skilled his cheating went unnoticed for years.The bends and dents helped him identify what other players at the table for three card games were holding.
After he was spotted at the Playboy Club, parent company Caesars Entertainment contacted the MPS Gaming Unit who circulated his image to casinos across the UK. He was arrested on 31 March 2014 at the Rubicon Casino on Regent Street, Northampton after staff there recognised him and raised the alarm. Officers seized £1,485 from him, but while on bail he duped at least another three casinos during the six year spree.
He was due to return to court in May 2014 but failed to turn up and detectives eventually tracked him down to Luton Airport where he was arrested as he tried to flee. Officers seized £3,000 from him under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Lacatos hoaxed staff at the Rendezvous Casino in Southend-on-Sea, the Genting Palm Beach Casino in Mayfair and Maxim’s Casino also in London and was convicted of fraud at all three premises.
He also fleeced customers at the Rank Casinos in Leicester, Stockport, Salford, Swansea, Portsmouth, Nottingham, Sunderland, Birmingham, Walsall and London premises in Victoria and Bayswater.
He used fake ID documents at casinos in Leicester, Stockport and Bournemouth. Lacatos will return to Southwark Crown Court on 16 March for sentence.
