CASINO CREDIT

Any place that attracts a large amount of people with money to lose attracts thieves. In the first six weeks of play in Atlantic City, there were two armed robberies in the rest rooms. I found out what was possible quite by accident once while seeing a show at the Stardust in Las Vegas.Our party had excellent seats at the Lido show, a table at cen-ter stage front.

One of the acts was a French pickpocket who could take anything. He was walking by where we were seated and suddenly dropped the mike. I grabbed and caught it, and as a reward was invited onstage. Here I was, a winning Blackjack player trying to take money out of the casino in obscurity up on-stage during the Lido show! I thought I was going up to hold the mike for him, but instead found that I was to be part of the act.

The pickpocket pointed to a spot on the stage and asked me to stand there. I remember being terribly nervous because I noticed I was standing directly on a trap door. He began to ask me ques-tions and walk around me as I answered. Suddenly he whispered for me to hold onto my pants, which made me even more nerv-ous. I knew he could take my belt off and drop my pants if he wanted to.

The next thing I knew he was holding a bag of jewelry (souve-nirs for the home folks) I had in my inside coat pocket, my watch, my wallet, and my website with all the little phone numbers in it. All I could think about was, "When do I go through the trap door?" He finally let me step down and the act got a big hand. After the show, people were complimenting me because they thought I was part of the act, even though I tried to convince them that I wasn't. What started me thinking was the ease at which my valuables had been taken and how open an available purse or a rear-pocket wallet is to nimble and dishonest fingers.

Sometimes a little clever daring is all you need. A woman told me of losing an entire fifty-dollar jackpot at the dime slots. She had just finished filling up two cups with dimes from the jackpot and had begun playing again. Suddenly a well-groomed man im-maculately dressed in an expensive-looking suit walked up, grabbed the cups, and said, "Let me cash these in for you." He then quickly turned and walked down the line of slots toward the cashier's cage.

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