Professional slot machines cheaters have been around for years. There are many was of cheating a slot machine, and Tommy Glen Carmichael, a 53 year old resident of Tulsa, is a master at the practice. He has spent much of the last twenty years ripping off slot machines across the United States and the Caribbean. He has used many of the tools out there, and has invented several of his own.  

Thrown in jail at 35 for his first slot machine offense, cheating using a tool called a “top-bottom joint”, which was the best cheating tool there was at the time, he used his time to create other gadgets that worked better. He met another man by the name of Mike Balsamo, and the two of them created a type of gang that specialized in cheating slot machines. The problem was that when they got out of prison the slot machines had been updated and their ideas didn’t work any more. So it was back to the drawing board for Carmichael, who then came up with the “slider” and the “monkey paw”, both of which enabled him to release large amounts of money from the machines, with the latter having a release of roughly $1000 an hour.

With the success of these slot machine tools, he then came up with something called “the Light Wand” that enabled him to cheat even more effectively, and then the “hanger” which he sold to clients as well as using it in the casino for his own use. He was caught again in 1996 while using a light wand to cheat the slot machines. Older and wiser now, he spends his time taking care of his mother and creating anti-cheating devices instead. He feels that having been on the cheating end of the slot machine business for so long, he is the perfect person to help them keep people like him from cheating. He may never find out however, as he will never be allowed to set foot inside a casino again.

Back to August Archive or Slot Machines