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A few years ago, a rumor started going around the casino world. There was a crew of Russians hitting up casinos across the U.S. They'd roll up, find their favorite slot machine, play
for a couple hours, and walk out with thousands of dollars. They didn't lose. All of it was caught on camera, but there was no evidence that these men ever physically tampered with the
slot machines. There was, however, something unusual about the way the men played: They always kept one hand buried in their pockets or in the bags they carried with them. In July of 2014,
Ron Flores, who oversees surveillance at the Pechanga Casino in California, witnessed one of these men in action. He called the California Department of Justice to pick him up. But Ron was
not the only one who wanted to get to the bottom of it. So many casinos had gotten hit that the FBI had opened its own investigation into the case. The trail takes investigators deep inside
the slot machine itself, and into some of the core vulnerabilities in machines all around us. Today on the show, how the Russians figured out how to never lose at slot machines. And how the
FBI cracked the case. It's a crime caper wrapped in some hard core computer science wrapped in hundred dollar bills. _Here's the Wired_ _article_ _by Brendan Koerner that inspired
this story._ _Music: "Stinkin'," "Talk Is Cheap," and "Hangin'."Find us:_ _Twitter_ _/_ _Facebook_ _._ _Subscribe to our show on_ _Apple Podcasts_
_or_ _PocketCast_ _._ Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.