Feds: Russian gangs hacked Nev. slot machines
By Benjamin Weiser, New York Times
NEW YORK — There were the usual accouterments of an organized crime prosecution: an illegal poker house and cases of stolen cigarettes, authorities said.
But there was also a scheme to defraud casinos with a hacking device that predicted the behavior of particular models of electronic slot machines. And a plot for a woman to seduce men, drug them with chloroform and then rob them.
There was even a large shipment of stolen sweets: 10,000 pounds of chocolate confections that two defendants were overheard discussing on a court-ordered wiretap in March, according to a federal indictment.
In all, charges were unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday against 31 people. Many of them, according to the indictment, were based in New York City but others operated in Florida, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and abroad. They were mostly from the former Soviet Union, and many had strong ties to Georgia, Ukraine and Russia.