The floorman at the craps table was momentarily speechless, but he recovered quickly. “Did you say a million and a half, sir? One bet?”
“That’s right,” said Jack Wilson. “On the don’t pass line. Straight up. No odds.” Wilson had studied the mathematics of casino gambling, and he knew that this was the single best bet of any table game. The mechanics were simple: you placed your bet in the don’t pass area of the layout. If the first roll of the dice—the come-out roll—was a two or a three, you immediately won an amount equal to your original bet. If a seven or an eleven came up, you lost it all. Twelve was a push, or a stand-off, and another come-out roll had to be made. If any other number was rolled—a four, five, six, eight, nine, or ten—that number became the point and you had to hope that a seven was rolled before the point repeated. If it did, you won even money. If it didn’t, you lost.
The house edge on a straight-up don’t pass bet was only 1.4 percent. Jack knew full well that he could decrease that percentage even further by backing his bet with free odds, but that would mean he’d have to hold at least a million dollars in reserve. He’d miss out on doubling his entire stake instantly if a two or a three appeared on the come-out roll. And even if he won, the odds portion of his bet would not be paid off at even money but rather at the true odds, which could be as low as one to two—fifty cents won for every dollar bet—depending on the point. Essentially, he’d be making two bets instead of one. For Jack Wilson, alias Fred Langdon, this had to be a one-shot deal.
The floorman said: “Sir, this is too big for me to authorize alone. Would you mind waiting for a moment while I call my supervisor?”
Wilson nodded assent. As the man walked to the pit phone and spoke
briefly, Jack whispered to Sheila, “I told you they’d check us out. Don’t forget who we are!”
“Right now I’m a nervous wreck,” she whispered back, trying to smile bravely.
The floorman returned with two casino executives in dark suits. “Sir, I’d like you to meet my shift supervisor, Ed Kelly. And my pit supervisor, Rick Bloom. My name is Bob Sinclair.” Wilson had already noted the man’s name on the brass badge he wore. “And you’re Mr … .?”
“Langdon. Fred Langdon. From Tacoma. This is my wife, Dorothy.”
“Are you a regular player here at the Galaxy, sir?” asked Kelly. “I don’t remember seeing you before.”
“No, as a matter of fact, this is my first visit to your casino.”
“And you’re playing for cash?”
“A million and a half. I have it right here in the bag.”
Kelly appeared cautiously impressed. “Mr. Langdon, as you know, there’s technically no limit to the size of your bet. However, we do have to be careful with amounts of this magnitude. In addition, the state requires that we record the details of any cash transaction over ten thousand dollars. Regulation six-A, you know. So I will need to see some identification—”
“Really? Okay, that’s no problem.” Wilson pulled out his wallet and produced his custom-made driver’s license and Social Security card. Kelly examined them and passed them along to his subordinates, Bloom and Sinclair.
“Do you have any other ID, sir? I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but we have to be certain who we’re dealing with. Credit cards, perhaps?”
“Sure. I only carry one card. American Express. Gold.” Jack handed over the counterfeit card.
“Thank you, Mr. Langdon.” After a few moments Kelly returned the documents and the card to Langdon/Wilson, who had observed Sinclair copying the fictitious information in a notebook. By the time they checked it, if they ever did, the “Langdons” would be long gone. “Just one other question, sir, and I’m a little embarrassed to put it to you. I hope you’ll understand that I’m not questioning your integrity or … prying into your private business. But with an unusually large wager like yours, we’ve got to ask. Where did you get the money?”
Wilson’s heart skipped a beat, but he remained outwardly calm. He managed a conspiratorial chuckle. “Actually, I won it,” he replied. “Washington State Lottery.”
“I see,” said Kelly. “Not that I doubt your word, Mr. Langdon, but do you happen to have any proof of this win …?”
Jack had rehearsed this scene over and over in his mind. It was time to add credulity to his story with a touch of impatience. “Listen, Mr … . Kelly, is it?—if this is too big for you guys to handle, there are plenty of other places who’d be glad to book my action. I didn’t come here to be hassled and, believe me, if you have a problem—”
“No problem, sir,” Kelly replied quickly. “Please bear with me for just one more moment. This is standard procedure when we’re meeting big bettors like yourself for the first time.”
My ass, thought Wilson, you’ve probably never booked action this big in your life. With the air of a man who has just about had his fill of bureaucracy, he sighed and said aloud: “All right, just a second. Dorothy, do you still have that Xerox in your purse?”
“Yes, I think so, dear. Let me look.” Jack was proud of her self-control. Her voice was steady, and she looked calm and composed. He knew how difficult this was for her. She rummaged for a moment and “found” the paper. “Here it is,” she said, handing it to Kelly. “Sorry, it’s kind of dog-eared … .”
Once he’d embarked upon the Plan, Jack Wilson had taken steps to avoid any potential problems with the placement of his bet. He remembered reading how Caesars Palace in Atlantic City had been forced by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to close for an entire day as punishment for “willfully” helping a compulsive gambler from Toronto lose millions of dollars he had embezzled from the bank he worked for. In addition, fines ranging from $3,000 to $10,000 had been imposed personally on six of Caesars’s employees. Casino executives across the country had taken note. You couldn’t just walk in and lay down huge sums of money if they didn’t know who you were or where you got it. Besides, Nevada state regulations required casinos to record the name, address, and Social Security number of any person who made cash transactions, including bets, exceeding $10,000.
To get around this requirement, he’d need to establish an alternative identity, one that would stand up to close scrutiny. This could be accomplished with the use of fake ID, which (somewhat to his surprise) Jack discovered was relatively easy to obtain.
He’d also be required to explain the source of his cash, to avoid questions about embezzlement or money laundering. So Wilson hit upon the idea of pretending to be a lottery winner. For proof, he decided that a fake newspaper article would suffice. So he created a story about the fictitious Fred Langdon and his big win. Using QuarkXPress, a computer typesetting program, he set the story in type on his Macintosh, carefully matching the size, style, and layout of an existing article on the front page of the Tacoma News Tribune. He then output a hard copy on his laser printer and glued it directly over the original article. He also reset the dateline to read four years earlier and made a laser print of that line of type, covering the original dateline with his version. Wilson made a preliminary Xerox copy of the pasted-up section of the page. He then used Wite-Out to eliminate cut-and-paste marks and completed his cover-story prop by making a clean second-generation photocopy.
At the craps table, shift supervisor Ed Kelly unfolded the paper that “Dorothy Langdon” had pulled out of her purse. It looked perfectly natural to him: a slightly shopworn photocopy of a Tacoma News Tribune front page dated four years earlier. Kelly quickly scanned the story:
41-YEAR-OLD TACOMA MAN WINS $12 MILLION IN LOTTO
News Tribune Staff—An independent certified public accountant from Lakewood Center will be busy managing his own funds now that he has won $12 million, the grand prize in the biweekly Washington State Lottery.
Frederick C. Langdon became the 32nd jackpot winner from the Tacoma area, confirmed lottery spokesman Paul Richardson, with winning numbers he generated randomly on his home computer. The win was the second-largest in the history of the Lotto and will be paid in twenty annual installments of $600,000.
Langdon and his wife, Dorothy, plan to use part of their winnings to pay off debts and finance their children’s education.
“Other than that, we don’t intend to change our lifestyle. I’ll keep on working, although maybe not quite so hard, because I enjoy my job,” Langdon told News Tribune staff.
Langdon, who says he has always been fascinated by games of chance, purchased five tickets at the Safeway store at 10595 Gravelly Drive S.W. but didn’t check the winning numbers in Sunday’s newspaper. When he bought more tickets for Wednesday’s draw, he had a Safeway clerk check his earlier numbers. The machine issued a “claim jumper” ticket.
“The clerk jumped up in the air and yelled, ‘You won the jackpot!’” Langdon said. “The only response I could think of was, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’”
Langdon wasted no time claiming his winnings once he learned of his good fortune, arriving at the lottery’s Olympia office within the hour.
“I like casino gambling and poker, but I never thought I’d win anything like this,” Langdon stated.
And what about the future?
“We still intend to buy lottery tickets,” he said. “You never know—lightning can strike twice.”
Kelly stopped reading. Jack’s heart was pounding, and his mouth was dry.
The shift boss handed the photocopy back to Wilson. “Mister,” he said, “you’ve got yourself a bet.”
Pit supervisor Rick Bloom surveyed the neatly wrapped piles of cash stacked in the Wilsons’ gym bag. “Mr. L., we’re going to have to exchange this money for player’s checks. There isn’t room on the table to stack all these bills.”
“I understand,” said Jack.
“We’ll have it converted in the cage. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. Would you care to be present while it’s counted?”
“No, that’s okay. I trust you.” Wilson knew that the bigger casinos were scrupulously honest and extremely accurate in their transactions. On many occasions he’d observed players leave large quantities of chips on the table while they took a break from the action, relying on the casino staff to watch
over them. On one occasion, late for his plane, Jack had forgotten to pick up a couple of hundred dollars in chips at one of the Palladium’s craps tables. The chips had been returned intact to him on his next visit.
“Perhaps you’d like to wait for your checks in the VIP lounge?” Bloom suggested respectfully.
Wilson glanced at his wife, who shook her head. “Thanks, but we’ll stay here and watch the game,” he said. “You know, get a feel for the dice.”