“In the early 1990s, Ron Harris was a software engineer writing anti-cheating software for the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
But secretly, he was coding machines with a hidden software switch that paid out huge jackpots when players inserted coins in a certain sequence.
According to CNN, Harris rigged 30 machines before getting accomplices to play the slots and walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Harris was eventually caught when one of his accomplices was busted trying to rig a game of keno in Atlantic City. Harris pleaded guilty in 1996 to four counts of slot-cheating, according to the Las Vegas Sun, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.”
When I was working in Vegas a story broke about a software engineer with a company that did BINGO systems. He wrote the code for those little electronic devices that let you play a bunch of cards at the same time. (Like the PlayMakers you’d see in bars for playing those trivia games).
He had added some code to enable some secret key combo that would let you pay for 1 card, but play 1024. He got caught, and before he made it to trial, he “committed suicide”.
So, it DOES happen, but it’s getting harder every day.