The poker cheats with a camera up their sleeve
It was one of the most dramatic runs of luck casino staff had ever seen.
Poker player Bit Wong, 39, won 34 hands out of 44 in just 40 minutes.
But that was as far as her good fortune went.
Police and security experts swooped to arrest Wong - and two accomplices who had been using James Bond-style equipment to cheat casinos out of an estimated £250,000.
Wong and 45-year-old Yau Lam were using hidden micro-cameras to secretly video the dealer's cards.
Wong's camera was in her handbag on her knee while Lam's was hidden in his shirt sleeve.
Their pictures were beamed to Fan Tsang, 41, sitting in front of a bank of monitors and recorders in a shabby white van outside the Mint Casino in Kensington, West London.
He played them back in ultra slow motion, so he could see the dealer's exact cards, then transmitted the details to a hidden earpiece Wong was wearing.
Tsang tried to destroy a videotape as police burst into his van.
But officers painstakingly pieced it back together to crack the gang's secrets.
Yesterday all three were given jail sentences at Southwark Crown Court.
The gang - all of Chinese descent and with connections in the restaurant trade - admitted cheating at gaming, contrary to the Gambling Act 1845, in September 2005.
The court heard that Wong, who "won" £3,520 at the Mint Casino, was chosen to front the scam because she was well known in London casinos.
But she came under suspicion after turning a £31,000 stake into £69,000 at another casino.
Lam, of Edgware, North London, a chef in a Chinese restaurant in Woking, was jailed for nine months.
Wong, a waitress, of Sandy, Bedfordshire, and Tsang, a former restaurateur from Paddington, West London, both received nine-month sentences suspended for two years and 150 hours community service.
They were banned from entering any casino for two years.
After the hearing Detective Inspector Darren Warner, head of Scotland Yard's Gaming Unit, said the trio had cheated five other London casinos out of an estimated £250,000 in the biggest scam of its kind to come to light.
He said the gang made trips to Las Vegas but it was not known if they had attempted the scam there.
