SINGAPORE: A man who was part of a foreign syndicate that illegally used a formula to record cards dealt won a total of S$433,730 (S$324,100) over eight days of playing baccarat games at the Marina Bay Sands casino.
Tan Kian Yi, a 35-year-old Malaysian, was sentenced to three years and four months’ jail on Wednesday (Nov 22).
He pleaded guilty to four counts of conspiring to record cards dealt during a game under the Casino Control Act, with another seven charges taken into consideration.
The court heard that Tan, a sales manager, was part of a syndicate comprising five other members from Malaysia and Taiwan.
He first met two of them – Hung Yu-Wen and Chou Yu-Lun, a couple from Taiwan – in the Philippines in August 2022.
Hung asked Tan if he was interested in winning money in a game of baccarat. She knew Tan had an interest in card counting and that he had attended a class on advantage play in 2019.
The class was held in Taipei, and taught people how to count cards, how the interior of a shuffler machine looked like and how it worked.
Hung then told Tan that she was going to Singapore to do a survey on how the game of 7UP Baccarat was played at the Marina Bay Sands casino.
Tan agreed to join her there, as he wanted to learn how to win money through the game.
In October 2022, Tan and the couple met in Singapore, staying at the MBS hotel and visiting the casino to observe how the game was played.
They met a month later at a casino in Manila, where Hung told Tan she had a formula that could enable them to win the game.
The formula was developed by a man she called her “teacher”, and the syndicate intended to use this formula to skew the odds of the game in its favour.
Hung showed Tan the formula on her laptop. It was in the form of an Excel sheet, and Hung showed Tan how to use it.
She gave him a set of codes to memorise, referring to the values and suits of the cards in the game. She also told Tan that he should key the codes into the sheet after someone else transmitted the information to him.
To use the formula, the syndicate would need someone to transmit information on the cards dealt to the person operating the formula, who would key in the values into the Excel sheet.
The formula would then predict and generate the game’s next outcome.
At this, Tan asked if his friend, 45-year-old Malaysian Chai Hee Keong, could join the syndicate.
Hung agreed and promised to give Tan and Chai 20 per cent of the syndicate’s winnings.
She created a group chat on LINE, with a Chinese name that described a “work group” in Singapore.
The chat was used to keep track of how much capital each syndicate member started off with, the time they clocked in and out at the table, as well as the winnings or losses made.
The group arrived in Singapore in December 2022 to execute their plan. They were assigned roles to play – ranging from a marksman, a sorcerer, a tank and an auxiliary.
Tan was both a marksman and a tank. In the first role, he would be stationed in a hotel room where he received information that he keyed into the formula and told the sorcerer how to bet.
The sorcerer was a female member of the syndicate who wore Bluetooth-connected earphones hidden by her long hair, so she could communicate with the marksman.
Tan’s second role involved him placing high bets at the table based on instructions relayed to him by the sorcerer.
Each of the syndicate’s members started off with S$100,000 worth casino chips.
Over several days in December 2022, they received winnings from their games using their scheme. At one point, one of the other members wanted to know how the formula worked as he felt very impressed by it, but Hung did not want to share the specifics with him.
Between Dec 16 and Dec 23 last year, casino employees began to take notice of the syndicate’s conduct, by going through closed-circuit television footage.
On Dec 24, 2022, one of the members went alone to the casino to gamble. He was taken to a room by security officers and the police later arrested him.
When the other members of the syndicate realised that this member could not be contacted, they suspected that he had been arrested.
Hung suggested they leave Singapore, and the rest agreed. Tan left with four other members at about 2am on Dec 25, 2022 via the Woodlands Checkpoint.
He was arrested at the airport in Kuala Lumpur by Malaysian authorities on Feb 3, when he was intending to travel to Taiwan. Tan was extradited to Singapore and arrested.
He initially claimed that he had come to Singapore for a holiday and to gamble, but admitted to his involvement after being confronted with the messages in the chat group.
The syndicate operated in Singapore from Dec 16 to Dec 23, 2022, winning a total of S$433,730 through its operations at the casino.
Casino chips worth around S$790,730 were seized from rooms occupied by the syndicate.
This case was the first prosecution for an offence under Section 171 of the Casino Control Act for using a device to count or record cards dealt in a casino game.
The prosecution sought 42 to 48 months’ jail for Tan, saying the offence “struck at the heart of Singapore’s engine for growing tourism – the MBS casino”.
“The syndicate leveraged technology and devices to record cards dealt in the casino, which illegally tilted the odds in its favour,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Shao Yan.
He said the jail term should be imposed to discourage potential offenders, especially syndicates, from entering Singapore and “compromising the integrity of our casino’s operations”.
Tan’s lawyers, Mr Adrian Wee and Ms Lynette Chang from Lighthouse Law, asked for 12 to 18 months’ jail instead.
They said Tan’s partner was expecting her first child with Tan when he was arrested. She has since given birth while he was still remanded, and he has never seen his child.
Mr Wee argued that the offence was a distinct one from cheating at play. He also stated that the court documents did not set out the workings or objective of the formula.
“It would appear from the statement of facts that none of the accused persons understood how the formula worked,” said the lawyer.
“It is thus impossible to determine whether the effect of the formula would have been to change the odds of a game beyond that envisaged by the casino, thereby crossing the line into fraud or cheating at play.”
He said the use of a formula did not amount to fraud or cheating at play.
The cases for two of Tan’s co-accused are pending.
