A Malaysian national has been sentenced by Singaporean authorities to three years and four months in jail over a scheme to record cards dealt at Baccarat games at Marina Bay Sands (MBS).
According to Channel News Asia, 35-year-old Tan Kian Yi was part of a foreign syndicate that won some SG$433,370 ($323,400) by recording cards dealt over an eight-day period.
Tan, a sales manager, was part of a five-person syndicate with members from Malaysia and Taiwan.
The Malaysian national met two of the other members, a Taiwanese couple, in the Philippines in August of last year.
Tan had previously attended a class to learn how to count cards and understand the machinations of the shuffler machine.
Tan later traveled to Singapore and met the couple, staying at the Marina Bay Sands and visiting the casino. They met again a month later in Manila, where Tan was shown the ‘formula’ for the card counting.
This involved inserting the card values into an Excel sheet, with the formula predicting the game’s next outcome.
The group began operating in Singapore in December of 2022, with Tan playing a role both as the bettor and the inputter of information into the Excel sheet.
Casino employees at MBS started to notice the group’s behavior after going through CCTV footage from December 16th to 23rd, with authorities arresting one of the members on the 24th.
Tan and the other members, suspicious of the arrest, left Singapore but Tan was arrested in Kuala Lumpur, en route to Taiwan, extradited to Singapore and arrested by local authorities.
The case marks the first prosecution under the Casino Control Act relating to counting or recording cards dealt in a casino.
The prosecutor sought such a strong sentence as the act “struck at the heart of Singapore’s engine for growing tourism – the MBS casino”.
The lengthy term is hoped to discourage future offenders which could compromise “the integrity of our casino’s operations”.
