Tommy Glenn Carmichael was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the 7 May 1950.
Carmichael was the mastermind of a slot machine group that cheated millions of dollars from casinos worldwide.
The Early Years
In 1980 Carmichael worked as a technician for a television repair shop called Ace TV and Sales when he was approached by a friend of his named Ray Ming.
The friend showed him a slot machine cheating tool called a top-bottom joint. It was a simple piece of metal and string which went into the corner of the machine next to the circuit board and sent low -wattage electricity to hotwire the hopper where the coins are kept.
This device intrigued Carmichael, so he immediately moved to Las Vegas to test it out.
Las Vegas
He first tested it out on a five-cent machine at one of the casinos on the Las Vegas strip and won $35 worth of nickels. He proceeded to use the tool on many other slot machines and won a significant amount of money.
However, the casinos got suspicious, and when he was eating lunch at Denny’s restaurant, police officers burst in, searched his car and found the cheating tool. He was sentenced to five years in jail but only served two years.
Further Cheating Devices invented
Upon his release from jail, he invented further more sophisticated cheating devices and went on to defraud casinos of thousands of dollars.
His devices included the ‘slider’, or ‘monkey paw’, which could be inserted into the payout chute of a slot machine which tripped the microswitch to result in an illegal release of coins.
He also invented the ‘light wand’, which ‘blinded’ the payout sensor, again causing a release of coins. The casinos once again caught him, and he got more jail time.
Where is he now?
Upon Carmichael’s release, he spent his time making an anti-cheating device called “The Protector” which he was hoping would pardon him for his past mistakes. He died in Oklahoma on the 1 February 2019.