Former Control Board agent indicted for cheating casinos

Friday, June 14, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Bench warrants will be issued today charging former State Gaming Control Board agent Ronald Harris and three associates with cheating Nevada casinos out of $32,000.

A Washoe County grand jury indicted the suspects on a total of 23 counts this week after hearing testimony from 18 witnesses.

The indictment charged that Harris, a former employee of the Control Board's electronic services division, modified a computer program used to test slot machines.

Harris altered the program so that it inserted a cheating routine into computer chips in certain slots being inspected by Control Board agents, the indictment said.

The altered program triggered a jackpot payout if coins were bet in a specific sequence, according to David Thompson, deputy attorney general.

Harris, currently held in the Washoe County Jail on $50,000 cash bail, also is charged with rigging an Atlantic City casino's keno game to win a $100,000 payout in 1995.

Indicted with Harris on the Nevada charges were Reid Errol McNeal, Victoria Elaine Berliner and Lynda Lee Doane. Berliner reportedly lives in Fullerton, Calif., and Doane in Las Vegas, Thompson said.

McNeal, who operates an underwater photography business in the Cayman Islands, was charged with Harris in the Atlantic City scam when he attempted to collect the $100,000 keno jackpot without showing identification.

In the Atlantic City case, which is scheduled for trial later this summer, Harris allegedly took copies of a "source code" for a program that ran a keno game at Bally's Park Place and used them to pick eight numbers.

The code, so confidential that casinos buying the program don't even have access to it, is used by gaming regulators to verify the program complies with manufacturers' claims.

The Nevada indictments alleged that Harris instructed McNeal, Berliner and Doane on how to trigger slot jackpots at Northern Nevada casinos in 1993 and 1994.

They included a $5,000 jackpot at the Crystal Bay Club at Lake Tahoe, and three $9,000 jackpots at Fitzgerald's hotel-casino in Reno.

If convicted on the Nevada charges, the suspects face one to six years in prison and $10,000 fines on each of the counts.