Convicted slot cheat added to Black Book

Brendan Riley

Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 | 9:27 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Tommy Glenn Carmichael says he's now using his cheating skills to improve slot machine security. But that got him nowhere Thursday with Nevada gambling industry regulators.

The state Gaming Commission voted unanimously to list Carmichael, 52, whose criminal record dates to 1973, in the Black Book of unsavory types barred from Nevada casinos.

Commissioners were aware of one of Carmichael's latest inventions, an anti-cheating device being marketed to casinos around the world. But they were advised of concerns that the device could somehow be manipulated by slot cheats.

"It's impossible to use this to do anything to the machine other than protect it," insisted Carmichael, reached by telephone at his Tulsa, Okla., home.

But Carmichael said he didn't attend the Gaming Commission hearing to tell how he's trying to go straight because "everything I always heard about (a Black Book hearing) is that it's a no-win situation, a kangaroo court."

"This is just an opportunity to right a wrong," Carmichael said of his invention, one of several he's developed recently. "That's what is going on with my life."

At Thursday's Gaming Commission hearing, Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Carvalho detailed Carmichael's criminal history, which includes three convictions involving cheating at gambling and a fourth drug-related crime.

Carvalho also played wiretapped phone conversations that Carmichael, while living in Las Vegas, had with four men already in the Black Book for slot-cheating activity.

The wiretaps, authorized by a federal judge, recorded conversations with Ramon Pereira, Mike Balsalmo, Jerry Criner and Harold Lyons.

Carvalho also showed Gaming Commission members some of the crude slot-cheating devices that Carmichael created years ago, and also displayed a more recent, high-tech device that can drain thousands of dollars from slot machines in minutes.

"He'll continue to stay up with the technology," Carvalho warned in pressing for Carmichael's inclusion in the Black Book.

"I just enjoy inventing things," Carmichael said. Asked if he was finally out of the criminal world, Carmichael added, "Yep, I'm out."

Carmichael is the 38th person to be listed in the Black Book -- officially known as the List of Excluded Persons. Anyone on the list is supposed to stay out of Nevada casinos.

If authorities spot one of them in a casino, the club could face licensing sanctions.