Magician teaches Pa. to spot casino cheaters

June 2, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

HARRISBURG

He has the hands of God.

He opens a new pack of cards and spreads them out face-up on the table to show they are all in order. Then he shuffles them several times, cuts them three times and spreads them out again ... and they’re still in order.

“Evidence of a misspent youth,” says George Joseph.

Joseph made his name as a magician and card dealer in Las Vegas in the 1970s, and he was so good that when George Burns played God in the movie “Oh, God!,” viewers saw Joseph’s hands as “God” performing card tricks.

Joseph also knew cards so well that Las Vegas casinos asked him to help spot cheaters, and that’s what he’s been doing since.

Joseph spent a week at the Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course in East Hanover Township, teaching Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board employees and state police officers how to spot cheaters when table games open this summer.

He’s doing five weeks of training for state surveillance officers in casinos across Pennsylvania.

“Quite frankly, we don’t want to be caught with our heads in the sand,” said Richard McGarvey, a spokesman for the Gaming Control Board.

Though each casino is training its staff, the Gaming Control Board wanted to make sure its staff was up to speed and extended the training invitation to the state police and the state Department of Revenue.

About 50 people have been training at the Hollywood Casino this week.

“The No. 1 job of the Gaming Control Board is ensure the integrity of gaming in Pennsylvania,” said Gregory Fajt, the board’s chairman. “When a person comes into a Pennsylvania casino, they need to know they are getting a fair shake, and they aren’t being cheated.”

That’s not magic. It’s work.

But magic is where the work began for Joseph.

Joseph grew up in a “big Lebanese Christian family” in Detroit, and his father and uncles “would do this trick with the kids on our big mahogany table,” he said. One uncle would hold a raisin under the table, while another placed an empty hat on top. The hat would be lifted, revealing a raisin that had apparently passed up through the wooden table.

“I figured it out,” Joseph said. “I didn’t tell anybody except my dad ... and the look of approval in his eyes sparked a lifelong passion.”

Joseph hunted in libraries for books on magic, “and if the book was too good, I’d steal it because I didn’t want the other kids to get it,” he said.