Cheats used to hide cards up their sleeves. Now it's cameras.

From cell phones to microwave plates and infrared light, some people are employing high-tech means to try to cheat at cards.

Take it from George Joseph, a magician turned consultant who can change a blackjack hand of 14 into a winning 21 without taking a hit and who can switch a pair of dice with the innocent wave of an arm.

After all, he is the hands of God. Well, OK, his hands doubled for those of actor George Burns during card tricks in the 1977 movie, "Oh, God!"

"It's sort of always a cat and mouse game. The bad guys come up with some way to steal or cheat and we find out about it. We prosecute it and then we change our policy, procedure or equipment to accommodate the scam," he said.

"I'm the first to admit that the bad guys are many times -- not always, but many times -- ahead of the casinos."

Mr. Joseph, a former surveillance director for major Las Vegas gambling venues, is working with the state Gaming Control Board to try to make sure that doesn't happen in Pennsylvania. He runs George Joseph's Worldwide Casino Consulting.

He is conducting five week-long sessions throughout the state to help train casino workers, state police officers and gaming board employees on ways to watch for cheating when table games make their debut July 8 at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh and The Meadows Racetrack and Casino in Washington County, where he was Thursday.

"It would be, in my opinion, a head-in-the-sand moment if we did not anticipate that there would be cheaters coming into Pennsylvania with the advent of table games," gaming board Chairman Greg Fajt said.

Mr. Joseph will tell you there's no surer bet.

"No doubt, no doubt, only because every other jurisdiction who's ever opened ... has had attempted cheating, has had the same bad guys make the rounds and show up in their casinos," he said. "So we can expect to see it here."

Mr. Joseph said casino scams can range from the simple to sophisticated. Some people simply will try to illegally add to their bet if they have a winning hand or try to remove part of their bet if it's a poor one. At the craps table, some cheaters will try to put their bet down after the roll of the dice or try to confuse the dealer in the amount they have bet.

Card counting has become more popular, particularly with the explosion of Internet sites dedicated to the technique, he said.

But the surge in technology also has produced a level of card cheating wizardry unheard of in the days of Bugsy Siegel and the early development of Vegas.

Ten years ago, Mr. Joseph helped to bring down a cheating scam that involved a small camera concealed in a sports coat. One of the buttons on the sleeve hid the camera lens and another held an infrared light.

The images were transmitted by the player to a partner in a vehicle who recorded the shuffles and the card games. The pair sought to analyze the results in an effort to gain an advantage in subsequent games.

Mr. Joseph said the duo stayed under the radar when they were winning smaller amounts. But he said greed ultimately did them in. As the winnings grew into the tens of thousands, they attracted the attention of the casinos and ended up getting caught.

It's a lesson for casino employees: Money still talks.

"Money is always the first tell," he said, noting that large bets sometimes are a tip off to possible cheating.

In other instances, card cheaters will deploy modern means to accomplish age-old tricks. Instead of using dye or bending an edge to mark a card, some will try to use infrared technology or even radioactive iodine for the same purpose.

"You have to have almost a Geiger counter under the table to read those cards," he said.

Others might try to read cards using an infrared camera hidden within a cell phone.

Mr. Joseph advises casino employees, law enforcement officials and others involved in surveillance to watch "what the play looks like on the game." One tip off is a customer who seems to know the next card coming or the dealer's hand.

"It looks like marked card play. It smells like marked card play. It probably is marked card play," he said.

He also teaches craps dealers how to examine dice to make sure they're not loaded.

Yet despite all the gadgetry, Mr. Joseph said the most common theft in casinos up until recently involved stealing coin buckets filled with a slots player's winnings.

Still, while techniques used by cheaters to gain an edge over the house have advanced over the years, the methods employed by casinos to catch them have become more sophisticated as well.

Mr. Joseph remembers the stone-age days of walking catwalks at Las Vegas casinos between shows looking for cheaters. Now casinos deploy an untold number of cameras to watch every hand, every move, every shuffle.

They also use video to review large winnings after the fact to make sure they were on the up and up and to pay close attention to gamblers who bet large sums.

"It's always amazing to me that a thief or a crook decides to come to an environment where there's a camera every 4 inches. Not only that, [but] 100 percent certainty of coverage and 100 percent certainty of being recorded," he said.

Some cheaters may get away with their crimes for a period, he said. But as confident as Mr. Joseph is that there will be attempted cheating, he's equally as certain that it eventually will be discovered.

"In today's gaming world, especially in this jurisdiction, you try that stuff, you're going to get snatched up and face some pretty serious consequences," he said.

By that he meant jail time, not broken legs.

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