Mark “Balls” Abromowitz had met Richard Marcus at a poker game in New Jersey where he had been given the nickname of Balls. When in the year 1989 the Classon Pastposting team of gambling scam had broken up, Richard Marcus wanted to set up a new team of his own. At the time he met Abromovitz again at the Mirage, which was 15 years later and instantly asked him to join the team. He had been trained to be a claimer and then as a claimer and mechanic for blackjack.
Mark had met Pat Mallery before they knew anything about gambling scam at casinos in the sports touting business. For two years when Mark and Marcus worked together, they ran into Mallery quite often and asked him to join their team but he was never interested.
Cheating Career
Later in the year 1994 when Mallery’s business went bust he joined their team. Mark and Marcus trained Mallery for pastposting blackjack chips and in just two weeks the new team made a history in April, 1994 when they became the first ever team to pastpost $5,000 chips. Most of the moves were done by Pat Mallery at the blackjack tables though Abromovitz too had an important job as the time asker.
On the suggestion of Pat Mallery Balls would approach the player sitting on Mallery’s right at the table at just the right moment and just ask him about the time. When the player would look at his/her watch, Mallery would switch the chips and then complete the rest of the blackjack pastpost move. The team of three successfully pulled of 151 of such moves in a row without missing a single time.
In the year 1995, this move received a lot of heat after the casinos in Vegas had ended up paying close to a million to the team. It was later that the very famous Savannah move had been invented. Balls too had been a member of the Savannah operation and helped the team rake in millions of dollars by performing the trick in casinos all over the world.
The Savannah move was considered the best pastpost move of all times and the player just had to hide $5,000 chips under his $5 chips at the bottom in roulette. The dealer would believe that the bet consisted of two $5 and $10 chips. If the bet won, the dealer would be shocked to know that there was a $5,000 chip at the bottom of the stack. In case the bet lost, the player would simply remove it from the bottom of the deck and would replace it with two $5 chips and got away with it easily.
The casinos were never able to figure out this move throughout the time that the team employed it in the casinos. Pat Mallery and Balls worked at the casinos for a few years even after Marcus retired in the year 2000.
Finally, Balls Abromovitz retired too in the year 2003 and left his casino cheating business for ever.