
Berlin police find radioactive iodine on playing cards - dberhane
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42157129
======
michaelt
You can also get cheating devices [1] where the edges of all the cards are
printed with IR barcodes, then a special camera (concealed in a modified phone
or car key fob) can tell you upcoming cards by looking at the edge of the
deck.

Of course, you need to convince people to play with your deck of cards first,
so you can't just walk into a casino with these things.

[1] [https://www.elie.net/blog/security/fuller-house-exposing-
hig...](https://www.elie.net/blog/security/fuller-house-exposing-high-end-
poker-cheating-devices)

~~~
kiddico
Wow what a crazy device! That link led me to Elie Bursztein's youtube channel
where he posts all of his defcon talks (or at least a lot of them). They're
all really good!

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Gargoyle
This is the plot device for an actual novel about a detective hired to solve a
casino scam. Don't want to completely spoil it, but it's the main plotline.

~~~
ghrifter
I wonder if the cards found were inspired by the novel

~~~
Gargoyle
The author said most of the scams in his book come from real life, so it's
possible someone did it in the past.

James Swain is the author, the series is his "Tony Valentine" books. Not
fantastic writing, but packed full of scams and cons if you enjoy that kind of
thing.

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source99
Pretty interesting that the government is checking garbage trucks for
radioactivity and also able to trace t back to a specific business.

~~~
madez
In Germany, garbage is considered a serious issue. There are various levels
and ways of mandatory recycling that need to be implemented by everyone,
including private households. For example, depending on the city, paper,
"Gelber Sack", organic material, and everything else besides special
disposables like for example batteries must be seperated, and compliance may
be checked, and fines may be handed out in case of violation. Some people
moving to Germany are surprised about how serious it is.

This explains why the garbage was checked, and why it was possible to track
down the source.

~~~
bamboozled
It's actually refreshing to know this is happening somewhere, thanks for
sharing.

~~~
yAnonymous
About half of the recyclable garbage is still burned along with the regular
garbage, because it burns better.

Profit is, after all, more important than the environment. The garbage
companies in Germany make somewhere between 50 and 100 billion per year.

~~~
kretor
The garbage companies are burning that stuff because nobody wants to buy it
from them. Because often making something by way of recycling uses more
resources than the alternative.

------
csours
Fortunately I125 is not likely to cause severe thyroid damage

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-125](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-125)

~~~
llsf
I got some injected several time when I was a kid (for angiography). As a kid,
the fun part was peeing fluorescent liquid (little I knew...).

~~~
DennisP
I used to have a friend with a masters in biochemistry. Once he tested a
glowstick and determined that the components were completely nontoxic. (He
couldn't vouch for all glowsticks, don't try this at home.)

He put each liquid component in a test tube and went out for beers. He poured
one tube in a buddy's beer when he wasn't looking, and another in his next
beer. Then he went in the restroom and unscrewed the lightbulb.

~~~
philipkglass
I think that your friend was pulling your leg. The oxalate esters and hydrogen
peroxide in a glow stick shouldn't be ingested, though the actual dye that
gets excited to fluorescence would be relatively harmless. I also wouldn't
expect the concentrations of active materials to remain high enough in urine
for the glow reaction to be noticeable, even if all the chemicals were
excreted unchanged.

~~~
DennisP
He was referring to the military version, would that be the same?

It would not be surprising if he was pulling my leg, we were a group of
practical jokers. And this story made me swear off ever doing anything to him;
in retrospect maybe that was the intent.

~~~
philipkglass
Yes, military glow sticks use the same basic chemistry: hydrogen peroxide,
diphenyl oxalate or analogs, various excitable dyes that actually produce the
different colors.

~~~
thret
Yep, glow sticks are glow sticks. Ours come in fancy camo packaging though so
you know they're suitable for lighting the portaloo.

------
rboyd
I'm having a hard time imagining how this hustle works. With the luminous ink
or daub the idea is to see the markings from a distance. Here you would think
you'd need to be fairly close with a geiger counter to detect the marking. So
maybe it was a self-deal game or the dealer was colluding with the cheat? In
that case maybe it's more like peeking with a shiner.

~~~
anfractuosity
I wonder if you could build something to detect gamma rays which it sounds
like the iodine emits, into a watch, possibly making use of a PIN photodiode.

~~~
monochromatic
Still... you really need a directional detector to make use of this.

~~~
QAPereo
Triangulate between two detectors?

~~~
komali2
"Eh, Slim Johnson, whys you always flapping yer arms around whens we playin
poker?"

"Shoulder exercises, Bill. Shoulder exercises."

~~~
QAPereo
Lol oh god, Gary Larson would be proud. Still humor aside I think that you
could deploy a partner to be the second point. Still, added complexity and new
(albeit less awkward) questions.

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btreesOfSpring
The restaurant in question is in the Marzhan district of Berlin[0].

[0]
[https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article21267...](https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article212675467/Betrueger-
setzten-radioaktive-Spielkarten-ein.html) (Article in German)

------
germanier
Does anyone know which (probably Vietnamese) game that was? Apparently it is
played with round cut-outs of playing cards. Here is a photo:
[https://www.facebook.com/PolizeiBerlin/photos/a.253825908134...](https://www.facebook.com/PolizeiBerlin/photos/a.253825908134854.1073741828.167233600127419/785902204927219/?type=3&theater)

~~~
andrewksl
Looks like what casinos do when they throw cards away so they can't be
scavenged and used for play.

~~~
germanier
The police explicitly commented that you play with those circular cutouts and
confirmed it again after confused questions by users but that could be wrong
of course.

~~~
andrewksl
Ah. I didn't pick that up from the Google translated version I read.

------
lordnacho
What's the legit use of infrared contact lenses? I gather Johnson and Johnson
makes them.

~~~
_rpd
Firefighting, search and rescue, power line maintenance, home inspection and
of course, military/law enforcement night operations.

------
posterboy
The older generation of vietnamese immigrants came due to the german
democratic republic siding with communist vietnam because of the vietnam war.
The traditional social order is patriarchal, so I would be surprised if the
woman in question wasn't a strawpuppet to some extent.

------
lunchladydoris
In the linked articles is this awesome piece: "'Laser scam' gamblers to keep
£1m" [0].

[0]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4069629.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4069629.stm)

~~~
fastball
I mean, yeah, the only real rules of Roulette are "call it before the ball
goes round three times".

Still, probably good they did it at the Ritz in London, rather than back home
in Serbia, I have a feeling the outcome could've been very different.

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gozur88
This sort of thing is why I would never play cards for nontrivial money
outside a regulated club. It's a lot less likely to happen when the owner
stands to lose a license worth millions.

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jxramos
Pretty soon we'll have a mobile card printer generate new decks right on the
spot.

~~~
derekp7
And 30 seconds later, we will have remote hacks for the card printers.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
And a year later, news that Uber knew about the hack but buried it.

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tartuffe78
I guess this way the con men knew when the cards were hot!

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zerostar07
good police work

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obilgic
Wait, so you can gamble at a restaurant?

~~~
bluetwo
Between closing and opening, yes.

