The phone Call That Changed Everything

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Before there was a podcast, before there was a four-year run of never getting caught, there was one phone call from a mentor named Mr. CC. Dustin had no idea what he was walking into. By the end of that play, he'd learned the move that would define the rest of his career.
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THE CALL
At the time, Dustin was already cheating on his own — dealing a shoe game on the Strip, using an agent who card-counted while Dustin secretly signaled him the dealer's hole card and stacked the deck. Then Mr. CC called and told him to come over. Dustin walked in to find his mentor dealing blackjack with a stranger standing off to the side. Dustin was told to just watch the game and try to catch the move. That stranger — nicknamed Frankenstein — turned out to be the one that showed Mr. CC an entirely new move for the first time. It was the first time Dustin ever saw The Flash.

​BECOMING THE BUFFALO
Frankenstein was the mastermind behind the play, working as a shift boss at an out-of-town casino. But he refused to personally hire Dustin, wanting zero connection between them if anything ever went south. So Dustin had to audition for the casino's manager. The first audition went nowhere. Mr. CC had an explanation why Dustin did not hired. Dustin had shoulder-length hair, a full beard, and weighed 260 pounds, Mr. CC's exact words: you look like a Buffalo. A second audition, another rejection. On the third attempt, with the whole play about to start without him, Dustin leaned on a sympathy pitch — telling the manager he was nearly broke and would work one day a week. It worked. He was hired full-time on the spot.

WALKING INTO THE PIT
Nothing prepared him as he walk onto the casino floor: fourteen people total, across every shift, day, swing and grave. Five cheating dealers. Seven players. Two shift bosses down with it. All of it happening on old-school single-deck games with no discard tray — cards just went back under the deck by hand, a setup already outdated even by 1980s standards. Every dealer was dealing The Flash. Dustin was dealing The Flash and stacking the deck. The team was beating the casino for $15,000 to $20,000 a day.

THE FOUR-CARD CUT
Since the casino didn't use a plastic cut card, players cut the deck by hand — which meant beating the cut required unusual precision. The team's solution: stack the deck with exactly four cards on top of the stack and rely on Mr. CC being one of the only players skilled enough to consistently cut four cards. He never missed. Dustin never missed the stack.

WHEN IT STARTED TO UNRAVEL
The casino performed random polygraph tests on its dealers. One by one, the other cheating dealers failed and were fired — never arrested, just let go. Dustin was never polygraphed, which he suspects came down to one of the shift bosses steering him away from the test entirely. Around the same time, the casino began backing off the team's players all except Mr. CC, protected by the same shift boss. Eventually the operation shrank down to just three people: Dustin, Mr. CC, and one old-timer boss who wanted no details, only instructions — and who happily stationed himself at first base to block The Flash.

THE BREAK ROOM
One night Dustin goes on break. Two men in suits walked in, unusual for a casino where suits were rarely worn. They were gaming control agents, and they accused him of cheating specifically signaling the hole card to Mt. CC. It wasn't what he'd actually been doing. He realized only afterward that the agents were on the table watching the play. They could not detect the moves. Finally the gaming agents left, Dustin was not arrested, not even fired.

THE QUIET ENDING
Mr. CC was also questioned and then he left the casino never to return. Dustin was the last man standing and wanted to quit, but Frankenstein's said: quitting right after a gaming control visit would look far more suspicious than sticking around. So Dustin kept dealing on the square, for almost another month before finally being let go. He moved back to Vegas. He cut his hair, shaved the beard, and dropped ninety pounds. The Buffalo was gone for good.

WHY IT MATTERED
Looking back after four decades, Dustin doesn't talk about the money first. He talks about the move. That first encounter with The Flash and dealing to Mr. CC's. The Flash became the move he and The Kaiser would go on to use relentlessly for years afterward. One phone call and one move that changed the entire direction of his career.

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