Monique Laurent: Leader of the French Cigarette Pack Scandal

Monique Laurent will always be remembered for her captivating beauty, but there’s more to Monique than just her good looks.

She was incredibly smart, so smart that she had developed a foolproof plan on how to manipulate the roulette wheel into giving her the results she wanted.

This lead to her and her team finding a way to cheat the Deauville Casino in France out of $1 million in less than a week.

Although Monique did eventually get caught, it may not have been for the reasons one would expect.

Card Experts have placed Monique Laurent in their Legendary Cheats section and have this to say about her actions,

For more information on Monique Laurent and her crimes, please feel free to read through this article.

Monique was born on Valentine’s Day in 1948 at a hospital near Deauville, France. No information has been released concerning her childhood but the crimes she committed in her mid-twenties have made her infamous among the gambling community today.

Towards the beginning of the summer season in 1973, Monique’s brother started working at the Deauville Casino in France as a croupier. Under his position, he had full access to the roulette wheels and was actually one of the men who spun the wheels and checked them for accuracy.

During the slow periods at the casino, her brother would take the time to examine the wheel and see if there was any way he could control the outcome of the spins. He asked Monique for help, as he knew how intelligent she was.

Whoever was holding a radio transmitter could choose with 90% accuracy which six numbers the ball would possibly land on. Realizing this, it was Monique’s idea to hide the transmitter in a pack of cigarettes, as no one would become suspicious of her carrying them around.

They realized to effectively pull their plan off, they would need to recruit one more person to join their team. Monique quickly asked her husband to participate and he happily accepted her offer.

It was his responsibility to place the bet on all six possible numbers that the roulette ball could land on and it was Monique’s responsibility to press the hidden button on the pack of cigarettes so they could persuade the ball to land on one of those six numbers.

She would often stand at a nearby table with her back turned so that she looked as if she was pre-occupied with another game.

Lastly, it was Monique’s brother’s responsibility to discreetly switch the casino’s roulette ball with his own and then give Monique the signal to press the button.

Figuring out how to place the receiver inside the ball without it looking like it had been taken apart and put back together was challenging enough without somehow being able to do this while making sure the ball still weighed the same as the standard balls without the receiver.

After several different accounts of trial and error, Monique’s brother was successfully able to produce a ball that met all of the requirements.

Now it was time to execute their plan, and betting on their first set of numbers was very nerve-wracking for everyone in the group.

In a week, this conniving group of three was able to accumulate nearly five million francs (equivalent to $1 million) at that time, and that money was split evenly between the three of them. Naturally, casino security became increasingly suspicious as more and more money seemed to walk out their doors.

Casino officials were immediately curious about how this ordinary gambler kept having so much luck at the roulette wheels. They hired outside organizations to come in and examine the wheels, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with them.

They also paid close attention to Monique’s brother, but he technically wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for the casino owner to take notice of the beautiful women who had been coming to his hotel regularly for the past couple weeks.

He was eager to make advancements towards her and he wasn’t too pleased when she shot him down. His anger caused him to keep an even closer eye on her and to question her every move.

The casino owner wondered why this gorgeous woman was always alone and why she hardly placed any bets. He also was curious about the pack of cigarettes she always had on hand and yet never smoked a single one.

He noticed that she always seemed to stand at the table next to where the man kept winning.

Although he didn’t have all the answers to these questions, he made it a point to find out if there was any correlation between her pack of cigarettes and this man’s unlikely winning streak.

The casino owner decided to approach Monique a second time, asking her for a cigarette to see if she was hiding anything in her pack. When she couldn’t give him the cigarette he asked for, he immediately had casino security confiscate the pack from her and examine it for any evidence of cheating.

It didn’t take long for police to determine that the pack of cigarettes had been used in a cheating scandal, so Monique was quickly arrested for her crimes. These infamous events later became known as “The French Cigarette Pack Scam.”

The Award-winning, French film “Les Tricheurs,” which was released in 1984 was inspired by Monique and her team of casino cheats. The words, “Les Tricheurs” translates into English as “The Cheaters,” and the storyline reflects the title flawlessly.

The main character of this film, Mic, played by Pascale Petit, was inspired by Monique Laurent. Mic and Monique share similar personality traits and participate in similar methods of cheating. They also share some of the same physical traits, as they both have petite figures and short, black hair.

Although Monique never had to serve time for her actions, she did have to give back the majority of the money she won from the casino.

Despite getting caught, Monique still loved the environment of casinos and just couldn’t seem to stay away. She has since moved to the United States and resides in the heart of Las Vegas.

Although she no longer gambles or participates in any cheating scandals that we are aware of, she does spend a great deal of time at the casinos there. She works as a wardrobe department manager at small Las Vegas clothing store during the day, but spends her evenings and weekends at the casinos.