Like a bird of prey, Gary Bemsel quickly scanned the thousands of video slot machines, looking for the small jackpots.
Every minute or two, he found a terminal with unclaimed credits, its redemption button lit up, and the seat was empty. He approached rapidly, pressed the button, and snatched the golden ticket. He hit the jackpot of 11 cents, 22 cents, and 50 cents.
‘And,' said Mr. Bemzel, tall, slim, single, and young for a 55-year-old. It's like a big bank,” he said.
With a keen eye honed by making a living as an off-track ticket seller at racetracks for the past 15 years, he can scan hundreds of video slots a minute.
Bemsel is a regular at Aqueduct and Belmont Racetracks, taking two two-hour trains each day from top10gambling.net. However, just a year ago, when New York City's racetracks closed and many off-track racetrack users flooded into Aqueduct, the harvest at the racetracks became less and less.
Shortly after the so-called racino opened next to the racetrack in late October, Mr. Bemzel heard from a colleague at Stuper that he could win a small fortune on the casino floor without having to bet a dime on the slots. Eventually, Bemzel got into the habit of buying horse tickets, earning a living from unclaimed racetrack winnings.
It's a legitimate way of life,” he said. “It's a legitimate life,” he says, “and I don't have to go through the trash.
Mr. Bemzel has not given up bending over. After a lap around the track, he has enough cash to stand in line at the ticket window. As he deftly weaves his way through the crowd of cheering, swearing ticket sellers, he can read the slips on the ground and quickly tell if it is a winning ticket or not. For face-down tickets, he uses a nimble soccer-style flip with both feet.
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Some of the winning tickets Mr. Bemzel found at the ticket machine (Credit.Julie Glassberg for The New York Times)
At the racetrack, Mr. Bemzel is just one of perhaps 20 regular vultures. Each has his own unique blending technique. The savvy ones pose as gamblers by tucking gambling debit cards into their shirts or clutching dollar bills. One regular marches with authority in a used “security” jacket. Another constantly holds a cell phone to his ear.
Mr. Bemzel, dressed like a high roller in loafers, slacks, and a dress shirt, moves quickly through the crowd as if he were heading for the high-limit section.
The first few weeks,” he says, “I used to find $20 bills stuck in the A.T.M. machines. But then certain people caught on, and now they spend all day at the machines, snatching $20 bills.”
A casino spokesman said there are no specific rules against collecting vouchers, but they do not recommend it. If a bettor misplaces a ticket, “we will work with that bettor to recover that lost ticket,” the spokesperson added.
Bemsel has been an avid horse betting fan since he became hooked on tickets at Monmouth Park on the Jersey Shore when he was 16 years old. After high school, he worked in a warehouse until he turned 40, when he saw a man at the Freehold Racetrack in New Jersey taking tickets out of a trash can. He and three other stoopers rent a house for the Kentucky Derby and the August race in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
On Wednesday, he walked quickly around the two massive casino floors, checking thousands of video terminals with optimistic names like Instant Winner, Stinkin' Rich, and Wall Street Winner, and saving up a fistful of vouchers to redeem at a nearby window.
Bemzel says he works 12 hours a day and gets between $600 and $1,200 a week in winnings, most of which he spends on bad horse bets. ‘I do it to feed my gambling addiction,' he said. It's a disease.”
The racetrack is a godsend, he says.
Back then, he said, he could make $1,000 a day and regularly stayed in suites in Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
On Wednesday, he stopped during a round at the racetrack and said, “One of these days I'll hit the jackpot and come back on top.”
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