Elkerton does not dismiss the possibility outright. In fact, she says that it does at least seem plausible. The Helixes that Aristocrat had been shipping, she says, “do not yet contain the solution that we have implemented.” (An Aristocrat spokesperson stresses that “Ms. Elkerton’s comment in response to the extortionist’s cheat allegation against unspecified games on Helix cabinets simply acknowledged a theoretical potential.”)

Sensing that he now has the advantage, Alex instructs Peter to demand that his proposal be passed along to Aristocrat’s most senior decision-makers, whom he believes would accept his offer if they knew their Helixes were in peril. But Elkerton counters by citing not only Aristocrat’s commitment to being “truly ethical” in its dealings but also her fear that Alex might not be a man of his word: “I have no guarantee that Alex shuts down this crew slash syndicate if we were to pay him a fee, a consulting fee, whatever we want to call it.”

Before ending the call, Elkerton poses a question to Alex: Why, after many years of earning millions with his milking system, is he now eager to cut a deal with Aristocrat? Why is he no longer content to continue making a small fortune by sending his agents around the globe? “He does know that in some countries [his system] is illegal, and that does concern him because he does not want to be criminal,” Peter answers. “He decided it would be better for him to get out of the illegal field and just shut it down and get a certain payment from the company for consultation and the patch.”

Upon hearing that Alex’s fondest wish is to be a straight arrow, Elkerton bursts into grim laughter.

Alex waited three weeks for Aristocrat to have a change of heart, then sent Elkerton a lengthy email in which he detailed the specific services he could provide in exchange for a sum that ran into eight figures. He also outlined some of the steps he might take if Aristocrat continued to dawdle, such as sharing his vulnerability information with the company’s competitors so that they could secure their own machines as well as poach Aristocrat’s customers.

As in his earlier email, he offered mathematical evidence of his bona fides—in this instance a breakdown of how the PRNG works for a game called 50 Dragons that runs on Helix machines. The proof also included a photograph of a Helix machine that Alex’s organization had allegedly targeted at the Sands Macau Casino; Alex urged Elkerton to have one of the company’s engineers check the machine’s logs to verify his claims.

Aristocrat parsed its words carefully in response to my inquiry as to whether Alex has cracked a Helix game’s PRNG. “Aristocrat received information from the extortionist alleging to be proof of a cheat,” the company informed me in a written statement. “However we could not verify any cheat based on the information provided. Aristocrat reiterates that it has no evidence of any actual or potential cheat of any title other than the handful of Mark VI vintage titles previously reported.” (Aristocrat has informed its customers that the thousands of compromised Mark VI games “are no longer supportable” and urges them “to replace this old, end of life technology with new, more modern products.”)

It seems improbable, however, that Alex could send Aristocrat a proof that the company’s engineers would instantly recognize as fiction. Were he to do so, Aristocrat would have good reason to dismiss him as a charlatan whose threats are idle. But based on its reaction to my various inquiries, the company seems far from nonchalant about the Alex situation. (In response to a specific question about whether Alex’s email contained the 50 Dragons proof, a company spokesman said: “Aristocrat has confirmed this extortion attempt, the fact that it has been referred to the relevant authorities, and managed in compliance with all relevant protocols. It would be inappropriate to comment further.”)

After Alex shared his most recent Aristocrat PRNG proof with me, I showed it to David Ackley, a computer science professor at the University of New Mexico. Ackley discovered that the algorithm had a peculiar backstory. On a hunch, he took some of the equation’s values that were expressed in hexadecimal format and converted them to decimal format. When he did, he noticed that the resulting numbers were familiar: One was an approximation of pi (31415926), one was an abbreviation of the mathematical constant e (271828), and one was a slightly ribald jest (69069).