LAS VEGAS -- It's usually the roar from the craps table and the shrill ring of the slot machines that provide most of the excitement in Las Vegas, but this week all eyes are on an unlikely quarter of the casino.

Bingo? Indeed, the hottest scandal in Vegas at the moment is the unraveling tale of a Reno software engineer who allegedly rigged electronic bingo machines in Las Vegas to allow himself to play many more cards than he had paid for. The programmer, Brett Keeton, 38, apparently killed himself Friday by leaping off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge after he realized he was the focus of a fraud investigation, gaming investigators say.

Keeton worked for GameTech International, which makes two varieties of electronic card "minders" that keep track of the numbers called for the gambler so that the gambler can play more cards at one time. Players who use the electronic minders don't get actual bingo cards but instead play off of computer-generated cards that are kept up-to-date by the computer.

One version of the card-minder is hand-held and requires the player to enter the numbers as they are called on a pad, while the other is a fixed-base machine that is informed electronically of the latest numbers.

Gamblers also can play with actual paper bingo cards using ink daubers to mark the numbers called, but that's slower and reduces many players' abilities to keep up.

Investigators from the Nevada Gaming Control Board are investigating what Keeton may have done to get the fixed-base machines to give him extra cards after paying only the $5 or $20 fee for a single bingo session.

One programmer speculated that Keeton may have sent out the altered software code in a routine software upgrade, which is done remotely from the Reno company to every unit in Nevada.

It's unclear how Keeton triggered the machine to give him the extra cards when he went to Las Vegas to play. Casino sources say he didn't claim prizes large enough to have forced him to fill out an income tax statement in order to avoid being noticed. Bingo jackpots typically don't exceed $2,000.

Yet Keeton, who was in Las Vegas for a gambling technology trade show last week, was noticed on Sept. 19 playing irregularly by a security officer at one of the six Station Casinos that use GameTech's machines.

Keeton drove back to Reno that same night, showed up for work on Sept. 20, then apparently committed suicide in San Francisco at about 8:25 p.m., Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes said.

Nevada Gaming Control Board Dennis Neilander ordered all 3,475 GameTech electronic readers shut down on Monday, but Neilander allowed all but 282 fixed-base minders back into service by the next night.

But in the meantime, only paper bingo was permitted at the 16 casinos that use GameTech equipment, angering some players and dropping bingo business by as much as 30 percent in some locations.

GameTech spokeswoman Cheryl Walsh said the company hopes to get approval to use the fixed-base minders again by the end of this weekend. Software programmers have isolated the glitch that Keeton allegedly introduced and are now working to prove to Neilander's board that it's been fixed.

The incident, which has received front-page attention in Las Vegas newspapers for days, was a surprise to security veterans, who noted that casinos spend millions to protect against cheating in the high-stakes games.