The great mystery involving ASM, and can they be pre programed to cheat?

[GMass]

There was an instance at Foxwoods in CT in which an ASM was serviced and a dip-switch inside was set improperly causing the machine to organize the shoe back into perfect brand-new deck order. They were fined heavily for it.

The machine's manufacturer boasts that each card is read to ensure it hasn't been marked, tampered with or switched, and counts each card to ensure the shoe is complete.

Given that info, it's obvious that the machine could be programed to do anything - make the shoe low-heavy at the beginning and bury the high cards at the end where they're likely to be cut off - or could be programed to keep the deck balanced throughout, so that the running count is nearly always zero and the inherent house advantage prevails. That said, if a gaming commission or other other oversight authority were to forensically inspect the devices and discover that was occurring, the casino would never deal another hand ever again.

[mofungoo]

Given that info, it's obvious that the machine could be programed to do anything

That is possible, almost anything is possible. However, we here on this site deal in probabilities not possibilities, and the probabilities are near zero that a casino would hire someone to modify one of these machines to cheat. As you said, the mod would be discovered with dire consequences for the casino that did such a thing. The fact is that casinos are literally printing money and it would be highly unlikely that they would kill the goose that is laying golden eggs to make a relatively small amount by modifying a shuffling machine to cheat players.