This isn’t the first time casinos on the Las Vegas Strip have been embroiled in an anti-money laundering scandal.
About a decade ago, Las Vegas Sands, then the operator of The Venetian, and Caesars Entertainment both were under fire for lapses in reporting suspicious transactions.
Sands paid the federal government $47.4 million for failing to file Suspicious Activity Reports about Zhenli Ye Gon, an alleged international drug trafficker who was once The Venetian’s largest cash bettor. Caesars paid FinCEN an $8 million civil penalty for failing to appropriately police its private gaming salons, allowing what the agency called “some of the most lucrative and riskiest financial transactions to go unreported.
