Three years since scammers started targeting casino cages nationwide to steal millions of dollars, law-enforcement officers say criminals continue to try to take advantage of confused casino workers.
Jeremy Wolff, agent in charge for the Colorado Gaming Division’s Central City and Black Hawk field office, told a surprised audience at the World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas that the scams haven’t stopped. Wolff appeared in a panel discussion with Marc Evans, a cybercrimes and fraud detective in Las Vegas and founder of a company that provides training and education to financial institutions, law enforcement, and senior communities. He echoed Wolff that scam attempts continue today across several business types.
In March 2023, $500,000 was reported stolen from the Monarch Casino in Black Hawk, the largest casino heist in Colorado history. In that scam, a casino cashier took 10 bricks of $50,000 from the vault and delivered the money to someone in a hospital parking lot. The cage employee told authorities the money needed to be taken to an attorney or the casino would breach its contract. The perpetrator was arrested.
“I thought this had slowed down a little, but general managers are saying they’re still getting a few of these a week,” Wolff said. “They’re probing the enemy lines. If they do it multiple times, maybe they’ll get that one employee to buy off on it and then they’ll get their payday.”
In Las Vegas in June 2023, $1.1 million was stolen from Circa Las Vegas. A man claiming to be co-owner Greg Stevens convinced a casino-cage employee the cash was paying for fire-safety equipment. That case, too, led to an arrest.
Thieves also targeted casinos in Mesquite and Laughlin, with employees at the Golden Nugget in Laughlin duped into thinking they were transferring money from cages to a legitimate business.
Evans said right after the incidents in 2023, he was getting phone calls that scammers were attempting it daily at different casinos to get employees to walk out of cages with cash.
“The cases I dealt with were three quarters of a million dollars. In that same month, $1.1 million walked out of a different location. A week later, it was $150,000. Right after that, I was getting call after call. We have 100 casinos (including bar casinos) and not just on the Strip. Even smaller ones were getting the same calls.”
Following those casino cases, there were similar attempts reported at retail stores, gas stations, drug stores, and other businesses.
“It wasn’t just that they were targeting casinos, but casinos had a lot of money.” Evans said. “The biggest ones were marijuana dispensaries, where they have a lot of cash on hand, for $300,000, $400,000, and $500,000 at a time. “The attempts are still happening, but the success [rate] is slowing down.”
Transnational criminal organizations are behind the scams to take the money out of the country.
“Sometimes we’re lucky and are able to recover the money,” Evans said. “In one of my big ones, I was able to recover $850,000.”
World Game Protection Conference founder Willy Allison said he was stunned that the attempts are still continuing and people in the rest of the world can’t believe they’re successful.
Wolff said the scams are similar. Someone calls the cage, saying they’re an owner or general manager, and puts employees on the clock, so that it’s urgent to take out the money to pay a bill. The employees feel they can’t let their boss down.
“It worked in several jurisdictions and by the time all this has happened, local authorities from local enforcement are behind the clock,” Wolff said. “The money went out of the casino, and now we’re chasing it down. Similar things happened (in Nevada) with the same MO, getting employees to move cash that violates policy, putting pressure on them, and convincing them they’ll save the property.”
None of these cases involved AI or technology. They were old-school cases of making a phone call, impersonating high-level executives and others, Evans said. The scammers do research on social media to learn about employees to see who they want to target, he added. “It was social engineering, and all they had to do was trick that person into believing who they were in order to walk out with millions of dollars in cash.”
“All they need to do is find that one weak point in the system and possibly get it and walk out,” Wolff said.
Evans said Nevada casinos implemented additional training to blunt the thefts from happening again and alerts were put in place requiring secondary verifications.
“The biggest thing casinos did was communicate with each other,” Evans said.
Wolff said Colorado casinos do a good job of sharing information. While it was embarrassing when Black Hawk got hit three years ago, it prompted every property to look at their cage procedures, after they loosened up following the pandemic, and reinforced training.
“People weren’t all in like they should have been,” Wolff said.
Shortly after the Black Hawk incident, employees at another property were walking out money, but it was halted before leaving the property.
“They’re doing so much better, but unfortunately, it took a big incident in our area and other jurisdictions,” Wolff said. “It got us back to where we should have been.”
Wolff said when the stories break of the scams it gave others the idea to try it thinking it’s simple and take their shot as well.
