In the spring and summer of 2023, several casino cage managers across the country were tricked into handing over large sums of cash to criminals. Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas got hit for $1.17 million. Many of us asked the obvious question: How could anyone fall for such a ruse?” Erin West thinks she has the answer…and some solutions.
After 26 years as a prosecutor in Santa Clara County, CA (aka Silicon Valley), she quit her job and founded “Operation Shamrock,” dedicated to fighting what she calls a worldwide “scamdemic.”
So, how could sophisticated casino staff fall for these scams? “The whole thing is, we are up against scammers who do this all day, every day, and who have perfected this craft,” says West. “They know exactly what levers to pull and what triggers. It sounds insane, but the way they do it is, they’re going to do it at a weird time of day, and they are going to do it where their whole objective is not to give you any time to reflect.”
In the Circa case, the scammer used phone calls and texts to impersonate well-known casino owner Derek Stevens. The fraudster said the cashier needed to make immediate cash payments to a safety equipment provider or lose certification from the Las Vegas Fire Department. It was, they said, an “emergency.”
Many of these cage scams used “spear fishing” to target specific employees, social media to learn facts about casino team members and operations, AI to imitate voices, and, in some cases, cryptocurrency to get away with the stolen loot. Cryptocurrency is relatively new, but it is one of West’s biggest concerns these days.
She says, “The U.S. needs to declare this a national security threat and take coordinated action. That would empower banks, law enforcement, and Treasury to act decisively. Right now, we have people tackling bits and pieces independently. Until we mobilize as a unit, we’re just throwing eggs at a skyscraper. We need a task force, leadership, and a clear plan to dismantle this industry.”
She added that a big part of the problem is that those well-intentioned groups mentioned above are all operating in individual “silos,” meaning they all have valuable information that they should be sharing, but they don’t.
Coincidentally, those same “silos,” (but in our industry) were the reason that surveillance pro Willy Allison, and his wife Jo, started the WGPC conference in 2006. Prior to that time, casino security and surveillance teams worked in near isolation with little sharing, especially among competitors.
Now at this annual three-day gathering in Las Vegas, over 600 attendees learn the latest in fraud detection, surveillance, cheating, cybercrime and that includes “scams.” Unlike the past, these pros openly share and exchange their experiences, as well as attend training sessions and panel discussions. There are also some scary demonstrations and discussions with former card counters, hackers, scammers and other casino cheats.
While the public would love to sit in (since some of the sessions are like watching a great episode of “Law & Order”), the conference is not open to outsiders. All attendees must be approved. Ironically, (and thanks largely to WGPC) this formerly secretive and isolationist group now has a reputation for more coordination and communication than most other casino departments.
Sharing is a theme that West has been trumpeting for years. In September of 2024, she testified before the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions: “I come before you as a woman who has literally and figuratively lost her voice from asking more and more loudly for the last two years for a national strategy and whole-of-government collaboration including state and local law enforcement. We have reached crisis level and we must act today.”
She is certainly doing her part. “I left my job (as a prosecutor) to start ‘Operation Shamrock’ and work on this full time. One of the things I did was build the ‘Crypto Coalition.’ There are 2,400 active members of current law enforcement in this group, and that’s how we train and teach and share information.
While seemingly perpetually upbeat, West is also realistic, “We’re not doing enough. The need for affordable tools and training continues to plague my peers.” She bemoans, “We need more work on it. We need more resources. What happens in the United States right now is, if you had $100,000 stolen from you, and you went into your local law enforcement, they are likely to say, we can’t help you. And that has to stop.”
The stats are alarming: the FBI’s Internet Crime Report shows that scam losses rose from under $13 billion in 2023 to $16.6 billion in 2024, a 33% jump. There were over 800,000 reports each year with the largest grouping in the Phishing/Spoofing category (193,407). West notes that this is truly an international problem, and the FBI says that over 200 countries filed complaints with them in 2024. In the U.S., California led all states with just under 100,000 complaints and over $2.5 billion in losses. These numbers are likely lower than what is really occurring since many of these crimes go unreported.
One scam category that West often cites is “pig butchering.” Despite the name, West explains it is not fraud in the meat packing industry. Rather, it is a term bad actors use to “fatten up” their victims (getting them to increase their wallets) before “slaughtering” them and taking their money.
Sadly, these new scams seem to pop up worldwide faster than a game of Whack-A-Mole. To counter that, West now has a weekly “Stolen” podcast that covers topics like sextortion, romance plots, hacking, human trafficking, cryptocurrency and dozens of other scams.
She says, “The fact is this crime will not stop until my Aunt Judy knows about it. And so, I needed a podcast to be able to reach regular people. I needed a podcast to be able to reach my neighbor and my kids’ friends’ parents.”
West’s keynote presentation at the WGPC entitled “Scam Factories: The World’s Fastest-Growing Transnational Form of Organized Crime” will occur on Day 2 of the conference, March 4.
The World Game Protection Conference will be held this year at the South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa in Las Vegas. In addition to numerous training sessions, featured speakers and presentations, there is also an EXPO trade show displaying the latest from vendors on camera technology, facial recognition, threat detection, databases, AI solutions, security robots and the like.
Registration is open now until the start of the conference on March 3, 2026. In its 21st year, this show has become a “don’t miss” event each year for regulators and security pros. It can also be a real eye-opener for any casino executive regardless of which department they work.
