Two high-profile speakers at next week’s World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas said security and human resources staff will learn how to create safer workplaces, avoid lawsuits and stave off cheating that can cost casinos millions of dollars.
The educational sessions run Monday through Wednesday at the Tropicana Las Vegas and include Bill Zender, a casino consultant specializing in table game protection. Zender served as general manager for Artichoke Joe’s Casino in California for nearly a year.
Also included in the conference is body language expert, Joe Navarro, a 25-year veteran of the FBI where he investigated counterintelligence matters and was a founding member of the agency’s Behavioral Analysis Program. Navarro is the author of 12 books including Hunting Terrorists, Dangerous Personalities and a leading body language book, What Every Body is Saying.
While technology is a major part of the conference, training casino staff to weed out threats and cheating will be discussed during the program. Casino security and surveillance experts will talk about the emerging threats and ways to counter them.
“If there’s a theme for the show it’s the synergy we must have moving forward of using of human skills and technology,” said Willy Allison, the show’s founder. “I believe in the next 10 years that (aspect) collides with video analytics and artificial intelligence. But right now humans need to be trained especially when you’re protecting people and games.”
Zender will be on three panels, including one dealing with anti-money laundering. In 2017, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, hit Artichoke Joe’s with a $8 million fine. The penalty was reduced to $5 million a year ago for the casino’s monitoring of anti-money laundering. Zender said the casino now has some of the most robust anti-money laundering procedures in the nation.
In another session, Zender will talk about electronic table games and vulnerabilities that have been exploited. He will offer advice on how to protect them from cheats and advantage players.
“There are doors being opened and a lot of avenues for use in advantage play,” Zender said. “There was one guy on the East Coast that found a video blackjack game with a tell if the dealer had an ace in the hole. We are rushing electronic games because we want to attract millennials without any due diligence or testing, and no one in the casinos know how these things run. We’re getting in trouble with these things.”
Zender will discuss training casino supervisors and surveillance for threats to roulette and craps. More states are adding the games to their menu. Cheating in casinos is getting more sophisticated, and groups are going after larger amount of money, Zender added.
“Nowadays they’re going after millions instead of $25 dollars,” Zender said. “The World Game Protection Conference is great because there’s always something new, and there’s a lot of people who should be going who don’t. They’re the ones in the past who get hit with the scams.”
During the conference, Navarro will discuss ways casino operators can protect properties from dangerous personalities, whether that’s customers or employees. Through examining behavior, human resources, security, management, and staff can be trained to detect and stop individuals before they do harm and trigger lawsuits.
“Anybody in the work place, whether they’re doing the hiring, a pit boss, a dealer or a maid can pick up on behavior that says something is wrong,” Navarro said. “People from the industry should come to this because you don’t want to end up in a situation where you are sued because the information is out there. There’s a checklist for behavior.”
Other speakers include Tony Stone, vice president of surveillance for the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and Robert Krauss, vice president of public safety at the Pechanga Resort in California, which introduced robots and dogs to its security team. Mike Waite, vice president of security and surveillance at Okada Manila, will discuss the casino’s specialized emergency response teams.
“I toured the Asian Pacific region last summer, and I was out there searching for best practices and what people are doing in terms of preparing themselves for today’s threats, especially the violent threats,” Allison said. “The good news is there are casinos that are doing some really good stuff. They are developing emergency response teams and they’re getting new AI (artificial intelligence) technologies.”
Michael Rozin, president of Rozin Security, will talk about using threat detection to project events. Rozin is a graduate of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel and completed the Advanced Security and Anti-Terrorism Training under the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet). He worked as a principal security consultant for the 2018 Super Bowl Host Committee.
Josh Davis, an international expert on facial recognition, will talk about how super-recognizers, can be employed in the casino industry.
“There’s resources out there that can help our industry, train our people and put plans in place preparing for these events,” Allison said. “You can get consultants and specialists, but it’s hard to get people in our industry to talk about security and surveillance. I got guys from all over the world who are going to share their secrets with us. I think that’s one of the good things that came out of the Oct. 1st (2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas) is that maybe people will start talking about how they do stuff and share it with others.”
Also during the conference, Vegas Golden Knights President Kerry Bubolz will give a keynote presentation about how the first-year NHL team went to the Stanley Cup Final in its inaugural season.
A welcome reception and networking is set for Sunday night ahead of the three days of programs and technology exhibit on the final day.
