Insider scams and increasing violence.
That’s the message Willy Allison, founder of the World Game Protection conference, shared Monday morning in talking about the threats and risks facing the casino industry in 2019.
Allison’s presentation kicked off the three-day educational conference at Tropicana Las Vegas.
Willy Allison
“It has become apparent that casinos are changing, and it’s not just about card counters,” Allison said, talking about employees involved in thefts and scams. “The trend seems to be moving the wrong way, and the collusion is costing a lot of money. Casinos are increasingly becoming a place of violent acts. Sometimes it’s among players (or) customers, and sometimes it’s our employees.”
Nearly 600 people, ranging from surveillance and security to managers, regulators, and personnel staff, are at the conference, which aims to present information about the latest threats and scams and the best practices and solutions from around the world for how to deal with them. More than two dozen speakers from inside and outside the industry will present technology and methods of customer and employee care and risk reduction.
Casinos need to do a better job of enforcing the protective procedures they already have in place, Allison said. The scams being used aren’t new, he said, but syndicates are now going so far as to try to time when slot machine jackpots will hit. Other groups are lifting players’ loyalty cards and using the data on them to steal rewards.
Most of the biggest scams in the casino industry involve players obtaining inside information of cards before they’re dealt, especially baccarat, where casinos are being cheated out of hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars, Allison said.
“Players getting the fix in the game is the common denominator of the scams of 2018,” Allison said. “It’s been the same theme – inside information.”
For example, a dealer peeks at several cards, remembers the sequence, and tips off players at the table about when to bet. The most critical part, he said, is the shuffle and loading the cards in the shoe.
There continues to be cheating with craps, as well. In 2018, Nevada added three people, including a former craps dealer, to its restricted list (the Black Book) after a scheme run at the Bellagio netted the trio more than $1 million.
“But the most common way employees steal is good old chip theft,” Allison said.
He also indicated that thieves are getting more brazen. In Alabama in 2018, a Wind Creek Montgomery casino employee and one other was charged in a theft of more than $190,000 from a cash kiosk, while two employees of the Mazatzal Casino in Arizona were arrested in August and charged with stealing $650,000 from the casino in an armed robbery. Two Vietnamese tourists were murdered in their room in the Circus Circus in Las Vegas in June, also as part of a robbery.
“A week didn’t go by when there wasn’t a casino robbery somewhere in the world,” Allison said. “In this town (Las Vegas) we had 12 last year – one a month. They’re mostly armed robberies, and most of (the robbers) weren’t caught.”
American casinos are particularly vulnerable, he said, because of the easy access they offer to the public.
“Following people out of a casino and attacking them is a growing trend,” Allison said. “They’re watching people go to the cage and seeing who the winners are at slot machines.
“We have people coming in and hurting our players.”
Mixing the availability of guns with the opioid epidemic and gambling can be a “deadly cocktail,” Allison said.
That’s a lot of negativity to start off a conference, he acknowledged, but these are the nature of the threats and risks faced by casinos today, which is where, he said, the gaming protection conference comes in.
“We are developing programs and training, and raising awareness… It starts at the top,” Allison said.
Also on Monday’s panel was Snoqualmie Casino President and CEO Brian Decorah, who was in Las Vegas on Oct. 1st, 2017 during the Route 91 Harvest festival massacre.
Decorah later hired the Tennessee-based Tomahawk Strategic Solutions, a group of former Navy Seals, to train the staff at Snoqualmie to respond to an active shooter situation.
“We knew immediately we were a threat, because we’re a soft target,” Decorah said.
Casino employees went through a drill, complete with gunfire, and learned methods of fleeing and hiding as a way to save their lives and those of customers. Decorah believes his was the first casino in the U.S. to do the drill.
“They hear the gunfire, and they get it,” Decorah said. “It gives them that fast reaction time. If you act (to save) yourself, you will save a lot of guest’s lives, as well, because they will do what you’re doing.”
