We specialize in on-site training in Surveillance and Security, including all forms of game protection, detection and handling of advantage play, and training in the detection of cheating and internal theft. See the list below for an idea of most of what we have available.

We are looking for areas where there is a concentration of casinos, for host casinos willing to support large open enrollment training seminars. We are looking at bringing groups of casino Surveillance and Gaming Commission people together to build teamwork and communication as well as bring up the level of awareness.

Gary L. Powell and Jim Goding are world leaders in casino security/surveillance training and management, offering comprehensive training for surveillance, table games, security, and slot operations on how to:

	Identify cheats and scammers	Work with General Managers
	Identify the latest slot cheating devices	Reduce liability
	Identify the latest cheating techniques	Identify advantage players
	Detect and prevent Internal Theft scams	Provide game protection
	Enforce proper policies and procedures	Establish surveillance reviews
	Manage evidence	Increase Management/Surveillance teamwork
	Manage lost and found/detect theft	Manage equipment
	Fully utilize Surveillance capabilities	Manage Risk
	Utilize Investigative techniques	Etc.

Training seminars are catered to each casino's individual needs. These sessions have been presented to casinos around the world to help improve worker performance and accountability while increasing profitability.

Gary Powell is a senior trainer with over 30 years of investigative and casino gaming experience.

Contact Gary for a resume of his experience: http://www.casinosurveillancenews.com/powellbio.htm

Or email directly to gp@casinosurveillancenews.com

Jim Goding has been an investigator or supervisor in Casino Surveillance for over ten years, and has been training others for eight years, both on his own and in partnership with Gary Powell. He has a textbook currently in use at two universities and over 100 casinos worldwide, in four languages. Contact Jim directly at jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com for a resume of his experience.

http://www.casinosurveillancenews.com/training.htm

We are fully ready for business. Inquire at

consultant@casinosurveillancenews.com

Jim Goding

3044 Capistrano Court

Las Vegas, NV 89121

(702) 622-7915 mobile New Number

(lf no answer please leave detailed voicemail message. I am often out of calling areas.)

The INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CERTIFIED SURVEILLANCE PROFESSIONALS is a group of like-minded individuals dedicated to improving the training and professionalism of Casino Surveillance personnel. We require that members be currently employed in a Casino Surveillance department at time of enrollment. Training seminars are offered for members on a quarterly basis. For more information visit the website through the link above.

CSN News: new policy: I will send the text of any single article of six pages or less in length, to any single individual, free of charge, in non-reproducible PDF format, by email. Send such requests for articles (including the specific article by name) to request@casinosurveillancenews.com

This unfortunately cannot apply to instructors or others who would be further distributing the materials. I have to make a living too.

New article for sale.

I have completed all initial work on a new Gaming Glossary, targeted to casino workers from entry level up to top management, with especial emphasis on the terms needed for Surveillance people (everything).

The Gaming Glossary at this time is over thirty-five pages in length, and includes as many of the terms as I could include without further feedback from my readership.
This will be the Glossary for the textbook I am still writing.

The Gaming Glossary is as up-to-date as I could make it. Its cost will be $30. It will be added to the 2008 Edition of the Casino Surveillance Operations Manual (sometime in the summer, after I have received feedback on other terms which should be included).

From earlier training I have received and given, I have learned that it is extremely important for people to understand the words and jargon of the trade. This is the reason for the Gaming Glossary.

So here is the deal: buy the Gaming Glossary at this time for $30. I am ASKING for feedback on terms that I should have included, or for additional definitions.

IF YOU BUY IT NOW, I WILL SEND YOU A FREE COPY WHEN IT IS UPDATED

and in its final form, whether you have suggested additions or changes or not.

It will have no shipping charge at this time, and will be sent to you in an inexpensive cover,

punched for 3-hole binder. You can thus add it to other materials. One copy per property or person,

and one free copy per property or person when I re-send on completion in June or July.

If you wish to buy the new glossary, email to request@casinosurveillancenews.com and put "Glossary" in the subject line. I will send a hard copy as soon as I receive payment. It will have features that prevent photocopying, at this time, in order to protect my copyrights.

The ‘’buyer beware’’ at this time is that I am depending upon the buyers to tell me if something is either omitted or incorrect. However, when all feedback has been received and additions or corrections made, I will send a copy of the corrected and completed document at NO CHARGE to all previous buyers.

Please remember, I have never considered myself the final authority on anything. So if you buy the Gaming Glossary, and find that I have defined something incorrectly or incompletely, PLEASE tell me about it. And PLEASE tell me what terms I have omitted that need to be defined.

Once again: if you wish to buy the Gaming Glossary, 35 pages in length, email to request@casinosurveillancenews.com and put ‘’Glossary’’ in the subject line. We will work out payment from that email. $30, no shipping, and free complete/corrected copy to all buyers in June or July, or immediately after I feel I have received and handled all feedback.

Due to other writing duties, my keynote article is once again a reprint from an earlier time. I have unfortunately not completed a new article ready for publication.

Protecting Casino Patrons

By Jim Goding

Protection of guests from physical risks, from thieves and scam artists should be a primary concern of not only the security staff but of all casino and hotel employees.

Your most important asset is your casino patrons. All the table games, slot machines, restaurants and entertainment facilities are worth nothing without the guests who pay for them.

One guest who gets injured or ripped off in your casino will tell his story, and others who hear about it, even third and fourth hand, will avoid a place where someone they know of got hurt. This is loss of future income.

People are careless. Any walk through a casino, hotel or shopping mall will reveal women being careless with purses and bags, men draping jackets (with wallets, etc., in the pockets) over the backs of seats, people leaving valuables unattended. These are the targets of distract thieves and pickpockets.

Foreign nationals are preferred targets of thieves and scam artists. The thieves know that even if caught, a foreign national is unlikely to return to this country to testify in a trial.

In any crowded area, such as a casino, shopping mall or convention, there are people who are not there for entertainment. They walk differently, they are alert and looking at different things. Train your security and surveillance people to see these people and to trust their own instincts on this. It is actually rather easy to pick these people out in a crowd, once you begin to look for them. There is something different: They are interested in individual people, not in gaming or entertainment. It cannot hurt to watch someone just because you don’t like his looks.

Hotel checks-in areas, bell desks, and valet areas are common target areas. People coming in are tired from traveling and easily distracted. People leaving are in a hurry and often hung over. These areas should be scanned often, especially at busy times, for known or suspected thieves.

Your hotel staff, as well, are potential thieves. Though this does not happen as often as guests claim, money and other valuables left in a room are obvious targets of maids, bellmen, and other people who come into the rooms, including prostitutes brought in by male guests.

Cleaning staff in the casino itself are also occasionally suspect. A bucket of coin or a purse left unattended can be a big temptation for a porter, who is usually working an unskilled job at low wages.

When a purse is reported stolen or missing from the casino floor, often a quick check of wastebaskets in the area, or the nearest restrooms (both genders) will locate at least the bag and a wallet with ID and sometimes credit cards intact. Many thieves are only interested in the cash, knowing that attempting to use stolen credit cards is a quick way to get caught and also carries a much heavier penalty. It is also a good idea to check the waste bin that any porters are using.

Reported thefts of items from rooms, such as jewelry, cash or other valuables, should prompt a quick check of maid carts, linen closets, and other storage areas.

Housekeeping supervisors should be alert for missing keys, and also should watch out for people inspecting maid carts. Housekeeping passkeys should be attached to the room attendants’ bodies or clothing, never left on carts.

Prostitutes are a common hazard in a resort town. Male guests, away from their wives for a weekend, or in town for conventions, are often the victims of prostitutes who have no problem with a bit of theft on the side. It is income they don’t usually report to their pimps. And the guests often don’t even report it, fearing that word will get back to their wives. (“Honey, what was that summons to Las Vegas court that was in the mail today?”)

Busy holiday weekends, with hundreds of thousands of people in town, are the annual income producers for organized thieves. They are more easily lost in the crowds, security staff and police are often too busy to be completely alert to their presence, and the crowds themselves mask the activities and presence of teams of people intent on theft.

A large crowd around a table with relatively little play can be an indicator of an organized distract team, especially if one of the players is displaying a lot of money. Often a distract team has five or more people, each fulfilling a separate function. (This can also indicate a cheat team, such as past-posters; however, with a past-post team, most of them will also be “players.”) Watch for crowds of non-players, and when you find one, watch them closely.

Be suspicious of anyone dressed in clothing that approximates any uniform of the hotel or casino. Counterfeit “floormen” in the slots area are a favorite scam, and a very effective one. Slots and Pit personnel should be able to report such, and any other suspicious characters or activity, to Surveillance and/or Security, without fear of having their reports belittled or ignored.

Certain types of slot machines attract scam artists. These are any machines that have an element of predictability about when they will pay off, such as a screen that shows an accumulation of symbols, that when full, pays a jackpot. Be aware of these slot banks, and scan the areas often for people who reappear time after time. They will often be running a “let me show you how this works” routine, running up the bonus with your guests’ money and then playing it off themselves for relatively little.

While this does not directly hurt the casino income from those machines, your guests do figure out they have been scammed, and will not return to a casino where it happens. Also, often these scam artists are very rude to the guests in order to move them away from a machine that is ready to pay, and this alone is enough to run your guests off, now and in the future.

Use your Pit personnel to help protect the guests from their own carelessness. A surveillance investigator or supervisor should be able to call the Pit and let them know that “the guest on seat 5 of BJ 28 has her purse looped over the back of her chair,” and be able to expect that the Pit person will diplomatically get the patron to protect her belongings.

Prevention is much better than filling out paperwork and reports. If a theft can be prevented with a few kind words to the guest, that leaves that much more time for the floorperson to watch the games. It is very hard for a guest to have fun when all their credit cards and cash have been stolen, and very difficult for a floor supervisor to watch games when he is filling out reports.

Surveillance staff should know the casino and hotel areas as well as the walk-around Security people. They need to be able to track suspects, be able to predict where someone will go next so they can follow with cameras. Often a distract team or other group knows the casino as well as the staff, having previously scouted it, and they have often drilled their escape routes.

Be alert for people who are seen continually looking at or into the cameras. They are searching for areas of no or poor coverage.

Other Hazards

Certain areas should have cameras recording full time. These are escalators, entry doors, stairways and others. Certain hazards such as wet floors, crowds, and so on, occur at these areas.

Surveillance and Security should keep their eyes also on cleaning staff in the hotel and casino. Careless or ignorant cleaners do silly things: They stretch vacuum cords across pathways, even across stairway and escalator entries. They leave wet spots, hang off the edges of projections, stand in high places with no support. These are hazards to guests and staff. Your best protection in this case is prompt reporting of such hazards to Security and Housekeeping, and effective correction of the individuals involved.

Copyright © 1998, 2003 by Jim Goding. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized sale or distribution is a violation of law and of the proprietary rights of the author, and is actionable under law. To purchase this author’s materials, visit www.casinosurveillancenews.com

News: News was more than a little weak on busts and scams and the items the I feel would interest my readers. I have only a few news articles this month.

(if any of these links don't work, email me at inquiry@casinosurveillancenews.com and I will send the text of the article)

Busts and Scams:

A fired card dealer accused of leading a crew that swindled casinos out of $7 million has pleaded guilty to multiple charges in one of the largest casino scams ever detected. See the story

A former head of Oklahoma Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes was sentenced to a year in prison for stealing more than $100,000 from tribal casinos. See the story

Late news: after the newsletter was sent today I received the photos and information which you can view at this link, regarding a high-tech cheating scam detected and busted in Europe. See this page:

Other Casino News:

A Las Vegas labor attorney stated to Nevada's high court justices that Wynn Las Vegas illegally violated employment agreements with its dealers when it changed its tip-pooling policy in 2006. (This one looks like it might go on for a long time.) See the story

California's first inspection of slot machines at Indian casinos has found widespread software lapses that could be short-changing tribes, the state and millions of gamblers, the state's gambling commission warns. State inspectors approved just 60 percent of the slots that were examined last year at seven casinos, which included some of the most successful and sophisticated in the nation. See the story

That’s all for this month, Folks.

Feel welcome to let us know if you come across any stories that you think we should include. Deadline for news and announcements, press releases and sponsorships, is two days prior to mailing on the last day of each month. Send me news, even substantiated rumors, with some indication of source, and I’ll check it out. I do not guarantee that anything you send will be included, but all contributions will be considered.

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Copyright © 2003 by Jim Goding. All rights reserved. Unauthorized sales or duplication by any means is a violation of law and of the proprietary rights of the author. Purchase this author’s work at www.casinosurveillancenews.com.

We are fully ready for business.

Inquire at

consultant@casinosurveillancenews.com

Jim Goding

3044 Capistrano Court

Las Vegas, NV 89121

(702) 406-7784 mobile

(lf no answer please leave detailed voicemail message. I am often out of calling areas.)

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