Available in Russian Translation

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 © 2001, 2002 by Jim Goding. All rights reserved. Duplication in any form, electronic or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author is forbidden, is a violation of the proprietary rights of the author and is actionable under law. This article may be purchased for a nominal fee by clicking on the following link.

Purchase this Article

Bookstore

Back to Prevention Home