Table Game Protection Post: Game Protection Training Dilema: Should Casino Floor Personnel Be Trained Together with Surveillance Personnel?

This is a very common question.

The worry that most casino upper managers have is that if Gaming Floor People are shown all the cheat moves that Surveillance Personnel are, the result might lead to more inside dealer/floorperson/surveillance scams against the casino, or simply that casino floor people should not have as much knowledge of scams as surveillance, so that they might not be tempted on their own to cheat their tables.

I have always conducted my game protection training with the two groups together. I feel strongly about this because I believe the casino staff on the floor must be on the same page as the surveillance staff "upstairs."

True, there are potential negatives, even dangers. But let's look at a few facts first.

The first is that collusion scams performed by casino floor staffs very rarely involve surveillance people. So by that alone, you can rid yourselves of the worry of a major scam going down in your casino from the bottom all the way up. That can only happen in a casino that has disastrously poor internal controls and game-protection policy, and complete lack of adherence if there is any game-protection policy in place.

Second: There are always some dealers who turn to cheating the house. This can NEVER be avoided. But the global percentage, even in casinos with poor internal controls that are literally asking their dealers to cheat them, is extremely low, probably lower that the vast majority of worldwide industries.

With that in mind, excluding dealers and floor supervisors from knowledge of the inner-workings of table scams being taught to surveillance staffs will have a negative impact on your casinos.

Why?

Simply because your dealers are your first line of defense against ALL casino scams not involving dealers. If they are ignorant to a particular cheating scam happening on their tables, then, unless a very sharp supervisor behind them takes notice of the moves going down, surveillance immediately becomes your FIRST line of defense.

Now I have absolutely no bias against surveillance staffs, but in my 25-year casino-cheating career, not once has a cheat-move of mine been spotted on time or stopped by surveillance alerting the gaming pits.

I mean NOT ONCE!

This is not to say that surveillance operators aren't efficient. By and large they do a great job, especially if they have good training and follow internal policy. But it is much too difficult to spot the majority of professional moves when you're away from the table--no matter how good your equipment is.

Remember, good game protection must come from the floor up. Surveillance serves best when the floor staff alerts them to something suspicious. Then they can focus in on whatever it is going down on the tables, and then mobilize the entire casino to eradicate the problem.

So all that said, it is firmly my opinion that you should train your floor staffs in game protection, cheating and advantage play as you do your surveillance staffs.

However, I do suggest that if dealers are participating in game protection training, they should not be present when inside-dealer scams are being presented. They can learn these when and if they become supervisors.

I would love to hear your opinions on this, and if they may have changed after reading this post!

Yet ANOTHER Insider-Dealer/Agents Baccarat Cheat Scam in Macau!

More tricky fingers at Macau bacc tables

It seems I'm copying and posting the same article every week!

Same old Macau Baccarat Cheat story: Crooked dealer teams up with wife/husband/friend or all of the aforementioned and helps them win on the baccarat tables.

And the amazing thing about it is the banality of the scams. You have to wonder what they're thinking in terms of how long they might get away with it.

This time, the dealer, like with all the other times, simply did not take her cohorts' losing bets when they lost, and sometimes even switched them to winning bets after they lost and made them winners, which she paid. (Yes it was a female dealer--Macau does not discriminate against cheating feminine dealers.)

I am not too familiar with the Macau dealers scene, but I imagine they earn a good living and should not have such a pressing reason to cheat and steal from their casinos. Maybe I'm wrong.

And maybe Macau's casinos are not properly vetting their dealers before hiring them.

Or maybe the dealers have picked up on internal game-protection weaknesses in their casinos and are simply exploiting them.

If you want the details of yet another redundant baccarat scam, you can read them in this article.

Golden Triangle Area Casino is Huge Den of Iniquity

Gateway to casino Iniquity

Those of us old enough to remember the days of the Vietnam War, the Golden Triangle was the name given to a corner of Southeast Asia where opium was cultivated to manufacture heroin. The three countries that formed the triangle were Laos, Burma and Thailand. This territory had a major impact on US forces who served in Vietnam, and it was not good one. It helped turn many US soldiers into heroin addicts.

Today the Golden Triangle is not much different. One of the countries, Burma, changed its name to Myanmar, but the triangle is still a den of iniquity.

Maybe even a bigger one!

Enter the Kings Romans Casino, a lavish casino resort built in 2007 by the Hong Kong company Kings Romans Group, who promised the Laotian government they would turn the area back into a paradise.

Well, they sure did.

Like any other lush casino resort in Vegas or Macau, hundreds of heavy gamblers can be seen wagering thousands on each hand of baccarat. World class restaurants, facilities and swimming pools drool over the complex. All the luxuries that can be bestowed on man.

But let's not forget the women. They are one of the luxuries bestowed on the men there. World class and very expensive prostitutes from all the nearby Asian countries are readily available to the highest bidders.

So are the drugs. Not just heroin, but cocaine, hashish, methamphetamines--you name it, Kings Romans´s got it for sale.

So the new glitzy Golden Triangle of the twenty-first century has picked up just where the old one left off. You can read lots more about this place here.

Million-Dollar Casino Marker/Credit Scam Eerily Similar to the Same Scam I called the Greatest Casino Scam Ever on my Best Scam of the Month Page

Bogus Casino Credit App

I sure hope they didn't get the idea from me! My Best Scam of the Month page is meant to both educate and entertain, not to give people crazy and illegal ideas that can put them in prison and ruin their lives.

A 54-year-old woman named Vivian Wang just pleaded guilty to a million-dollar national casino marker/credit scam by using stolen identities to obtain casino credit for which she and her already-convicted partner in crime, 49-year-old Frank Luo, bilked casinos countrywide for more than a million bucks.

They used a plan which I described in the writing of the infamous Roselli Brothers Casino-Credit Scam that was pulled off by a trio of New Jersey brothers in the late 1990s. The Rosellis were a bit more successful, though--about 37 times more successful. Their take was in the neighborhood of $37 million.

And they never got caught.

And their giant scam was hushed-up by Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos looking to avoid the bad publicity.

The first step in this Wang/Luo version was the same as the Rosellis'. They stole identities of people to open up bank accounts and set up credit lines with the casinos. However, they differed a bit. Whereas the Rosellis resorted to the pilfering of credit histories belonging to established well-to-do people, Wang and Luo used those of migrant workers.

Then they went and established small credit lines under various names and corresponding bank accounts, then showed the casinos false action on the tables via offset-betting procedures at craps and baccarat, in which their losses on one side of the table were recovered by cohorts on the other side betting against them.

The next step was to get their credit lines raised, which they did by paying off all their markers in timely fashion. This process was repeated many times, each time getting an increase in their credit lines, until they finally "busted-out" the casinos when their credit lines reached a high-enough limit.

Like the Rosellis, Wang and Luo used several "employees" posing as the bogus high rollers.

I do not know how they were finally busted after the six years (2008 to 2014) they scammed the casinos.

Lou pleaded guilty last year and received 3 years in prison. Wang, on the other hand, is facing 20 years and a half-million-dollar fine.

To read about the Roselli giant casino credit scam go to my Casino Scam of the Month Page here and scroll down to Credit/Identity Scam.

My take: First of all, Wang and Luo had to have worked very hard to turn histories of migrant workers who surely had no credit ratings into very creditworthy people--at least as far as the casinos were concerned. This fact brings to light the lack of casino thoroughness in deciding who they issue credit to. Perhaps they just look at credit-scam losses as just another cost of doing business, the same way giant retailers expense shoplifting losses.