Putting a Blindfold on Casino Surveillance
By John

Internal Theft Security Alert

There is a lot of pressure placed on the surveillance department in casinos today. With the economy in a slump, business has dropped off, internal theft is on the rise and casinos everywhere are looking to cut costs across the board.

In times like these, casino management relies on the expertise of our surveillance agents more than ever to keep a vigilant watch on the customers, the employees, the cash and the assets. Since this has been the job of casino surveillance from the beginning, we as surveillance managers, supervisors and agents don't mind the additional pressure, all that we ask from management is for you to help us help you by giving us access to pertinent information that will help our department operate at an optimum level. What do we mean? What information outside of our camera views do we need? The answer comes as a surprise to those outside of surveillance, although most of us in the surveillance world have a hard time understanding why. Surveillance needs access to variance reports, table inventory sheets, employee tip sheets, players club information, player rating information, fill/credit slips, shipping invoices and delivery schedules, and P.O.S. records for all departments within the casino. With the back of the house computer systems and software most casinos are running today, there is no reason surveillance should not have read only access to this type of information.

The surveillance team assigned to look at these reports along with the casino compliance officer/investigator looks at these reports as a whole, not one shift or one day at a time; they look for patterns or for a starting point to begin the investigation into the variance. There are two ways in which a strong, properly trained and motivated surveillance department aids our General Managers in their quest for growth and higher profits. First, when our surveillance agents observe and report procedure violations we are helping to eliminate potential theft and dealer/customer collusion, saving huge losses to the casinos bottom line. Second, when our surveillance agents investigate variances it doesn't take them long to find the individual that may be causing the problem once again protecting the bottom line.

Surveillance managers everywhere are nodding their heads in agreement and all the other casino department heads are scratching their heads in bewilderment. I know this because of the conversations I have had with other surveillance directors and supervisors as well as my conversations with casino General Managers and other department heads. Most of them disagree, my General Manager being one of them. We have fought to update an inadequate surveillance system, we have fought for a fair wage for the agents, and we have fought to bring training to our department. All of this we have been successful in, however when it comes to getting access to the information needed to truly turn this department into a weapon against employee theft we are told that we are getting into areas that do not concern surveillance.

The general managers reasoning goes like this, "The department heads and accounting goes over that stuff". Ok, that's great but it has been our experience that when an irregularity is found by the department head or accounting they try to find the mistake in the paperwork and they deal with it as an isolated situation as it pertains to that department. It seems that most of them have blinders on and are incapable of looking at the "big picture". When the irregularity is ongoing they generally just work with it even when common sense dictates that someone be notified. For example we had a situation in a smaller satellite casino where over 50% of all our jackpots were being won by one individual. This person had won over one million dollars the year before and in the first half of the next year they had won around a half million dollars all in jackpots. At no time in that 18-month time frame did anyone in slots or accounting see a red flag and bring this to surveillances' attention. I just happened to be in accounting one day and overheard a conversation between two accounting employees about how "lucky" this person must be. When we began asking for more information about this person we were shocked to hear the winnings involved. Our department began an investigation into this person but before any thing else could be determined someone involved in the investigation outside of the surveillance department leaked information, that person is no longer with the casino. Strangely enough this person who had won so much money disappeared and has not been seen at either of our gaming sites since. We are not saying that this customer was doing anything illegal but since we didn't have the opportunity to conduct a thorough investigation we are left with more questions than answers. Because of this incident we now keep more detailed reports and files on jackpot winners than we did before, and even though we informed the cage supervisor why we needed more information, we were still met with resistance when we began requesting names of winners.

Denying surveillance access to this information is like requiring a surgeon to operate with no access to x-rays, cat scans or MRI's. He may have some general idea that there is a problem but without that information the surgeon would be unable to start cutting. It's the same with casino surveillance, without this information we are essentially putting blindfolds on and hoping we get lucky and catch something. We do get lucky from time to time much like a blind folded person gets lucky and eventually hits the piata. Casino management actually uses the fact that we get lucky sometimes as the reason we don't need more information.

Just because we don't have access to this information doesn't mean we sit back and wait for the phone to ring. As surveillance employees we understand that we have the responsibility to take the initiative and actively protect our properties. We do hourly table chip inventories to track valued cheques and confirm where they are going, we do random area/employee audits to insure compliance to departmental/casino policy and procedures, we do blackjack player evaluations to compare a players play against basic strategy and track win/loss percentages and dealer evaluations to ensure proper procedures are followed and to confirm no dealer/customer collusion. We do this and more because we take our job seriously and truly wish to be an asset to the properties we work in. We hear all the time that surveillance is not a "profit generating department" it is up to us to show management that we are a "profit protection department" and that by teaming together we can have an even greater impact on the bottom line.

How much money is walking out the door because too many casinos blindfold their surveillance department? I have spoken to surveillance directors who are lucky enough to have the information they need and the results are impressive. They are able to direct close watches and investigations based on the information they receive and because of that, they are able to catch employees stealing or scamming the casinos much faster than those of us with the blindfold on.