Casino Surveillance News

Welcome to Casino Surveillance News, the first and longest-running online trade letter for Casino Surveillance and Security. We are still here and still operating, though I am (still) occasionally a bit slow in getting posted.

The news-only portion can be seen at http://casinosurveillancenews.com/newsletter-2

CSN News:

Casino Surveillance News now has available a complete, on-site, one-payment permanent training program that can be customized for any casino operation. We can accommodate privately owned, corporate, or tribally owned casinos.

We can accommodate casinos outside the United States in most countries, though I have to acknowledge the fact that the training program is best understood by those who are fluent in English. I apologize: my own heritage and the time available to me as the owner of this business and its only available consultant and trainer does not allow me to learn new languages or translate the materials correctly. I welcome inquiries regarding translation into languages other than Russian and Italian. These are already accounted for.

The training program available is in three distinct parts. Each one involves operating in the real world of gaming, and each involves training in the prevention and detection of real-world scams and other threats to the actual bottom line of the casino. Each includes a number of Power Point presentation classes including text, voice-over narration, video clips illustrating scams, situations, required coverage and universal problems, and other photographic materials, as well as text materials to be studied. Each also has tests designed to direct attention to areas needing to be restudied.

1. Training new operator/investigators:

This program is used for newly hired operators, whether or not experienced, in bringing an entire department up to the standard required. It is designed from the lowest common denominator: training people with no gaming experience up to a level of competence where they can spot and report discrepancies in a gaming operation. Where a person already is experienced in an area, simply have them take the test, and if passed, the training material is not needed. This level is very effective in filling in the gaps in training and experience that newly hired but experienced investigators may have. The customization involves the games offered by the casino: table games (which ones do YOU have?), Slots, Finance operations (cage and count rooms), Security, Hotel, Retail, etc. You only pay for what you and I determine your operation needs. I feel that I can offer advice, but you are the one who knows your own operation. Your word is always final.

2. Training Supervisors:

Supervisors and the Director are the people who must pass on all reports, who must fill in the gaps in training and experience of the people working under them. Prevention and detection of illegal and unethical activity in the casino and its support operations is a team activity, and the Director and Supervisors are the team manager, coach and quarterback.

Supervisors require a higher level of training in specific areas, including the handling of evidence, reporting, training personnel, handling personnel, and directing surveillance operations. These classes are designed to fill in any gaps between experienced Surveillance Investigator and Supervisor, so that the Supervisor and his juniors and seniors have confidence in the ability of the Supervisor in his ability to make rational decisions, even under pressure, to properly focus attention on areas where it is needed, and keep his own people productively functioning.

3. The Director’s Course:

The Director is the team manager, and it is his job to ensure the attention of Surveillance is correctly focused on the parts of the casino operation where vulnerabilities occur, bringing executive attention to the vulnerabilities, and ensuring that  holes in the casino operation are plugged. This requires some high-level information on Surveillance itself as well as training on the handling of personnel, executive level teamwork, and other duties including liaison and team-building both within the department and outside it, with Security, executive branch, other managers and outside law enforcement.

Please visit these pages for details of the available, customizable training plans:

http://casinosurveillancenews.com/surveillance-training-programs

http://casinosurveillancenews.com/training-materials/available-classes

WE STILL SET THE STANDARDS FOR TRAINING OF CASINO SURVEILLANCE

and for

BASIC SECURITY TRAINING FOR CASINOS

A custom training program can be made for your casino and put into place in a matter of three weeks.

Contact jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

Keynote Article: Having some recent experiences with Human Resources departments and with recruiters and executive placement services, I thought an article with a bit of social relevance might be in order. Don’t worry, this also fits into our own concerns in Surveillance and Security.

Little Boxes

by Jim Goding

People make sense of their world by fitting the things they see, observe and interact with, into little boxes. They classify things and people so that they can understand them, put them next to things in other little boxes, and most of all so that they can avoid the work of analyzing everything they see as they see it.

Sometimes this can be taken to extremes. Sometimes things that don’t fit into the little boxes are ignored, other times they are thrown away, and sometimes the things that don’t fit into the little boxes are simply destroyed because they don’t fit together with the other little boxes. When things don’t fit into a person’s little boxes, it tends to make a threat to the way the person thinks about the world, or requires the person to think just a little bit outside of the box.

Many valuable things and ideas might have been lost because they didn’t fit into the little boxes that constituted the way that people thought about things. All human advances in thought, science and technology have occurred because someone didn’t stay within the little boxes–or they stretched the box to fit ideas that were too big for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I use them too. Little boxes are very necessary in my work as a writer, as a consultant, as an evaluator of surveillance and security activities and capabilities, as a trainer. They are necessary to every Surveillance and Security officer: When things don’t fit in the box, they need to be looked at again. Sometimes when many things in one area don’t fit in the available boxes, it is enough to require a full-scale investigation.

The true challenge lies in how we handle things that don’t fit in the little boxes, and this is what makes an investigator, a supervisor, a manager. It is what we do with the things that don’t fit in little boxes that defines how well we do our jobs, no matter whether we work as a dealer, a cashier, a stock clerk, in human resources, in Security or Surveillance, as a manager or executive, or in any number of occupations where we have to deal with people either as groups or individuals.

So, how do people handle things–and people–that don’t fit into their little boxes? Let’s take a look at some different areas as examples, and see the typical ways that people drop things into their own little boxes, but more specifically, how they handle things that don’t fit. While doing this, I will mention a few very valuable things and people that never would have fit into the little boxes that we use today.

Human Resources: Do People Fit the Little Boxes?

Today’s Human Resources environment is far different from what it was when I was a few decades younger, but it still operates in much the same way.

If you don’t fit in the little boxes on the application, the form–and your chances for employment–end up in the trash.

I should note that I have never–in forty-plus years of nearly continuous employment–gotten a job through a “Human Resources” department application from outside the company. I twice got jobs through what was then called “Personnel,” but this was many years ago, in a different world, before all applications were screened through computer database programs. Even then, I got the job through having first contacted the manager of the department, and it was the manager who requested the application be moved through Personnel so that he could hire me. I once got a job through a transfer between departments, but I had the sponsorship of my current manager for the promotion.

You see, I have never fit within the little boxes. That does not mean that I equate myself with any of the examples I have used below. But I have never worked in a place where I failed to pull far more than my own share of the load, where I failed to contribute more than I was actually paid to do. I just didn’t fit in the box, and it was often because the box was just too small. I doubt seriously that I am in any way unique in this. I have known far too many exceptional people who would never fit in a little box on a form.

Human Resources boxes in these times are even more restrictive than in the days when the department was referred to as “Personnel.” Today, you have to fit within ALL of the little boxes, as well as a few that don’t officially exist. I am sure you know what I mean.

If the requirements for a position are “Bachelor’s degree or equivalent,” if you don’t list a college where you graduated, your application goes nowhere but the circular file. If you went to school in the wrong part of the country, or in the wrong country, same thing. You don’t fit the box.

What if, though, through the person’s experience, training, contributions and innovations in his particular part of the industry, he or she has the equivalent of a Master’s degree, but has little actual formal college schooling to show? That means the Human Resources department has thrown away a person who could be an extremely valuable asset to the company, simply because he did not fit in their little box.

Sorry, but the “University of Experience and Hard Knocks and Learn from the Mistakes of Yourself and Others” doesn’t fix the box. Neither do the innovations, experience and contributions to your niche in the industry fit. There is no little box for these in a Human Resources application.

The example that goes with this is the Wright brothers, who designed and built the first heavier-than-air flying craft. They were APPARENTLY a couple of bicycle mechanics. What they really were: natural engineers, who could look at a problem and with little equipment, using only their own knowledge and expertise, design and build the first functioning airplane, despite the fact that few people in those days believed that anything heavier than air could fly. It didn’t fit in the box. Neither did the brothers.

Just think what a Human Resources person of today would think of a person such as Albert Einstein: here is this wild-haired old man with a bushy mustache, doesn’t wear a suit or tie, plays the violin and speaks with a German accent. Would they hire him to, say, run the numbers for a gaming operation? What would his employment application state? “Reason for leaving most recent position: Escaped from Germany, where I was about to be arrested for sedition,” and because he fit into another little box with an ethnic label.

A former President of the United States: Born: Rural Illinois. Education: Home Schooling. Degree: read law, no formal degree. Experience: Farming, fencing, some charity work for the church.

Gives you the idea that there might be a few things to say about this man that don’t fit in the box, doesn’t it? This is the man who now has a 20-foot statue and an entire memorial in Washington DC, dedicated to his memory and the memory of his contributions to the country and to mankind.

Human Resources people should be aware that there are many people who could be extremely valuable contributors to their companies, who might not fit into their little boxes. If people don’t fit the boxes, though, those applications never make it to the manager responsible for hiring.

Unfortunately, today’s Human Resources departments have had to reduce people to a set of numbers: “does or does not fit such and such a box.” There should be a person in every human resources department going through applications looking for people who may have something to contribute, but who don’t fit the boxes. There is very little “human” associated with Human Resources. And to tell you the truth, when things fit the boxes TOO WELL, there is often cause for suspicion. Recent research has shown that over 50% of people lie in their applications and resumes.

There are no boxes in a Human Resources form for honesty, integrity, and willingness to learn and contribute far more than one’s share, simply because most people would be lying if they answered in the affirmative.

In efforts to remedy this problem, HR departments consulted with psychologists who, true to current people-handling form, designed tests to see if a person fit certain personality profiles (little boxes) or could be a “team player.” More little boxes. What happens to the stars (Elway, Berra) when they fill out such a form? They can play with a team and contribute far more than their own weight, but they also rely on their own talents and instincts, and often contribute far more than their own weight in doing so. If Vincent Lombardi honestly filled out an HR “Personality Profile Test” in today’s world (at least the ones I have seen), his application would end up in the round file.

Enough on Human Resources.

Surveillance and Security Little Boxes

As I wrote in one of my earliest articles, one of the methods Surveillance and Security people use is to spot things that just don’t fit.

Guess what: that means  that person down there does not fit into the little box labeled “slot player,” or “recreational blackjack player,” or “correctly trained dealer” or “slots floor person correctly following procedures.”

Now we have to determine what OTHER little box he might fit into: Maybe, through observation of his actions, he will fit into “slot cheat,” “distract and grab,” “short-change con,” or one of the other little boxes we have for people whose actions don’t fit the standard profiles.

Maybe that slots floor personnel who logs into two separate computer terminals before paying a jackpot fits into the box labeled “internal fraud through theft of the supervisor password,” or perhaps “false jackpot fraud,” or some other. Or perhaps he just fits in the box labeled “poorly trained and never corrected.” The point is that some investigation needs to be done. Perhaps we need to make a new box labeled “error.”

Or perhaps he just couldn’t get hold of the shift manager, and for really good customer service he went outside the box and did something the manager should have been there to do. In such a case, some correction may be needed, but in fact the person is doing no harm, especially if he is willing to take responsibility for being outside the box.

How about when watching table games, and a large number of newly hired dealers don’t fit into the box called “already has a year of experience dealing.” In other words, they do things that no trained and experienced dealer should do, such as carelessly exposing hole cards, sticking their hands in their pockets without first clearing, and so on. One such person is an indicator that they may have lied regarding their experience, but when you get a whole bunch of them, you now MUST look outside the “dealer” box, at the people who hired them and who passed them through Human Resources. How come these people don’t fit?

The point here is, it requires investigation. Sometimes things that don’t fit the box are okay, and sometimes they are not.

Sometimes you have to stretch the box to fit.

What you should never do, no matter what, is start modifying people to fit the box. If they don’t fit the box marked “dealer,” don’t add to the person, or cut pieces off, in order to make them fit that box. Perhaps they may fit a bigger box: maybe that dealer is just a little too big for the “dealer” box, and should be in a different position. Maybe they are a bit too small, not really ready for handling people one-on-one when they are drunk and losing, and should be somewhere else.

Or maybe they don’t fit because they are far too crooked to fit in a box.

Thankfully, we in Surveillance and Security are not the ones who have to make these decisions. We simply have to report when something doesn’t fit.

There is a very old story that goes with this. You can look it up on the internet. Use the search term “Procrustes,” and you will find articles that describe a person who forced others to fit his own preconceived ideas. If they did not fit the “bed of Procrustes,” he “adjusted” them to fit. If they were too short, he stretched them. If they were too long, he cut pieces off until they fit.

Take it from me, a person who for decades has had to hide parts that didn’t fit the box: it is a very uncomfortable experience. When you are forced to fit into a box that is too small, it makes less of you than what you really can be.

It is even worse when someone tries to add things to you that are really not true, as I have seen many times. For instance, I personally have never been able to deal with drunks, but this is something I had to do for several years as a casino dealer. I used the opportunity to learn some things, but I never became comfortable with it.

Unfortunately for us, our current society is unable to do much else: Because everything must fit into little computer-screen boxes, if something doesn’t fit, we tend to disregard it or discard it. This is a trap, especially for Surveillance, Security, Human Resources and executives.

Not every person who fails to fit within the box is a crook , a bad guy, or in the case of Human Resources, unqualified. Never presume that just because a person doesn’t fit within one box, he may not fit within a different one, or even a bigger one, or may not fit within a box at all. Investigate. Look. See what it is that makes that person different. Report only the facts, and don’t disregard some facts because they don’t fit your preconceived ideas of what may be happening.

Sometimes you have to modify the box.

Modifying people, or their actions, or especially your reports, in order to make them fit into YOUR BOX is not a viable option.

Jim Goding

It’s News Time:

(I will supply text of the news article if any of these links do not work. Email to inquiry@casinosurveillancenews.com)

Busts and Scams:

On February 2, President Obama told a New Hampshire audience, “You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.” The crack came not quite a year after a speech in Elkhart, Ind., during which Obama aimed a similar warning at bankers whose companies received bailout money. The earlier remark was responsible for approximately 3,000 lost jobs in Nevada, and over $300 million in lost income for Las Vegas due to canceled conventions. The New Hampshire remark not only reopened the political wound from last year, it also cut deeper by raising questions about why the president of the United States continues to use Las Vegas as an applause line in speeches about wasted money. See the story

A Clark County District Court ruled that Harrah’s Entertainment must turn over records to attorneys representing a high roller who allegedly owes $14.7 million in gambling debts. Businessman Terrance Watanabe, one of the biggest gamblers in Las Vegas history, alleges casino giant Harrah’s Entertainment not only kept him drunk but fed him drugs to induce his massive gambling losses. See the story

Harrah’s received preliminary state approval to acquire LV Strip casino Planet Hollywood, with company executives telling gaming regulators they plan to cut the property’s workforce by less than 5 percent. See the story

A Las Vegas man accused of counting cards at the Paris Las Vegas casino on the Strip is taking Harrah’s Entertainment to court in his bid to re-enter the company’s casinos after he was banned. See the story

Four men were ordered into pretrial detention by a Cambodian provincial court on Monday on suspicion of holding hostage and torturing two men suspected of cheating a casino. See the story

A mother and a daughter, each convicted of more than 30 counts of slot cheating in casinos in Clark County, have drawn some relief from the Nevada Supreme Court, which ruled there was insufficient evidence to uphold the convictions on 22 of the cheating counts. See the story

A man who won more than $9,000 at an Iowa casino can’t collect his winnings because he was banned from the casino 10 years earlier, the state Supreme Court ruled. See the story

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has fined The Meadows Racetrack & Casino near Pittsburgh $48,900 for violations that led the casino to pay $430,000 in false slot machine jackpots last summer. See the story

Other News:

MGM Mirage will divest itself from its holdings in Atlantic City by placing its 50 percent ownership stake in the Borgata resort and its vacant land holdings into a trust arrangement. New Jersey gaming regulators ruled that Hong Kong businesswoman Pansy Ho, MGM’s joint venture partner in Macau, was unsuitable. Ho is the daughter of billionaire Macau casino kingpin Stanley Ho, who is alleged by authorities to have ties to Chinese organized crime triads. See the story

A speeding auto crashed through the Laughlin, NV, Edgewater Hotel & Casino’s front doors, mowing down patrons and slot machines before finally coming to rest near the cashier’s cage. See the story

Native American gaming leaders are now calling for diversification in the leading income production for tribes. Brick and mortar casinos may not be enough to compete in today’s market, and other sources of income should also be considered now that capital has been produced by the casinos. See the story

Editorial:

This will be the last political commentary ever posted on THIS site, because I do not feel that I am any longer safe in emailing a political commentary to you, and also do not feel that you would be safe in receiving it after this warning. If you have the stomach for it, read the editorial. If you are not interested, quit now.

I will also give you a website where any further political commentary WILL be posted, should you be interested. I really don’t care if you agree or disagree with me, but this site will no longer carry political comments. Wrong forum. For any further p0olitical commentaries (they will be few and far between) go to http://jimgoding.blogspot.com/

As an American who understands the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as written and approved by our forefathers and the founders of this country, I am truly frightened by the direction this country has taken, especially the current Democratic Party Congress and the most recently elected President.

Mr. Obama appears to believe that he is in fact a King, not a president, and that his word is law. He is backed up by Congress, which is expanding the power of the federal government to spy on its own people, while failing to guarantee any protections as guaranteed by the first ten amendments. (See the story)

I have seen no greater threat to our protections from the government, as guaranteed by our founders in the Bill of Rights, since the days of Joe McCarthy, back in the 1950s. His Majesty is now issuing so-called Executive Orders in several areas.

He makes what are apparently “casual” comments during so-called town-hall meetings that result in thousands of jobs being eliminated and the leading businesses of cities losing hundreds of millions of dollars, in a time when the economy is hurting and unemployment is higher than any time in the last thirty years. Knowing, as the President, that even his supposedly casual comments will be reported widely in the press, and that they have nothing less than the force of law. Then he goes on to reinforce his comments with Executive Orders.

The current Congress is no better. With expanded powers of observation and surveillance on its own citizens, but lacking any safeguards, Congress has now bypassed the first, fourth, sixth, ninth and tenth Amendments that were a part of the approval process for our Constitution, leaving discretion up to bureaucrats as to who should be watched, wiretapped, and what should be watched for.

Think about it.

Jim Goding

Any further political commentary by me will be excluded from this site and this newsletter. If you have any interest, you may see further political comments on my personal blog, http://jimgoding.blogspot.com/

That’s all for this month, Folks.

Sponsors for this newsletter:

Casino Surveillance Operations Manual and Gaming Glossary: inquire with booksales@casinosurveillancenews.com

If you cannot access the Internet site casinosurveillancenews.com from the computer where you receive the newsletter, please re-subscribe from your home address or other email address. Many of my subscribers may have restrictions on their internet access at work. You can now subscribe to the newsletters from any page of the rebuilt website at www.casinosurveillancenews.com

Mailing List Policy: Our mailing list will never be sold to ANYONE, and we will never send spam. No special mailings will go out for advertising purposes, unless I judge that it will be of real use and real benefit to you, the readers. The only use for this list will be the newsletter and any major flash that looks important enough that you will all want to know.

Copyright © 2010 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.

Casino Surveillance News

February 2010

Welcome to Casino Surveillance News, the first online trade letter for Casino Surveillance and Security.

We are still here and still operating, though I am (still) occasionally a bit slow in getting posted.

The news-only portion of this newsletter can be seen at this page

February this year brings with it the first indicators of a slowly recovering casino business, with some of the numbers in a few areas starting to recover. Pennsylvania has passed its legislation legalizing table games in a limited number of locations, with indicators that Delaware may very soon follow suit. (Note, because I am late getting this out, I found that the approval process is done and Delaware will be setting up games this year. See the story

Pennsylvania and Delaware casino operators, be assured that CSN is ready and willing to provide your Surveillance and Security staff with the training they need in order to effectively protect your casinos. You will need to be expanding your Surveillance staff to accommodate the new demands on Surveillance time, you will need to be expanding your camera coverage to protect the games and their revenues, and your people will have to be trained in game protection. Please see the Permanent Training Solution Programs for more information, at this address:

I don’t hold with selling my training through fear, but I and others have seen through the years that when a new game, set of games or casino enterprise opens, especially with public fanfare, the scammers are going to be there waiting on opening day. I hope your people are ready, and CSN is here to train your people and back you up.

CSN News:

CSN is now working out methods for corporate licensing of the materials so that casino companies having more than two or three casinos can purchase a corporate license for uniform training of Surveillance staff through the entire enterprise. Corporate Surveillance Directors (under whatever name) should inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

Currently I am working on finalizing the class presentations with audio narration included. Each presentation is to be accompanied by audio voice-over commentary and narrative, explanations of the video, pointers from twenty years of casino experience, clarifications, examples and “war stories.”  This is a longer project than I thought, having not really taken into account the number of classes available, but I will still have basics, table games and slots  class programs deliverable within approximately three weeks of a contractual agreement.

In addition, I have taken the Casino Security Training program–basic training in casino security–and posted it on a new site: http://www.casinosecuritytraining.com/  This program was very successfully delivered twice in 2008 and 2009, and I have configured it for training from computer. This too will be delivered exactly as it was in the two very successful seminars, with voice over commentary and narration and explanations of the videos involved. Additional materials have been added.

WE STILL SET THE STANDARDS FOR TRAINING OF CASINO SURVEILLANCE

and for

BASIC SECURITY TRAINING FOR CASINOS

Keynote Article: Though I have written many articles used in the training of Surveillance and Security, I have never written exclusively regarding the actual need for training of these personnel. I have alluded to it many times in other articles. Today I am going to talk about why we need to train our Surveillance and Security staff, and how this makes it possible to run these departments as an asset to the casino.

Effective Surveillance Training

by Jim Goding

I am not here to sell training through fear. I am here to state a few facts.

To begin, the regulations adopted by National Indian Gaming Commission, though many parts have been disputed in Congress and in other venues, including the courts, this is one part that has never really been disputed: United States Code, Title 25, Part 542—MINIMUM INTERNAL CONTROL STANDARDS, “Section 542.43:   What are the minimum internal control standards for surveillance for a Tier C gaming operation? (a) The surveillance system shall be maintained and operated from a staffed surveillance room and shall provide surveillance over gaming areas. . . . . (g) The surveillance department shall strive to ensure staff is trained in the use of the equipment, knowledge of the games, and house rules.”

Despite disputes regarding tribes and federal jurisdiction, this is one part of the NIGC MICS that has mainly been observed throughout Indian Gaming, sometimes better, sometimes worse, depending upon the trainers and what they had available to teach and upon the experience available within the Surveillance department itself. Some trainers teach very worthwhile material, others present a dog and pony show. When they leave, what is left behind is a very small part of the expertise required to operate an effective Surveillance department.

Unfortunately, many, many jurisdictions do not require such training by law, and it is to the detriment of the operation of Surveillance and Security both. If not required by law, many houses simply do not train their staffs effectively. Their training is on-the-job training in “the way we do things.”

This can be very effective in its own right over a period of years of experience, but is restricted to the experience of the people doing the training. It does not take into account the things never encountered by the supervisors doing the on-the-job training, and it does not take into account any lack in the facilities and materials available for that training.

On the job training seldom prepares an operator/agent for his first experience of gathering, securing and reporting evidence of criminal violations, nor for the requirements of civil courts, which can be even more expensive to the casino. It is only over a period of years of this type of training, together with experience acquired over those years, that a new investigator learns to think with what he has learned and see beyond the obvious. Some never do learn to see beyond the obvious. Some never learn to evaluate priorities and importance of what they see.

I do speak from experience here. In my very first Surveillance job, under my first director, I received effectively no training in anything other than how to use the equipment we had. My experience at that time, many years ago, was restricted to the gaming experience I acquired from having been a table games dealer. It did not encompass many of the things I have since learned and applied effectively in protecting casino operations. I have been, myself, a very lucky person, since the second person I had as top senior took over: Not only was I trained in the various other casino operation areas–slots, cage, security, sports, food and beverage–in what to expect and how to pick out the scams, I was encouraged very heavily in my own desire to know as much as I could about the entire casino operation, its laws, regulations, and even the procedures in other parts of the casino. I learned from my own second boss and from every one after that, and even was given the opportunity to acquire formal training in many, many areas.

As a result, I not only learned the scams in all of these various areas of the casino, I learned how to figure out the new ones and how to spot the older ones that keep coming around, decade after decade. I learned to spot the points where areas are vulnerable, to spot the people who were opening the casino to cheats and thieves, and to spot the actions which are used to mask cheating and theft in all of the various areas of the casino. I picked up experiences from every person I worked with and many people that I helped to train, and I bring not only my only experience to training, but that of every boss I worked for, every person I trained and many, many people in all areas of gaming from corporate and privately owned casinos to tribal operations to Asian and European casinos.

I learned how to teach this material to others, how to write it and how to show it. With several years of training experience, I even learned most of the answers to the questions people asked, and how to work these points into refined presentation classes.

Most Surveillance operators get some part of these learning opportunities only after a year or two on the job. They get a chance to attend a 3-4 day set of training classes. As I stated above, some of these are good and some are not. Few are completely worthless.

I had the opportunity a few years ago to work up classes for one of the major training operations that services Indian casinos, and I know exactly how bad they were before I wrote up a new set of classes. They were mainly sales presentations for commercial products, and what was not sales presentations had been stolen from other trainers and abbreviated past the point of being useful for effective training.

What if many years of acquired experience were available from day one, and each new operator/investigator/agent had the chance, from the beginning of his job, to learn to effectively protect the casino? To learn the games, the scams, the procedures that effectively protect the operation? To learn why and how people cheat and steal, and how to spot it when it begins so that major losses could be effectively prevented? What if supervisors and managers could effectively focus their limited manpower to protect the casino, rather than have investigator time wasted on doing the jobs of the managers of the areas concerned–or worse, having Surveillance effectively misdirected from actual areas of cheating, fraud and internal theft?

In other articles, I have spoken many times of the principles of Surveillance, and one of the most important of these is known to every experienced Security officer, Surveillance officer and law enforcement officer: the principle of JDLR “just don’t look right.” This is the ability of a person who is experienced in his area to pick out things that do not fit–differences from the normal routine actions and people that don’t fit the regular profile of activities within the environment being surveyed. This ability can be acquired through years of experience–but it can also be acquired through supervised training, in a few weeks, by effectively focusing the attention of the operator on what he needs to learn. What if, from the beginning of a Surveillance agent’s job, he was taught about how all the scams operate, the tells and indicators that something is wrong–without having to have years of experience to pick these out?

Even more important is the ability to effectively communicate what one sees, both in present time to prevent or handle a situation, or later in order to report it effectively, either for law enforcement purposes or otherwise to protect the casino from unnecessary losses to cheats, thieves, accidents, fraud or other circumstances.

This is effective Surveillance training.

Jim Goding

A custom Casino Surveillance Training Program can be designed for your casino in approximately three weeks,

and put into action immediately.

Contact jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

It’s News Time: (I will supply text of the news article if any of these links do not work. Email to inquiry@casinosurveillancenews.com)

Busts and Scams:

For a popular view of what gaming surveillance is being made to look like to the American public, see the Popular Mechanics story here. This story will give you a good idea why it is so necessary to know your system and what it is actually capable of, as very few current systems have the capabilities that are outlined in this story. See the story This story has three separate parts, each with a link at the end of the first and second pages.

Sentencing has been postponed for two casino cheats listed in Nevada’s Black Book and a woman who was their accomplice in a 2006 slot machine-cheating scheme used at several Las Vegas-area casinos. See the story

Other News:

While the Missouri Gaming Commission considers shutting down the under-performing President Casino, two state lawmakers are floating a bill that would block the commission from doing any such thing. See the story and also this address, which includes several related links:

Two bills that would pave the way for Delaware to add table games such as poker, blackjack and craps to the state’s gambling options passed their initial legislative hurdles in  January. See the story Delaware has now passed and signed into law requirements for Table Games operations. A dew Delaware casinos will be adding table games to the mix this year. See the story

Surveillance and Security operators, supervisors and directors should take a look at what happens when Surveillance moves into the “Big Brother” realm: Great Britain, true to George Orwell’s “1984,” has moved into an area where police are abusing the surveillance capabilities available to them, and our own country is rapidly doing the same thing. (I realize that was an editorial comment, but it is true.) Please see the extended story

That’s all for this month, Folks.

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Copyright © 2010 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.

January 2010

Welcome to Casino Surveillance News, the first online trade letter for Casino Surveillance and Security.

Happy New Year, all.

Casino Surveillance News is now beginning, with this issue, its ninth continuous year of operation. We are still here, we are still surviving, and we have a totally new outlook on serving our clients.

CSN News:

Advertisers, please be patient. You will be up and running, with your home links active, before the end of the month. I am still preparing to deliver my new product, the PERMANENT SOLUTION to training casino Surveillance and Security, and there are a few more things I have to get done.

The new product is ready, but I am enhancing it: The Casino Surveillance and Security Training program class presentations will all be delivered exactly as I have always done in the classroom: Each presentation is to be accompanied by audio voice-over commentary and narrative, explanations of the video, pointers from twenty years of casino experience, clarifications, examples and “war stories.” I expect within a few more days to have all of the classes ready to go so that a purchaser can have it delivered within a week.

I have split the newsletter into two parts and made some other changes. Subscribers will still receive the entire newsletter as email. It will still be posted on the website. However, the NEWS ONLY portion will in future be posted at this address: http://casinosurveillancenews.com/newsletter-2

This means that you no longer have to skim my opinions in order to reach the news, if you don’t want to.

The CSN News, and any further editorial opinions I wish to express, will also be posted on my blog at this address: http://www.casinosurveillancetraining.com/

In addition, I have taken the Casino Security Training program–basic training in casino security–and posted it on a new site: http://www.casinosecuritytraining.com/ This program was very successfully delivered twice in 2008 and 2009, and I have configured it for training from computer. This too will be delivered exactly as it was in the two very successful seminars, with voice over commentary and narration and explanations of the videos involved. Additional materials have been added. Unfortunately there is one part of the “Concealed Weapons” class that needs to be delivered by a live person, and I am currently working out how to do this without having to come to your casino for delivery. (This one was awkward anyway, as there were several things I would have had to bring that generally made TSA very nervous when I packed them in my bags; forget carry-on. You have no idea what carrying stuff like this does when you are traveling by air.)

Advertisers please send me any new logos and links, and I will have you back up in a minimum time. Please be advised that CSN still occupies the top position on page 1 of a Google search for “Casino Surveillance,” and

WE STILL SET THE STANDARDS FOR TRAINING OF CASINO SURVEILLANCE

and for

BASIC SECURITY TRAINING FOR CASINOS

* * *

Keynote Article: I have updated this article from the original written in 2003, in light of several more years of casino Surveillance experience and several more years of experience in training Surveillance, Security and Gaming Regulation staff, as well as to bring it into present time regarding technology.

Teamwork Part IV

Surveillance as an Income-Producing Department

By Jim Goding

In budget meetings and fighting for upgrade funding, even in getting the funds together to meet minimum legal requirements, corporate political infighting will often produce the statement that “Surveillance does not produce income.” The same statement has been made, over and over through the years, regarding Security and also the Compliance and Inspection sections of tribal gaming regulation agencies.

Needless to say, this statement is false. However, it is not often obvious to people outside this field exactly how these areas produce income for the organization. I will attempt to show in this article how these investigation and inspection areas actually produce income, and also why it is not often apparent to people in the normal operations areas.

The short answer, of course, is through teamwork with other departmental managers. The income produced by a properly equipped and trained Surveillance department shows up as increased income in the Pit, Slots, Retail, Food and Beverage, and in massive savings on legal fees and settlement costs as well as saving money from fines from regulatory agencies, increased insurance premiums and other costs that don’t occur when an inspection or investigation department is fully trained and proactive.

This only works well if teamwork is active, however. Often, the best way to get other managers to work with Surveillance information is to show how their income could be increased. Once this starts working, it even sometimes happens that the budget infighting cuts down over Surveillance costs. (It will never, of course, go away entirely.)

Let’s take a look at a few examples; we will look at examples from the most visible departments. These can also be used as typical examples for other areas, especially the internal theft threats. Monetary damages alone from these can be extrapolated.

Slots: A slots cheat (external theft); a crooked floorperson (internal theft); and a crooked change booth cashier (internal theft).

Table Games: A cheating dealer (internal theft); an advantage player (external threat); and procedural errors by dealers (customer service).

Security assistance: A safety violation (potential lawsuit); a distract-and-grab team (threat to customers); and an under-trained Security Officer (potential lawsuits).

Slots:

The Slots Cheat: This person operates by various means, including devices such as optics, which fool the payout counter, and devices which can reprogram the central processing unit of a slot machine. More modern devices communicate directly to the credit meter on the machine, fooling it into granting far more credits at the touch of a button.

The first is less expensive to the casino. The cheater uses the device to empty the coin hopper of a slot machine and then exits the area. Let’s say that each time he uses the device, it costs the Slots department one fill bag: $300 in quarters, for example. Now, if the person finds, by getting away with it, that he can make $300 each time he comes into the casino, he will return many times, perhaps twenty times over the course of  year. That comes to $6000, for a single slots cheat, for one year. However, if this person is detected and apprehended, or even scared away by the attention brought on him by a well-equipped Surveillance department working in tandem with an educated Slots department, that is $6000 in savings.

In actual fact, that is a conservative estimate: in a single visit to a well-known casino, one cheat using such a device emptied three machines before leaving the area, a minimum of $900 in one visit. A device essentially identical to the one he used brought a black-market price of over $25,000. What does that say it was expected to produce?

Another major casino was hit four times in two years for over $30,000 each time by a team of people who were reprogramming the computer chip that determined when a large jackpot was to pay. This was only possible because (1) the Surveillance department was crippled by being under-equipped, having no or ineffective coverage over the slot banks concerned, and (2) the Surveillance and Slots departments did not work together, and in fact were discouraged by management from doing so.

The crooked floor person: This person has a variety of ways to operate. Fill bags, at $200 to $400 each, can disappear off the floor. Or the person can simply pour fill bags into a conspirator’s bucket, splitting the proceeds. The thing to remember is that such a person never does his scam only once: it will continue to occur, over and over, as long as the person feels he can get away with it, which means until he is caught.

So, again, let’s take a conservative estimate: Say he sends out only two false fills per week, at $300 each. That’s $31,200 a year. And of course, that assumes that only one person is doing it, which is a false assumption: If a department is operating in such a way that one person can get away with stealing, others are doing it as well, and it may reach well into the departmental supervisory level and above.

Jackpot amounts can be falsely overridden, for relatively small amounts, a couple hundred at a time. We have seen all of these, and more expensive ones as well. One Slots supervisor at a relatively minor off-strip Las Vegas property took the casino for over $2 million in less than two years before being detected. A Slots manager in Arizona took his casino for over a million bucks before being detected.

In the case of the Las Vegas property, that casino was unwilling to pay Surveillance operators the going rate, and as a result, their Surveillance staff were either completely inexperienced or were rejects from other casinos where they had not been able to make the grade. This casino, for reasons of its own, did not want trained Surveillance investigators. (I once applied there myself, turned down the job offered because they were unwilling to pay even standard starting wages for Surveillance though I had several years of experience at that time. Another investigator I know who had worked there had been released when he detected an internal theft scam by investigating internal control violations.)

Each of the examples here involved people who were caught doing these exact actions. In each case, a well-equipped and trained Surveillance department operating as a team with senior Slots Management may have caught them much sooner, saving major amounts of money for the company.

The crooked cashier: This, at first look, is generally considered to be petty theft. However, its consequences are much more far-reaching than the immediate theft at which the person is finally caught. To begin with, a crooked cashier generally steals a small amount of money, usually from the customers, amounting to, at most, $40-100 a day. He or she generally rationalizes it as an increase in pay. They may not make that much every day; let’s average it at $15 a day, five days a week, or $75 per week. That comes to $3900 per year.

However, the consequences of this are much more far-reaching. In actual fact, many people do realize they have been short-changed, and are either too timid to say anything or just don’t think it is worth the trouble to complain. However, they don’t come back. And it is very common for Joe Bloke from Peoria to tell his friends and relatives that he was short-changed by the slots cashier at such and such a casino, and this will keep those people from ever showing up. You can consider that for each displeased customer, at least five future customers will never come to your casino.

But let’s just ignore that for the purposes of this article: We’ll figure that only two of the cashiers in this hypothetical  loosely-run Slots Department are stealing, say two slots floorpeople, and if is a fairly large casino,  let’s say two slot cheaters of the less expensive variety are operating on a regular basis, using something like an optic device or one of the more modern equivalents.

With these alone, we are looking at preventing or detecting and stopping over $80,000 per year in lost income for the slots department. It is common for a Surveillance department, once it begins to be properly equipped and trained and work as a team with the Slots and Security departments, to find literally dozens of examples of these losses, as well as many other types, within the first year. After that, its presence and reputation actually prevents such activity from occurring.

Table Games:

The Cheating Dealer: Let’s take an example I have seen in a major Las Vegas Casino. Because procedures in the Pit were very lax, the dealer had worked out a way of slipping cash from customer buy-ins into his shirt. On the night he was arrested, this dealer had over $800 in cash that had been taken from customers stashed in his shirt. He in fact confessed to having averaged $300 per day for the last year when confronted with Surveillance videos of his most recent thefts. Just in one year, this dealer had taken $75,000 directly from the casino’s income, and that is just what he confessed to.

Of course, with procedures and supervision this lax in the casino, we know that this dealer was not alone. (I know of at least two other dealers who were busted for theft or cheating in that casino over the course of the two years I worked in that pit.) Since there were over 200 dealers working, probably only a few of them stealing, and not all of those working as profitable a scam as this one, let’s say there was “only” another $75,000 per year in lost income.  This is in fact a very conservative figure: In another casino with approximately the same betting limits where I worked, two dealers were busted for theft off the crap tables, and each day they were taking out $3-400.

The Advantage Player: The amount of money lost to advantage players such as card counters and shuffle trackers tends to strike fear into the hearts of senior Pit personnel. Of course, not all advantage players win. However, they tend to return, again and again to the same casino, until stopped. One team that was caught in Las Vegas was betting quite high on favorable decks, and after only half an hour of play had won nearly $40,000. This was the fourth visit by these particular players, and on each of their previous visits they had won between $10,000 and $50,000. Of course, these boys were the cream of the crop. Smaller, singleton players will often elect to be less conspicuous. Over the course of five years, I caught counters who had been working the casinos for extended periods of time. Some even had comp accounts. One was located by noting that he had been five times to the casino that year and had never lost a dollar, but in fact had profited $6-8,000 per visit. On his next visit, his play was analyzed and he was found to be a very skilled advantage player, and barred from further play on blackjack.

In preventing return visits by advantage players, in catching them when they return anyway, a skilled Surveillance department pays its salaries many times over. In one of the major casinos spoken of, by extrapolating how many times the teams would return in one year and how much money (by conservative estimates, as above) they would have taken according to their past record, the skilled Surveillance personnel saved the casino over $400,000 per year.

Procedural Errors: This is a bit more difficult to analyze in terms of dollars, and we will not add any figures in. However, procedural errors by dealers cost the casino many customers, and that, of course, is very expensive in terms of dollars, both in dollars never dropped and in customers who leave before they otherwise would, losing their money in another casino and telling their friends where they actually had fun.

The way it works is this: Dealers who habitually violate procedures are those with low skills and low morale. They appear unprofessional: not spreading cards, correcting their own errors, argumentative, and sloppy. They are the most likely, because of their low morale, to hustle tokes and otherwise offend customers by their attitude. In addition, dealers who are sloppy in procedure ATTRACT cheats, thieves and other types that are not the desired customers of the casino. One of the first things that a cheat looks for in scouting a territory is dealers who are sloppy in their procedures: Sloppy procedures make it much easier for the cheat and thief to operate.

In contrast, dealers who are well trained and supervised feel good about their work, feel good about their customers, make money in tips and make money for the casino by keeping the players at the table for longer times and more buy-ins. A professional staff attracts players and keeps them at the tables whether the players are winning or losing, because the players are being entertained. That, in fact, is what players really come to the casino for—at least the players that the casino wants.

A well-trained and well-equipped Surveillance Department, through its remote supervision of the Pits and correct reporting on command lines, keeps the Supervisors and dealers on their toes and corrects dangerous and sloppy violations of correct games procedure before they become habitual. This enhances the security, image and morale of the Pit, increasing their income and viability through better customer service.

Enforcement of procedures also discourages potential dishonesty by staff by making theft difficult; dishonest employees will depart for another area. In the first casino in which I worked Surveillance, one procedure correction enforced over an array of nine games raised the hold percentage on those games by a full point. In addition, one of the dealers on those games left for another casino immediately after the memo came down from the GM on that procedural point. That dealer was a few weeks later apprehended in a cheating/collusion scam that had cost the casino over $30,000 in a single night. It is unknown how many times this dealer had pulled the same scam on a smaller scale. The procedure corrected was the spreading of cards so they could be read by supervisors and surveillance.

Security and Other Parts of the Casino

Safety Violations: Some of these would curl your hair if you saw them. I have seen (as mentioned in other articles) some of the most truly stupid actions by staff, with potential costs in the millions of dollars. Let’s just take two that I saw in a single casino in the space of one month.

The first was a casino housekeeper, or porter, who was vacuuming the casino floor late at night in the area of an escalator that led down to one of the sets of restrooms. This person had, completely unthinkingly, worked his way from one side of the escalators to the other, and in the course of his work had actually stretched the black power cord for his vacuum cleaner across the opening to the escalators. It was stretched across at ankle height on the down escalator and at knee height on the up side.

Now, consider this from the point of view of a civil lawyer. First off, late at night in the casino, many patrons are inebriated to greater or lesser extent, and mostly on liquor that is provided “free” by the casino. The path to the bathroom had a tripwire, in effect, stretched across it by the unthinking (negligent) actions of a casino employee. There were no warning signs (negligence) and the power cord was black and nearly invisible (violation of safety rules: it should have been orange and highly visible, negligence again).

What happens when someone on the way to the bathroom trips over that “invisible” cord? If they survive the fall, they sue the casino for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills, lawyer fees and punitive damages, because of the negligence by staff and by management who should have provided better safety training and enforced standard safety regulations.

This particular error was caught by an alert Surveillance agent during a routine scan of the casino and corrected immediately by teamwork with Security BEFORE an accident occurred. As a result of the report filed by Surveillance, the staff member involved was corrected and received proper safety training, along with several other employees.

Let’s be conservative here, and say that the cost of an accident there would have been roughly $200,000 in hospital bills and attorney fees, settled out of court. This is not an unreal figure. Though the actual money would have been covered by company liability insurance, the premiums would have been raised because of the staff negligence and lack of safety training.

The second example of safety violation happened less than a month later. A cleaner was observed standing on top of a slot machine with a rounded top, hanging on to the electrical sign by one hand, and dusting the tops, between machines and around the sign using a backpack vacuum cleaner. The cord for the vacuum was stretched across a major aisle between a Pit and the slots area, at floor level on one side and chest level at the other. There were no warning signs.

A customer entangling himself in that cord could not only have tripped and fallen (potential injury) but could also have pulled the worker down from a precarious (and illegal) perch on the slot machine, injuring the worker and possibly pulling down also the electrical sign, with other potential injuries involved there, plus the relatively minor cost of repairs.

This is another potential $100,000 in fines (for safety regulations: no ladder, standing on the machine unsupported, no warning signs, power cord across walkway with no barriers), attorney fees, hospital bills, plus increased insurance premiums and state worker’s compensation insurance.

Again, an alert Surveillance agent working as a team with Security and Housekeeping prevented a potentially very expensive accident. Human Resources contributed, because of these two instances, with increased safety training.

Distract and Grab Teams: Distract thieves victimize your guests. They operate in your casino, steal from your players and cut into your current and future income.

A trained Surveillance and Security staff, working together as a team, can PREVENT distract and grab operations by creating a Security presence, in place and targeted at the thieves themselves, that prevents them from operating.

Let’s take a look at the way these teams actually hurt the casino.

First, a person who gets stolen from in your casino deprives it of the income that would have been generated directly from what the person stole. If he takes credits from a guest’s slot machine by distracting him or her, then he has stolen approximately 80% of the money that ticket represented from the casino. This takes into account the amount that would most likely be played back into the machines, offset against the possibility that the player would have cashed it and left the casino. So if the distract thief steals a TITO worth $50, the casino has directly lost approximately $40 to the thief.

More important, however, is the fact that, no matter your customer service and policies regarding returning money to players that have been stolen from, the casino is going to lose future trade. First off, even if the money is returned to the player who was victimized, that player will remember that it was YOUR CASINO where they had their money stolen.

If it was personal property stolen, such as a purse or jacket with a wallet in it, it is much worse. You can’t return the ID, the credit cards have to be canceled, the woman’s personal belongings are gone, and her privacy has been seriously invaded. You really have no idea how much this affects a person until you have had it happen to you.

This person will not return to your casino. Worse, when they go home, they will tell others what happened: Mabel the town gossip, the local barber, the boys at the bar, the bridge club and garden club and the social circle at the local church are all going to hear about how the guest got ripped off at _________ casino. YOU LOSE FUTURE TRADE. An informal study done on this in the late 1990s came up with the figure of ten future customers lost for each time someone got ripped off in your casino or hotel. I prefer conservative figures, so I talk about losing five future guests for each theft from a patron.

It gets much worse if the story makes it to the media and gets reported on the evening news.

Surveillance, working as a team with Security, can at times apprehend these thieves. More importantly, by reviewing recordings and getting ID on the thieves themselves, Surveillance can inform Security when these people return (which they always do until caught or the heat comes on), identify them for Security, get them run out when they return or simply put on the heat and make the place undesirable as a working environment for thieves. Prevention is a very powerful tool. Most of these people will depart immediately if confronted by a Security officer who knows what they do. Often the only thing needed is eye contact by a uniformed or suited Security officer. This is made possible by ID photos and communication with Surveillance.

The Untrained Security Officer: This person carries a potentially very heavy liability, and in fact may only be detected by Surveillance cameras and crew. In one casino, a new and poorly trained Security officer, ordered to escort an inebriated customer out, in fact frog-marched the customer to the door and forcibly pushed him out, resulting in the customer falling on his face and injuring himself.

Though in this case no lawsuit resulted, the Security Supervisor for the shift was unaware of the potential problem employee until notified by Surveillance. A single instance of this casual brutality could cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, even if no serious injury resulted. Added to that would have been the fact that this customer had been served complimentary liquor beyond the point where he was visibly intoxicated, which is a violation of state law. The casino could have lost its liquor license or been fined heavily by gaming regulation on this point alone, even without the injury and misconduct by the untrained security officer.

But let’s take a more prosaic example: underage gamblers. In Las Vegas at this time, it can cost the casino $10,000 per instance of being caught by Gaming Control allowing minors to gamble. Let’s say that the new security officer doesn’t understand that it is a part of his duties to be alert for underage gamblers, and to check ID’s and persuade minors to leave the casino. (And believe me, there are a lot of officers who will commonly walk right by obvious minors while on patrol: I have seen it hundreds of times.) That can be a very, very expensive error of ignorance. However, if detected and reported to Security management by an alert and well-equipped Surveillance crew, this liability can be handled at virtually no cost.

Summary

As we have seen, the monetary damages from any of the threats above is enough to justify major improvements in surveillance capabilities (equipment and training) or adding staff to the Surveillance department. The trick is that the income or saving of assets is, without exception, produced in an area other than Surveillance. This creates an apparency that the income produced is in Slots, Pit, or Legal, when in fact the producers of the income were a well-equipped and well-trained, competent Surveillance team, working in tandem with other areas and with Management.

The other important part to consider is that, according to survey, a major portion of losses due to theft in casinos are a result of internal theft outside the Pit and Slots areas. This, in addition to prevention of potential losses due to safety violations and regulatory fines, creates a major income source in a competent and equipped Surveillance Department.

The entire point of this article, though, is that in fact an untrained and inexperienced Surveillance department is not equipped to pick up many of the examples I have given here. They do not have the knowledge of the scams, internal and external, that they need in order to pick up the scams. An untrained department does not correctly write or route reports, and executives discount the reports they do receive. When illegal activity is detected they may not know what evidence must be maintained or how to maintain it for presentation in court. Without knowledge of procedures in the rest of the casino, or what those procedures are designed to control and prevent, cheating and internal theft can run out of control.

Untrained Surveillance can be as much of a liability to the casino as the untrained Security officer mentioned above. Confidentiality breaks, actions advised because of misunderstandings of the law, poor handling of evidence and reports that cannot meet the standard that would be required in court actions can cost the casino major portions of casino income. I know of one case in which a poorly trained Surveillance person advised a rookie gaming control investigator that a person was cheating by bending cards, when in fact the person was engaged in taking advantage of a poorly trained dealer who was exposing the hole card. The resulting arrest cost the casino over $150,000, because the video evidence in fact did not show any cheating moves, but did show that the dealer was exposing the hole card.

A trained and effective Surveillance, Security department and trained and competent gaming regulatory area are assets to the casino and its owners. Untrained or poorly trained personnel, in any department, are a liability to the casino in terms of lost customers, lost assets, potential legal problems and fines from regulatory agencies.

Copyright © 2003, 2009 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. Inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

A custom Casino Surveillance Training Program

can be designed for your casino in approximately three weeks,

and put into action immediately.

Inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

It’s News Time:

(I will supply text of the news article if any of these links do not work. Email to inquiry@casinosurveillancenews.com)

Busts and Scams:

A man was sentenced to five years probation after pleading guilty to cheating at gambling in an Iowa casino. His offense was moving his wagers from the Pass line to Don’t Pass after the point was established on a craps game. After repeated warnings from staff, Iowa state police investigated his activities and arrested him on a warrant. See the stories at this link and also here

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board fines the operators of the Meadows Racetrack and Casino a total of $10,000 for allowing minors to gamble and for allowing a self-excluded person to obtain a player card. See the story

High-rolling gambler Harry Kakavas has lost his $35 million case against Melbourne’s Crown Casino and may yet be forced to repay the casino $1 million. Kakavas had sued the Australian casino for a portion of his losses, claiming that the casino enticed him to play despite the fact he had placed himself on an exclusion list for problem gamblers. See the story

A cleaning employee at the Iowa Waterloo casino has been arrested after items were taken from rooms at the hotel. See the story

A Missouri man pleaded guilty to stealing from an Oklahoma casino by creating counterfeit gambling chips. He admitted bleaching legitimate 25-cent chips and then dying them to match the casino’s $500 chips. See the story

Nevada’s Gaming Control Board has opened a separate investigation into whether Harrah’s violated gambling regulations, based on allegations made by high-roller Watanabe, who lost over $127 million in 2007, and who claims that Caesars and the Rio plied him with liquor and pain medication as part of a systematic plan to keep him gambling. See the story

Other News:

Melbourne’s Crown Casino has hit back at a 2007 police report obtained under the freedom of information laws, which has detailed over 3000 crimes committed at the casino during a three year period. See the story

A French court reached a decision on two former friends who won a casino’s £2 million slot jackpot, but fell out as to how the money would be divided. See the story

That’s all for this month, Folks.

Permanent Solution to Training Casino Surveillance Personnel.

See the details: Click this link

For ten years I have either been training casino surveillance, security and gaming regulation personnel on my own, or I have been helping others to do it.

I have done this for corporate casinos, privately owned casinos, Indian-country casinos, casinos in other countries, other training companies, and even for private individuals. In all of this time, the basic concept has been that trainers jealously guarded their materials–their “stock in trade”–including presentations, written materials and especially video materials of cheats and thieves and other crooked activity.

I subscribed heartily to this, because it seemed that, in a limited business niche like this, if one gave away one’s materials, soon one would no longer have a market.

I am sorry. This was  a short-term viewpoint, and had little or no regard for the actual needs of my clients.

We are now changing this basis of operation.

Recent events, including a collapsing economy, and the resultant collapse of businesses associated with casinos, has demanded a fresh look and a new concept.

Casino Surveillance News

is changing the way that training has been done
in this segment of the industry.

Why should consultants demand that casinos bring them back, in order for the casino to maintain a high standard of training in their Surveillance personnel?

Why continue to send people, at great expense, to training presentations in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Washington DC, or other casinos?

With the amount of personnel turnover in the casino business, the people I trained are very seldom in the same casino three or four years later. Some of them have been promoted, some have moved to higher positions in other casinos, and some have even gotten out of the employee relationship, just as I did. This would seem to require that trainers return, again and again, to casinos where they had been. Yet very seldom did this actually happen. The next time the casino surveillance staff needed  training, the casino either did it themselves, or brought in a different trainer, with no benefit whatever to the original one.

Outside training is expensive, and can seldom be justified when budgets are tight. Currently, training budgets for casinos, especially in Security and Surveillance, have never been tighter. In many places they have been cut out altogether. Travel budgets especially are tight, making it nearly impossible to send people to open enrollment seminars held in other locations.

So why guard those materials so jealously? Doing this simply ensures that no one ever gets the benefit of the years of experience, the video libraries, the articles and presentations painstaking written.

There are a few other things that have entered into this new concept.

Both the best of the places that I worked and the best of the places I trained had formal training programs for their Surveillance staff, with specific requirements which had to be met to qualify for promotions or pay raises. I contributed in the design of some of these programs. A program like these is in fact the only way for a Surveillance department to maintain its quality and reliability of performance without regularly scheduled, extremely expensive, outside training.

Without a standardized program, each casino had to basically re-invent the wheel for its training programs, and there was very little that could be universally applied, if a person went to a new casino as an operator/investigator, or accepted a promotion in another property, or even if he took on a new position working for the same company or tribe in a new casino.

I am introducing a new concept in training Surveillance and Security personnel. This idea is going to royally tick off some people, specifically other casino surveillance consultants and trainers. I am going to make it unnecessary for any more “return visits from the doctor” for training new or inexperienced surveillance personnel. I am going to make it possible for any casino to set standards for the training of all of its personnel and to maintain those standards despite personnel turnover.

I am no longer selling training seminars as such, except by special request.

What I am advocating and selling is complete casino surveillance and security training programs, designed to make a casino entity or gaming regulation and compliance staff self-sufficient in its training needs in these very sensitive fields.

What this means is that I will custom-design for a casino a permanent, self-sufficient surveillance training program, based on my own experience and the experience of people I have worked for, worked with and trained under, based on my studies of the law, of my own experience and the experience of people I have worked with, of cheats, scams, internal and external theft and cheating in the real casino world., and on two very workable permanent, in-place training programs that I have seen, contributed to and participated in.

The  best part of this is that the cost for such a program is  far less than the cost of sending ten people to outside training seminars, and less than the cost of bringing in trainers for a three-day training seminar, which maybe half of your people could actually attend. It is a permanent investment that gives you the materials to ensure that your own people are trained and very effective.

It requires no travel budget. It does not require rescheduling. It does not require overtime pay for required training.

You simply set aside a portion of each person’s day for training time, from two to five hours a week. Many of the classes can be completed in one hour, with an additional fifteen minutes for a test to ensure comprehension of the materials and ability to apply them in the real world.

Tests and answer sheets are included. Or you can design your own tests.

The program will take a person from green trainee up to the point where he is ready to manage a Surveillance department on his own, when combined with the actual experience he acquires over his years.

This is not a two-day or ten-day training seminar, with the trainer and his materials gone, maybe to be brought back years later.

This is all of the formal training a person will need, in place in the casino with all of the materials required, and it can be stretched out over two or three years. Staff will have ALL OF THE MATERIALS AVAILABLE FOR REFERENCE AND REVIEW, however many times it takes. All of the staff will be able to take part. There is no time pressure on your staff to get it right in a limited-time training seminar environment: they can review the materials as many times as needed.

It will be of benefit to new operators, green trainees, experienced personnel, supervisors and even for those ready to move up to Surveillance Manager level. It is to be the property of the casino, and will be administered on the casino’s schedule, at no further cost after initial purchase. All of the materials are there, available on demand. Supervisors, in correcting inexperienced personnel, will have specific materials on hand for training or review.

The program would include Power Point training presentations incorporating text, audio narration exactly as if presented in an in-person class, real-life video and photos as needed, written materials, exercises, drills and tests to determine whether the person who took the class actually understood and can apply the material. Each presentation or class has a position in a specific training sequence.

Each presentation would be a part of a unified, complete and comprehensive casino surveillance training program designed so that a casino Surveillance department, working on its own or together with Human Resources, can maintain the training level of its staff at a high standard despite personnel turnover, without need of outside contracted trainers brought in at great expense. It allows training on a schedule which meets the needs of the casino itself, rather than the quick in-and-out typical of all outside casino Surveillance training to date.

Typically, a trainer or consultant comes in, being paid a high daily rate, and due to budgets and schedules, only a small minority of the staff gets trained. Or a few people get sent to an outside seminar, at great expense per person, plus travel and lodging expenses for several days. Usuallly only the best of your people get sent, or supervisors, so that you are “training the trainers” only. Other staff may get the materials, but only second-hand, and always without the video and photographic materials that make such training valuable.

I know. I have done it for years. It is one of the parts of the business that always bothered me most. A year after I have been there, the people I trained have moved on or been promoted, and the casino that paid for the training is back where it started with green trainees and people with some experience but no formal training.

Worse, some of those outside trainers only put on a dog-and-pony show, wasting time with card tricks and shuffling tricks that require years of study and practice to accomplish,  AND ARE NOT PART OF THE REAL WORLD OF CASINO CHEATING AND THEFT..

Training sold through fear: This is one thing I have given my word never to do. Especially fear of those things that are highly unlikely to show up in a real-world casino.  Why train  people to detect  things that  are highly unlikely to happen in your own casino?  Why waste their time on motivational lectures?

A surveillance training program owned by the casino would no longer require that whole departments scramble their schedules in order to send only a few for a training program. The program could be maintained on an individual-by-individual level under supervision of the Director. Or it could be scheduled in such a way that new trainees would attend classes together; classes could be put together for first-year investigators who are beyond the trainee level, and separate classes could be held for those people ready and wanting to move up to Supervisor level.  It would be totally under the control of  the casino itself.

A program like this could be used to bring all new staff up to a level of competence when a casino is getting ready to expand, or to open a new casino.

Such a program could be administered by the Director of Surveillance, with information to Human Resources as to who has completed the various levels of training. Training received would be considered when a new position opens or when promotion is due.

Or it could be administered, in Indian-country casinos, by the gaming regulatory authorities. Some of the materials included are also necessary for gaming inspector positions, after all. A requirement from Gaming Regulation that observer/investigators receive specific training, that they pass competence and knowledge tests, is backed up by NIGC regulations requiring Surveillance personnel be trained.

In order to give this new concept a fine kick-off,
a good beginning, I will give the
first  five four three two one casinos who purchase a  training  program,
customized for their needs,
a full  35 percent  off the purchase price
(click here for an outline of the available training programs
and an explanation of the pricing structure)
Inquire with jimgoding@casinosurveillancenews.com

A custom Casino Surveillance Training Program can be designed for your casino
in approximately three weeks,
and put into action immediately.

Note: Please bear with us as we update the CSN Site. We suffered another computer disaster. Though all the materials on the CSN site are backed up, this occurred at the worst possible time, and we are having to rebuild the site: See this page for details if you are interested. updated.  In the meantime, our NEW OFFERS are available at this backup site: www.casinosurveillancetraining.com

Welcome to the new home of

Casino Surveillance News

Here’s the situation: Since 2002, when I originally built the site, I have been expanding and maintaining it using an antique Microsoft website editor.

I’ve been through three computers since then, and the only one left with an operating system that supported the old MS software was a five year-old laptop.

The poor old thing died, taking the old MS program with it, and now I have to not only learn a new HTML editor, I have to rebuild about 100 pages from the ground up. The old MS program used a lot of theme materials that are not supported by other programs. It really was a dinosaur. The only good thing is that I was a good boy, and no actual content was lost due to my habit of continual redundant backup.

So until I start getting my materials rebuilt in new format, this is the first page you will see. You can also visit my new sister site at www.casinosurveillancetraining.com, where you will find my latest and best offer for training Casino Surveillance personnel.

I have had to get out of the training seminars business, for a variety of reasons. I took a fresh look at the business of selling seminars for training Surveillance, and really saw what it was I was selling: at best, a temporary solution. It does not really serve the needs of my client casinos, and it does not serve the needs of the people I was training.

A fuller explanation of both the reasons for the change, and my new and improved product–a permanent solution for training staff in Surveillance–can be found on this page, my new home page. Or click the link above for the sister site.

For the next couple of weeks, while I rebuild, this will be the new home page for CSN.  Once I have a majority of the site back online, we’ll put things back the way they were and I will use this blog page for the most recent newsletters.

Please bear with us until then, and many thanks for your continued attention.

(The old laptop, which had traveled literally all over the western hemisphere, deserves a wake. It has been a friend for many years, and has delivered more than fifty training seminars, has had many articles and even more training presentations created on it, as well as having been the real home of the CSN website. Sniffle. It has now gone to that Great Computer Resting Ground In The Sky. I wish it many happy algorithms, and far less abuse than I gave it.)