Casino Enterprise Management

We have all heard the horror stories throughout the hospitality and gaming industry too often—robberies outside a casino, jackpot winning patrons being followed home and robbed, employees collaborating to create jackpot payouts, players club employees redeeming cash back from inactive accounts, restaurant/bar employees “short ringing” a bill and pocketing the difference. The list goes on and on, as do the methods that customers and employees are using to gain an edge over the house. How do casinos stay ahead and cut or eliminate losses from theft of money, theft of time?

Google “casino theft,” and you will receive more than 7 million results.

When I first started in the gaming industry nearly 25 years ago, a friend of my mother’s who was from “the old school” in Vegas said to me, “Kid, the first thing I need to teach you is how to steal.”

I looked at him funny and he continued, “Because unless you know how to steal, you won’t be able to spot someone trying to steal from you.”

He was absolutely right, and the old school Vegas way of thinking still holds true today. That is why we go to game protection seminars and hire outside trainers and consultants to work with our staff on the latest scams and cheats to teach them to spot a cheater or a thief.

Years later, I was general manager of a tribal casino where we were dealing with a serious violation of internal controls, and we were deciding whether to reprimand or dismiss a manager. The CEO offered some sage, old school Vegas advice about the manager in question: (A) he either knew about it and was part of it, or (B) he should have known about it and is too ignorant to know when someone is scamming him—either way, we don’t want a thief or a dummy working for us! As it turns out, he was right.

My gaming experience started from front-line table games dealer through general manager, and I’ve worked in properties with one or two cameras to properties with hundreds of cameras. I have worked in properties with stacks of VHS tapes to the nearly complete movement to digital recording devices. This progression from analog to digital revolutionized the regulatory side of gaming operations and took surveillance from a smoke-filled broom closet with small monitors in a back corner of the casino to a high-tech suite of offices with walls of LCD televisions, digital video recorders (DVRs), and the ability to retain thousands of hours of recorded footage from the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of digital cameras located throughout the casino, amenities and the parking lots.

In the days of Bugsy Siegel’s Las Vegas, the surveillance professionals were managers who observed gaming action from catwalks above the casino floor. Eventually, these positions were replaced by video cameras and closed-circuit television, which resulted in a hard record of potential illegal activities or violations of internal controls.

A study by the Nevada Gaming Commission from the year 2000 approximated that 34 percent of those arrested for theft or cheating in casinos were employees of the casinos. Surveillance had to get smarter technology to stay ahead of the curve and retain public trust by taking on both external and internal theft and cheating.

Now, surveillance technology is moving from catching a criminal to improving service and being a management tool for human resources.

The continuous development of surveillance technology and the creation of “smart” software is happening as we speak, from biometric facial-recognition technology to “smart” business intelligence software that enables management to see and review operations by integrating point-of-sale (POS) data to your surveillance department, thus providing valuable insight into transactions and incidents. This technology shows real-time transaction data along with live digital video that can be accessed and stored indefinitely, and this same technology works with player tracking systems and ATMs, and can be utilized along with time-clock software to eliminate time waste.

These giant leaps in surveillance technology and smart software are taking the gaming and hospitality industry to the 21st century and beyond. When utilized by management, this new “smart” software allows management and surveillance to search and query the digital database by keywords and predefined triggers to find specific events or infractions. It also aids in inventory protection, cost of sales, maximizing efficiencies in labor management, and tying together exception reports with corresponding digital footage. This “smart” technology is taking the surveillance department from the catwalks to the high-tech world to make the casino safer, aid in staff planning and training, and save payroll costs by connecting digital video with clock-in areas at the employees’ work stations.

“Smart” surveillance software technology will pay for itself in the long run and pay for it quicker when you are able to use the software to catch employee thefts like the ones you have read about  at Casino X or Casino Y—just don’t wait until it happens in your casino. Explore “smart” business intelligence software and how it can help you and your casino realize its full potential today.

Theron Thompson is a former gaming executive with over 24 years of gaming industry experience, starting on the front-line through multiple Department Manager/Director positions, Corporate Marketing Director and General Manager of gaming properties throughout the United States. Thompson currently consults for casinos, businesses and Indian tribes. He can be reached at theron[at]scarletraven.com.