Published Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016 | 1:02 p.m.
Updated Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016 | 3:50 p.m.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board has filed a complaint against the Golden Gate, accusing ownership of the downtown Las Vegas casino of directing a $5,000 payout to a customer without recording the transaction on its books.
The complaint, filed Tuesday, also accuses a sister casino, The D Las Vegas, of providing $25,000 credit to a separate customer without checking that person’s credit, as required by state regulations.
Derek J. Stevens, who holds 78 percent interest in both casinos through a trust, said today the two incidents stemmed from paper-trail errors.
Stevens said the Golden Gate customer was a longtime client, and Stevens didn’t realize the man hadn’t signed a marker for a $5,000 chip stack from a craps table.
The D casino customer was an international patron with a $25,000 credit line, Stevens said. The D failed to meet gaming requirements because casino staff filled out the wrong paperwork when checking the man’s credit, he said.
Stevens called both errors honest mistakes.
“The bottom line is we screwed up some paperwork with two guys,” he said. “That’s it.”
According to the complaint, in January 2015, Stevens met an unidentified man at a bar at the Golden Gate, 1 Fremont St. Stevens told a casino host to give the patron $5,000 with “no paper trail,” the complaint alleges.
That order was relayed from the casino host to a casino shift manager, who then asked a boxman at a Golden Gate craps table to give $5,000 in chips from his table to the customer, the complaint says.
The boxman refused to give out the chips, saying the customer had no marker account and no play history that would merit a $5,000 marker, the complaint says. The boxman said he would not give money from his table bank without any paperwork or cash drop, the complaint says.
The casino shift manager then ordered the boxman to close a big six wheel table on the other side of the casino and sat down to distribute the chips himself, the complaint says.
The shift manager pushed $5,000 in chips to a dealer at the table, who moved them to where the customer was standing with Stevens, the complaints says. The customer picked up the chips and walked away from the table with Stevens, the complaint says.
The boxman returned to the table and noticed no paperwork had been created, no marker had been issued and no money drop had occurred, the complaint says. No credit account had been set up for the unidentified customer, either, according to the complaint.
A March 2015 investigation of the casino’s markers confirmed no paperwork was issued for the transaction, the complaint says. Instead, a separate casino report showed a gaming loss of $5,254 at the table, the day before the $5,000 marker was allegedly given out, the complaint says.
The board said the casino and Stevens misreported information to the state, violating six regulations. Two weeks after the transaction, the casino received $5,000 from the same customer, but the transaction was not recorded in the customer’s credit records, the complaint states.
The six-count complaint also alleges that The D casino gave out a $10,000 marker to a separate player just three days earlier without performing a credit check on that customer. The customer returned to The D the next day and was given an additional $15,000 marker by the casino’s chief operating officer, the complaint says.
The casinos and Stevens will have a chance to challenge the six-count complaint.
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