Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Casino crimes vary from sophisticated to slapstick

Scams described at G2E session

Mob Museum, introduces panelists during a panel discussion on slot cheats at the Mob Museum in downtown Las Vegas Tuesday, June 28, 2016.

Steve Marcus

James Taylor, deputy chief of the enforcement division for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, pictured speaking at the Mob Museum in June, presented “Scams, Cheats and Black Lists: Current Fraud and Casino Crimes” at the Global Gaming Expo on Sept. 26.

They are the types of criminal activities usually seen only in movies about Las Vegas: stacks of $100 bills hidden in walls, special contact lenses used to see invisibly marked cards, hacked casino computer systems and outright grab-and-run thefts.

But as a packed room at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) proved, cheating, theft and fraud are very real issues for the gaming industry.

Thousands of gaming insiders are gathering at G2E this week to network and learn about the gaming industry’s latest technology and trends.

Extra chairs had to be brought in as James Taylor, the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s deputy chief of special investigations, described both the scams and the scammers who target Nevada’s casinos.

Taylor said the purpose of his talk, titled “Scams, Cheats and Black Lists: Current Fraud and Casino Crimes” to tell the audience about some of the cheating trends and crimes the Control Board has seen and “maybe open your eyes to some of the things we face here.”

One of Taylor’s first examples involved a high roller named Zhenli Ye Gon and resulted in a $2 million fine the Control Board approved earlier this year against the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

In 2007 Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican authorities raided Ye Gon’s home in Mexico City and found more than $200 million stashed inside the walls.

Ye Gon has been accused of supplying the illegal drug cartel in Mexico with material to make meth and also of money laundering for those same cartels. The Control Board’s complaint involves the Sands’ failure to file a Casino Suspicious Activity Report about Gon.

“The man was living at the Venetian at the time,” Taylor said. “Looking into his actions here, we found he had bought a home with some of his proceeds. We seized his car and his house. Looking at all the records, we were able to document a $120 million loss he had at different casinos. And we found that he had $75 million wired to casinos.”

Gaming crimes aren’t always quite so international or spectacular.

Taylor showed video of one suspect distracting customers as they collected their winnings from ticket-in, ticket-out kiosks in Las Vegas casinos. The video showed the suspect distracting the customer with one hand, while grabbing the customer’s TITO ticket with the other hand behind his back.

Taylor said the suspect will be added to the List of Excluded Persons, people barred from entering casinos, a decision likely sealed when the board found he used the same technique to steal winnings from the father of a Gaming Control Board employee.

Of course, the sophistication of the cases varies. After raiding one suspected cheats’ Las Vegas home, investigators found playing cards marked with ink that could only be seen by someone wearing special contact lenses and glasses, Taylor said. They found the glasses and lenses as well.

In another case, Taylor showed a video screen grab of a person crawling through a casino cage window next to a security guard. The guard was clueless to the crime occurring less than a few feet from his post.

Because the incident was so blatant and absurd, the image drew laughs from the room of gaming pros. But the photo, along with videos Taylor showed of brazenly obvious thefts and cheats, helped Taylor show the audience the range of crimes the Nevada Gaming Control Board investigates.

CORRECTION: This story was updated to correct Ye Gon's surname and the type of kiosk Taylor mentioned. | (September 27, 2016)

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy