One of the biggest threats to casinos in the fight against money laundering is online fraudsters using their ill-gotten gains to wager in gaming resorts, said a speaker at one of the opening seminar sessions at Global Gaming Expo (G2E) 2014 in Las Vegas on Monday.
Paul Camacho, vice president of anti-money laundering compliance with U.S.-based operator Station Casinos Inc, made his comments on a panel discussing how casinos can comply with the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and other financial regulations affecting casinos.
Mr Camacho spent 26 years working for the U.S. taxman, the Internal Revenue Service.
He told the conference session at Sands Expo and Convention Center: “I truly believe we’re in the renaissance of fraud. The IRS is down to 1970s staffing levels [for] criminal investigations. There are less [fewer] criminal investigators out there; much less [many fewer] prosecutors. With the Internet it is so easy to commit fraud.
“There’s never been a greater time for criminals to gain so much and have such a low risk of going to jail.”
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center report for 2013, that year it received 262,813 consumer complaints with an adjusted dollar loss of approximately US$781.84 million. That was nearly a 49 percent increase in reported losses compared to 2012, when adjusted losses amounted to US$581.44 million.
Mr Camacho said during Monday’s G2E panel: “There are criminals that might come to our casino that maybe years ago they never would have. When U.S. Attorney’s offices say ‘Look, we can’t take a fraud [unless it’s over] half a million dollars or whatever, it’s a different environment now.
“And we have to be mindful that there probably are going to be more bad guys coming in [to casinos] because they [law enforcement] just don’t have the resources,” he added.
