🎤 Casino Security Expert Douglas Florence Interview

I got into the industry by mistake - I had worked for 14 years in retail security

I was working for 14 years in retail security and obtained my private investigators' licence in California.

I was doing investigations, mostly domestic, and was very good at surveillance. I always had my roots in Vegas and people were calling me in to let me know about different opportunities. A former colleague at Rio had some crimes going on: we called them bucket thieves where they stole coins and they were unsuccessful at resolving those.

He asked if I could come out for a week and help our team. I said I was building a surveillance van at the time but I can get it done in Vegas. So in 1993 I came out and spent 20 hours at the property. We arrested one of the folks well renowned in Vegas. I helped them catch him.

He went to jail and it ended up on TV. It was captured well. That type of crime was a big problem at the time. So I spent the next four days working with their team letting them understand what a predator looks like. Whether they come in looking to steal from the casino or a hotel guest, they’ve got to look for who they’re going to steal from and there are distinct non verbal cues that these people show. It was my job to teach them.

Then at the end of the week the manager has my cheque and goes ‘How did you do that? How did you catch him? And can you teach the team to do that?’ They were very resistant to learning, and I found out why later!

He said I’d like to offer you a job as director of surveillance. Over the next few weeks he kept calling me and upping the offer. Then I eventually said yes so they brought me in. It was a five-person crew. In surveillance rooms they vary in size. They have three to five people per shift over three shifts per day, so 15 to 20 people.

Training the next generation of casino surveillance — catching cues, reading behaviors, and protecting the floor in the heart of Las Vegas.

I took the job. I was born in Vegas but was not a gambler. So I enrolled in dealing school and took on my responsibilities with the limited system we had. We had 400 cameras in total, 1,500 slot machines and 49 table games plus a lot of restaurants.

Ultimately we started doing employee investigations because that was my speciality, internal as well as external crimes. We also started catching more bucket thieves. We weren’t getting as many customer complaints, we had customers engaged with their money again.

So in that year I completed gaming school and we revitalised the room and started to grow the business. That’s how I got into it, by mistake! Casinos are one of those things that just never stopped.

Hard Rock hired me after criminal activity among their own staff

It’s true I was hired by Hard Rock after some staff had been linked to criminal activity. That was in 2010. I had taken a sabbatical before then working on technology for a group running casinos globally.

I was recruited to the Hard Rock under a contract but before that, the Las Vegas Vice Squad from the LVMPD and the Nevada Gaming Control Enforcement Division were investigating the nightclub called Vanity, probably one of the most desirable nightclubs in Vegas.

I went there and they were going to be fined a lot. They risked their licence being taken away but they never want to shut a casino down. They want them to do the right thing. So they brought me in on a contract and in the first week on the job we got rid of a director who was in charge of security, he was part of the problem.

It was a challenge, I had to completely reorganise their security. I immediately went into the club and I brought women in as security officers as there were none, they could do verbal judo a bit better than a big hairy man! I also hired a new supervisor.

I caught the director of security at Rio stealing thousands of dollars

At the beginning of my career at Rio I understood what gaming was, I’m very confident with maths. All the games have their odds. Then there’s game logic. I’m learning these things as I go along. In terms of internal investigations at Rio they hadn’t had many cases. In our first year we had over 64 cases. Over the three and half years I was there we had over 150 employee cases, not to forget the cheating and advantage play, it was all part of the job.

But ultimately we had one case, which was the director of security. I had a casino cashier who had stolen $4,700 or $5,000 out of the casino cage. We caught her and went through her prosecution case. She pled guilty and evidence was returned to us.

Navigating casino crime from the inside — when suspicion meets hard-earned proof

This security director actually went and picked up what was left. So the balance of the money was turned over to him with the other evidence and he never turned it to us. When I called the board I told him I needed to pick up the cash. He said that’s already been picked up. He said this to the director. I get paid to be suspicious so I’m thinking he took the money.

I have to prove it before I can take any steps so I have to go over all the documentation. The money wasn’t turned in. So I went to management and they said he wouldn’t do that, he's the director of security. It turned out he had the evidence bag in his office there, and we discovered he’d been doing long-term theft from the lost and found. People drop jewellery, watches, cash, it’s thousands of dollars.

He had a player rewards tracking system at the casino across the road with a million points accumulated. When we did the theoretical on how much cash it would take to get that money to points we were in the $40,000 to $50,000 range. That gave us the number of how much he’d been stealing.

He finally pled guilty so the case was resolved. That’s our side of the fence.

This is how a dealer scam works - if no one was looking, they wouldn’t get caught

Now you think about cheating right? The dealer scams are the ones most people think about.

The player comes up and sits on third base to the dealer’s right, they buy in $200 and then instead of taking out green they take out $5,000 in big cheques and pass them, and then the player automatically puts their hands over the big money and goes right to their pocket.

Then they finish the buy-in for the real money. If no one was looking, it wouldn't get caught.

Subtle sleight of hand — how player-dealer scams can blend into the everyday rhythm of a busy casino.

Casino managers would embezzle and take millions every year

Not typically in the US or even internationally. In order to gain your licence you have to go through extensive checks. It’s a privilege to get that licence so most people would not risk it.

But we did have cases where the casino management would embezzle. They find ways to turn things in our casinos into money for themselves. Casino comps, sending false accounts, there was a scheme going on at the bottle service at Rio.

Every time there was a large cash transaction we had comp players coming into the VIP area. They would use the comp to pay the bill on the cash, keep the cash, and they were taking $10 to $30,000 a night. So over the course of a year you’re talking millions.

So that’s when you see casinos or operators commit crimes, when they have access to cash. Most casino executives don’t have that much access to cash. So it’s not as frequent as you would think. The lower end with deals and floor personnel, who have access to creating money, could be problems.

The mob left Vegas in 1983 - the new mob are accountants!

In today’s Vegas, the chips aren’t the only thing under scrutiny — AML policies and legal compliance are part of the new casino reality.

It happens, it’s the history of Las Vegas. A mob ran the city in the first decades of business. It wasn’t until 1983 that we got the mob out. A new mob came in, they were called accountants!

But ultimately we do see that happen in casinos, you have had cases in Vegas with Resorts World, MGM etc.

Anti Money Laundering, AML, that’s a big thing. And then here we are issuing credit and doing business with nefarious people and letting them break rules. That’s one of the things you can find that is public record today going back even the last two years. Gaming Control has levied some pretty big fines. We’re talking about fines of upwards of $40million and $10million lawsuits that have been settled.

It would be easy to be a crook if I wanted that line of work

There was a case at the MGM where a sports betting guy, a nefarious one, had a relationship with a surveillance director. He gave him all the player data for BetMGM, the sports betting. So that information is not public. They were fined $7million. Nobody was arrested and the director was excused. He’s still working in a casino in Vegas as a surveillance operator. How did he get that job? Sometimes friends help out friends!

In reality, who do we trust? That’s why we have so many cameras. As smart as I am, if I wanted to be a crook it’d be easy to do something similar and work with people on the outside. All you have to do is move a camera left or right, and make a decision not to arrest someone. Basically how do I prove that I did the right job? Part of that was I’m not better than anyone else, I had cameras watching me and my staff inside a surveillance room.

Ben Affleck is a very good player but he is not a threat

A lot of celebrities like to play blackjack. A few of them will play baccarat or lead, or dice. Andrew Dice Clay would come in all the time, he would gamble in our joint. Playing $10,000 or $20,000 a hand.

There was Ben Affleck. In a few movies you see him talk about the casino games like The Accountant, when he had that scene with the young female accountant. We evaluated Ben’s play at the Mirage. He’s a very good player but he was not a threat. He has money and the ability to play until he doesn't want to. Sometimes he wins all of them.

When celebrities come in they have that capability, plus people flock to them so we have them in a private game. But he played out in public a fair bit.

High stakes and sharp play — Ben Affleck, a skilled blackjack regular, always brought attention whether in public games or behind closed doors.

Ben Affleck was pushed out of the casinos - they thought he was card counting

A few years later after I’d left the Mirage and the Hard Rock, he was playing and they pushed him out of the casino because they thought he was a card counter. He’s one of those guys where the publicity that came out of that was tenfold compared to what it would have been if they’d just let him play. He was just a good player.

He wasn’t like the MIT group or other advantage play groups. They are very strategic on how they will whack you, it’s not cheating it’s all mathematics. In most cases it’s not cheating, it’s using our rules and tools against us.

Phil Ivey was pushed out and made a villain when $3.5million up - some will call him a cheat

Phil Ivey played high limit play with different people. With him there was the edge sorting.

He pummeled around and made a villain, but he was using our cards and our ability to let him break the rules. He could turn the cards and look at the edges and make a good decision. He had a little first card knowledge and not much more. But he had to have the cards out to see the whole edge. He didn’t win.

When he got pushed out of the casino when he was up at $3.5million at one time, he only walked out with $500,000. But in reality it was us breaking the rules. That’s just my feeling. Some will call him a cheat, in my book if we let them bend the rules to play then it’s our fault.

The 1996 Flamingo robbery sent a message to gang members - we made changes to stop heists happening

Target hardened — how Vegas casinos evolved their defenses after a wave of mid-90s robberies shook the Strip.

I never foiled an armed robbery. At none of the venues I worked at did we even have an attempted one. We had a string of them in the mid 90s hitting Vegas hard. We started doing things like changing the dynamics of the cage, putting up bars, making sure the little window the money would go through wasn’t big enough that you could put a skinny little guy through it.

We placed cameras inside, getting facial shots. We let people know the target was hard with security officers. The casinos they did hit were very soft targets. What stopped a lot of it was when Flamingo got robbed in 1996. They got hit pretty hard. But they caught all those guys and it sent a message out to all the gang members.

I was involved in a lot of consulting on hardening targets, designing casino cages, the man traps, things to do when you get robbed. Some people can’t hold their hands up very long and their hands start going down. So it was teaching people to interlock their fingers so they can have their hands on top of their head and not do something stupid.

I also said let them have the money, nobody’s life was worth any money.

AI can work with game logic to cause a threat to casinos

The modern cheat — hidden cameras, AI logic, and the ever-evolving cat-and-mouse game in today’s tech-driven casinos.

Game logic is the threat and that’s something AI can work with. If we are looking at Google Glass and any other ways people can put cameras in, say the side of their phones to lay them flat on a table, they can see marked cards, even if a deck is shuffled, if they turn it sideways like dealers do. Basically marked cards are like a bar code that changes on the side of the cards. They are printed that way. They get those decks into the casino.

So AI can understand game logic very well, very quickly and requires sophistication. It can utilise sensory input, in our case a lot of it is video. They have cameras up their sleeves. So AI can make the whole concept of decision strategy more effective and when we look at electronic table games, you see electronic roulette, these games all have computers engaged.

Think about the very first computer crime we had in Vegas, going back to the early 90s. We had a team, 8 people who were able to break into a slot machine and the FBI called it a banana, a device that had an eprom on the end of it that goes into the motherboard. They were able to hack the machine, fix it to the eprom and change the outcome.

They were hitting these multimillion dollar card giveaways and so on. What got them caught, because there were only eight people in their team, was they kept coming back to casinos in Jaguars and different vehicles, and the same people kept earning the same money. That’s what eventually got them caught. The guy went to prison.

So electronics and these machines today, they shield them.

One woman made up to $650,000 taking money from the snack bar

It’s hard to say, when you think about Vegas and all the videos we see today of sexual activity going on in elevators and hot tubs, some of the crimes that go down.

One of the internal cases that shocked me was when I held a training class at every casino resort. The things that can happen are shocking. Some are so simple. In this case I’m back at the Mirage, we had about 100 cash registers on the property, for the nightclubs, bartenders, you name it, always cash coming in.

Someone has to do those transactions. So I did a training class with the controllers, the accountants holding the areas for all the money throwing. I went over different programmes that we had where you could create filters on the data. Data mining is really how you follow the money.

Quiet confession in a back office — when years of hidden theft surface, the paper trail tells the story.

My best friend in a casino was a CFO and an analyst, they could tell me where I was making money and losing money. So I did the class with all these controllers and one of them came in and said I ran your little filter. She had those cash registers that were public and she had one that had an average ticket of $2 to $3, a small amount, less than every else.

I said, did you do 100 tickets to do the percentages, and it worked out she was stealing $200 to $300 a day, mathematically. At that time I’d been recruited to another company. I’d given my notice at the time but instead of showing me the door, they made me work until the last day. I told her to go over to security, have them watch the cash register and they will catch her easily.

The next day the same controller comes in, she’s got the VCR tape and the cash register tape. She said Douglas this is what they gave me, they didn’t find anything. They put the tape in and then in the first 45 minutes the cashier had basically been getting $100 worth of stuff. I said we’re done watching it now go back to them.

She took the data to the HR director, they made a decision they wanted to be the person interviewed, which is one of the things they did. I’ve only got three days left on the job and they call me to say they want me to interview someone. They said it involves the cash register at the pool. So my interview setting was not my typical interview setting. It was in a room where it was videotaped like it normally was. But I had HR employees, it was too many people in a room. In about 40 minutes I got a yes from this woman who had been stealing.

I knew she was getting $200 to $300 a day. I asked if she took anything home with her the day they sent her home. They just called her on the phone, told her to close her register and go home. They suspended her. They didn’t escort her, none of that. I said how much money did you take home four hours into your shift last week? It was only $285. The numbers sound small. She had money in the car so I got security to recover it. I said when was the first time you did this? She said 1993. In my head I’ve got eight years, $200 to $300 per day, that’s $52,000 a year. The low number is $400,000, the big number is $650,000.

And she took that out of a snack bar register.

I’ve seen people lose millions - it works out at $48m over a few days

I’ve seen a few million lost. If you go to the big room they’re betting $100,000 to $250,000 a hand, 60 hands an hour. You do the math on that one player in a high limit room, it works out to around $48million in the course of a few days.

We have a whole percentage we’re supposed to make but the players can get lucky. So for them to come in and beat you out of a million, $5million, $10million dollars, it’s not uncommon to have them get on a winning streak just like that.