Casino Surveillance Pro

A few posts back, I talked about the best low-tech way to keep a cashier honest. This time we're going to talk about some higher-tech methods. First of all you have to understand that all surveillance systems these days record video digitally using computers, servers and network-attached storage arrays. (VCR's and videotapes haven't been manufactured in over 10 years, and I don't know any casino surveillance operation that is still using them, of course there may be a few I don't know of.) Most larger casino operations also use a networked point-of-sale system, instead of just a regular cash register, to ring up guest tickets and collect all payments. Depending on the type of software involved, the POS and CCTV systems can be integrated together through an application that runs on a web browser. This application allows a surveillance observer to watch what a cashier is ringing up and collecting for payment, both in real time and when doing a review. It will also...

Low-tech ways to keep a cashier honest: The most effective low-tech way to see if a cashier is embezzling is to do a middle of the shift audit. That's where you walk up to the cashier tell him to stop working, and stand right next to you as you audit his till. You will run what's called an X report, if it's an old Tech cash register. This will show exactly how much cash he should have taken in. Add that total to whatever his starting Bank was and you have an exact amount that should be in the cash drawer. If it's over that amount, and especially if it's over by a fairly significant amount of money, then the cashier is not ringing up some cash sales even though he still collecting the money for it. I saw a cashier audited once only an hour into his shift and he already had over $100 more in his till than the X report said he should have. If the cash total is only over by a dollar to $10, then that can be contributed to errors, or poor cash handling skills. When ...

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Okay, here's where we get down to the nitty-gritty and what I assume you all really want to know about employee theft. Which is, what does the eye in the sky have to do with all this?What are the techniques that's surveillance uses to detect and deter employee theft in the casino? Well obviously they have cameras. Duh. In the last 10 to 15 years however, new software has emerged that allows those cameras to be synced up with the point-of-sale terminals at all of the cashier stations in the casino. The software has gotten less expensive over time, as software tends to do. The result is a pretty sophisticated way of looking at what each cashier does on their shift. For example, most of these software solutions allow you to go and pull up each individual transaction, along with the video on it. And they can be sorted by difference payment methods. You can view all of the transactions that only involve cash, or you can do every time the cashier it no sale to open their drawer. Th...

I remember the first time I was ever exposed to employee theft. I was a teenager in high school, and working during the summer at an amusement park. My first day there I was partnered up with another kid, about my age, and we worked an ice cream cart together selling ice cream sandwiches, popsicles and that kind of stuff. The problem was inventory control and I realized it right away. When we left the walk-in freezer to go out and sell, nobody verified how much product we had in the ice cream cart. And no one verified what we came back with, either. The kid I was working with had some kind of a cash bank, but that wasn't counted in or out either . And it was a general rule that by the time you got done with an hour or two of selling ice cream in the hot sun some of it would be melted at the bottom of the container. Nobody kept track of that either. So basically this kid was going out there, making all cash sales with zero inventory controls or monetary controls. If he came back ...