I sometimes post on the forum at wizardofvegas.com. It’s hosted by Michael Shackleford, the “Wizard of Odds,” who’s a long time friend and former radio show co-host.
Recently someone there started a thread, “Have you ever stolen from your employer?” They included a poll and, early on as I write this, half (3 out of 6) of the responders say they have never stolen from their employers. With a sample size of six, no conclusions can be made. But as the sample size increases, surely the number of people admitting to theft from their employers will increase.
In Dan Ariely’s “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves,” he makes the case that most people sometimes steal at least minor amounts of stuff. While not all of us are employed, we all frequent casinos (or you’re wasting your time reading my columns). So I thought I’d change the topic to how often we steal from these places.
Defining what is actually stealing isn’t easy — even if we use Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s (used in a significantly different context), “I know it when I see it.” Let’s look at things that may or may not qualify:
- Getting a comped room/show/meal and selling it to somebody else. The fact that it is comped means the casino knows it is giving it away and is fine with that. Casinos have policies against selling comps, but that doesn’t make it illegal or immoral. If you give the room/show/meal away to a friend or relative and don’t charge him for it, does that change the “theft or not?” discussion in your mind? What if you were upfront with your host and said your niece was coming and you needed a room for her? To me, this latter situation (which I’ve done recently) is perfectly okay. I’m not sure where the dividing line is, though.
- Loading up on toiletries, toilet paper, etc., from your hotel room and taking it home with you. If you’re fine with this, how about extending it to towels? Or bedsheets? Where do you draw the line?
- You’re playing blackjack betting two reds (total $10) next to another player betting two greens (total $50) on a stupid 6-5 game. Officially it’s a $25 minimum table but you were grandfathered in because previously it was a $10 table and you can play the lower stakes until you leave. You both get blackjacks and the dealer pays you both $60. Do you immediately speak up and say, “No. You should have only paid me $12?” I wouldn’t speak up (not that I play blackjack anymore — and certainly not on a 6-5 game), but some players would.
- You cash in chips at the cage for $175, but somehow the cashier miscounts your chips and gives you $200 instead. Do you return the excess $25? I would, but some players wouldn’t.
- Morally, it’s tough to distinguish between the two previous cases. The rule I use (as do many other players) is that if a casino worker will personally be responsible for making up the shortfall, I give the money back. Taking money from somebody who is working for wages is just plain wrong in my opinion. If it will just go into the pot as a casino loss, as in the overpayment on the blackjack table, I’ll keep quiet. I am in the casino to make money after all. But just because I have a rule of thumb to guide my actions doesn’t mean that it’s any the less theft.
- I’m married to Bonnie, but used to be married to a woman named Shirley. Let’s say I still have some of Shirley’s old slot club cards and I still use the same mailing address as when I was with her. If Shirley got a “come on back and we’ll give you $200 in free play” offer in the mail and I came in and played off that money, how wrong would that be? For me personally, it isn’t going to happen. I am too well known. Even casinos that allow me to play have some reservations about it, so I’m not going to do anything that could backfire on me. What’s right or wrong shouldn’t depend on the consequences if you’re caught. But it’s probably a factor to most people. Decades ago if this happened, I probably would have gone in and picked up the free play without any qualms whatsoever.
- Playing on a spouse’s slot club card is allowed at some places and not at others. Where it’s allowed, I take advantage of it and play on Bonnie’s card. There are players with players’ cards in 50-100 different names. To me this is clearly wrong, but I can see the argument that it’s just a matter of degree.
- Is that morally different from entering free football contests (where you need to pick who is going to win) in LOTS of different names and coordinating the picks to eliminate duplicate entries?
- I know a guy who found a wallet in the casino. He turned it in to security almost immediately. But since he REALLY had to go to the bathroom at just that moment, he took the wallet with him inside a stall. What he did with the wallet inside that stall, we’ll never know for sure. Makes you wonder, though.
- Dealers are sometimes sloppy and expose their hole cards. There are players who specialize in seeking out such dealers and using that information to beat the house. Legally, thanks to the Einbinder case, these players are on solid ground (in Nevada anyway — maybe not so much at Indian casinos). Does the fact that it’s legal have any bearing on whether it’s moral? If players discovered that performing a particular action (perhaps tipping) made the dealers even more readable, is that unspoken collusion a type of stealing?
- You’re playing blackjack at casinos that will award you airfare if you lose enough money. You have perfected rat holing, meaning hiding chips on your person surreptitiously so the chips in front of you are a lot less than what you actually have. The pit boss writes down that you lost $6,000 when you actually came out ahead. You do this at six casinos during the trip and turn in printed receipts for the same flight all six times. You even went further. You ordered the tickets at full price — printed off multiple copies of the tickets — and then cancelled those tickets and booked the same flight at half the amount. You got the larger amount reimbursed six times for imaginary losses. Was the line between being clever and immoral ever crossed here? At what point? There will be some who say that’s just business as usual — and others will say the line was not only crossed, it was obliterated.
I could go on, but that’s enough for today. Most of us, myself included, consider ourselves to be moral, law-abiding people. And we all do things from time to time that are difficult or impossible to explain to somebody who takes an opposing point of view. And if somebody disagrees with you, they often take a “holier-than-thou” attitude about it.
I do the best I can and suggest you do the same.
I remember a trip to Vegas years ago, before I was a local, and was playing a slot machine at Treasure Island (I said I was a tourist). The slot machine was supposed to pay me 10 quarters but paid me 11. I kind of freaked out, feeling that I had stolen something from the casino. My wife at the time urged me to just forget it and move along but I insisted on finding a security officer. I told him the story. He smiled and, of course, let me keep the quarter. No idea why I was so paranoid.
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What about walking past a machine that has credits left in it, abandoned by the last player? What’s the etiquette on that?
Also, letting a non-players club member play with your players club card in their machine?
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if its not yours, don’t touch it. pretty good etiquette for anything.
ask for the terms and conditions for the casino in question. if it doesn’t specifically say that you cant do it, you can do it.
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Don’t touch that machine. Serious charges can result.It’s like big time theft in casino eyes. Don’t pick up a chip off the floor either.
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Don’t touch that machine??? Tell that to the homeless that roam the casino floor night after night. It is their main source of income. I’ve seen it.
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That’s quite a question you posed Bob.
1. I think if a person gave away a casino comp away to a friend for a show/room/meal and don’t charge them for it, I don’t think it’s stealing. As long as the casino okay’s it I don’t see nothing wrong with it.
2. I don’t steal the linens or towels in a casino because the house cleaners check to see if items are missing and they will probably charge a persons credit card for stealing. I would like a new flat screen TV however.
3. I would have given the extra money back to the dealer for hitting a BJ if they overpaid me.
4. I would have returned the extra $25 bucks the cashier over paid me with.
5. No comment.
6. If Shirley and I left on bad terms I would rip up all her offers. If we left on good terms I would tell her about it and send them to her.
7. No comment.
8. No comment.
9. I found a ladies wallet on my last trip to the casino and turned into the casino staff immediately without looking in it. I did wonder if it was full of cash. I’ll never know.
10. A dealer exposing the hole card should be exploited even though I find it slightly immoral to take advantage of such a horrible dealer. If tipping made the dealer expose the hole card I might say to the dealer, “We need to talk after your shift is over.”
11. No comment.
On my last casino trip I was treated horribly by the casino. Due to their treatment of me I took home a nice drinking glass from the bar because the casino let me down. I was lied to by a casino employee, felt like I was being extorted by a bartender, and I couldn’t bet what “I” wanted to bet on a craps game. I felt like the casino disrespected me on many fronts. The casino employee that lied to me said my card didn’t work. I checked my card after my meal to see if it was working properly thru multiple electronic systems afterwards to see if she was full of it such as their comp station, different slots, etc. I checked my card thru 5 different systems and each time it worked I grew angrier and angrier, I took it as she lied to me. Since I was on the tail end of my trip I needed a momento to remember their horrible hospitality. So I took their nice glass home with me.
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the worst type of thief is one who justifies his/her actions. Using a bad experience to rationalize theft is very common. same with vandalism, assault, murder even. two wrongs don’t make a right, blah blah…
You then have to wonder if you weren’t the best host to a friend in your own house, and if they stole from you because they rationalized taking your stuff…
the other side of that is that you did something out of spite that they will never notice. you really taught them a lesson by taking the glass, right? probably not.
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You have a point JB. I was thinking along the lines of two wrongs don’t make a right but then I threw rational thinking out the window for the way they treated me. They were very rude and they cost me some cash I did not have to spend due to their own employee arrogance. So yeah, I took their glass! It probably didn’t help that I made a comment the lady probably didn’t like but it was not nasty. You know something along the lines of me beating the house, she took it personally and denied me and lied to me. That pissed me off!
I don’t let any of my buddies into my home so I don’t have to worry about not being a good host, though I am. I had a hole put in my front door many years ago due to letting a buddy live at my house, well they had a poker game over at my home one evening when I wasn’t there and a fight broke out. I got a hole put in my front door, a fist got put halfway through it.
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I fully understand the situation. I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t thought about doing something to ‘get back’ at someone else when they pissed me off at some point…
in life there will be a million situations where you feel wronged, your actions in response will define you and shape your future.
p.s. invest in a solid core door for the front door 🙂
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I can always take the glass back. I’m playing their game and following their rules and then the employees screw me over with bully tactics & attitude which cost me by breaking their own rules and etiquette, so I kinda look at it as I paid for the glass. It’s merely a souvenir.
I didn’t get a solid door, I just duck taped the hole and put some door adhesive tape over it so nobody knows. I wish I had a solid door so the guy who punched it would have broken some bones in his hand.
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I have well over $2,000 from erroneous payouts at Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em, and I never bet more than the minimum. While some players return their own erroneous payments, almost all players are willing to keep quiet about erroneous payments to others. I learned this protocol many years ago when I was trying to be helpful.
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would you say something is your neophyte table mate got short payed?
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if its given to you without mistake, its not theft. If its not yours, and it hasn’t been given to you, its theft.
1. not theft. its been given to you. civil issue.
2. toiletries that cannot be reused are given to you. not theft. towels, bedsheets, and the mini-fridge are meant to be reused. theft.
3. given to you, not theft. If they ask for it back, and you refuse, it becomes theft.
4. same as above, not theft, but if they ask for it back, be prepared to pay it back. same as any bank making an error and finding it later.
5. see above.
6. if its your club card, not theft. if it belongs to someone else, and you take it, its theft. permission doesn’t matter, it is simply who owns the item being given. the casino gave it to someone else.
7. gaining comp points on another name isn’t theft. using someone elses comp points is theft. or worse, using a card with a fake name and using a fake id, becomes fraud.
8. fraud.
9. if its not yours, don’t touch it. taking someone elses wallet can be considered theft, even if you had the best intentions. did you really have to go that bad? then you didn’t have time to pick up the wallet, and should’ve passed it by on your way to the bathroom. if picking up an item that isn’t yours makes you have to urinate that bad, your body is telling you its wrong.
10. given to you, not theft. even steering a dealer into breaking procedure isn’t theft. the dealer is supposed to follow procedure, no matter of tips or faulty table design. again, not theft.
11. not theft, not even fraud, just extreme couponing. unless they specifically say that you cant do it in the terms and conditions, then its fraud.
The real question for all of these things are, ‘Would a casino prosecute for them’? For most, if not all, the answer is no, even for the theft and fraud… If you continue to do them after being warned not to, or steal from another person who owns an item (i.e. the wallet you took into the bathroom), then the victim may press charges, but even then, the prosecutor would have to see actual proof that would hold up in court before he went forward with it, and like you say, in the bathroom, who knows what happens. In the case of things like #8, they would only care if you won the top prize using those methods… If you just gain a small advantage and amount of money, they wouldn’t notice or care, even if they did. same with #11.
As for #10 I haven’t heard of an tribal property trying to press charges on a hole carder for theft… and there is no such thing as unspoken collusion… if a property were to go after a dealer/agent for collusion, they would have to prove it happened, which is why there aren’t many collusion cases compared to theft or capping/pinching, etc.
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I used to work at a casino. It’s not as easy to “rat hole” chips especially on a black jack table. With the pit boss knowing within a few hundred dollars how much the table is up or down, stuffing that much money in your pocket and them not knowing????? Unless they’re really stupid, it’s impossible. If you buy in for the $6,000 and stuff all that in your pocket and there’s $6,000 missing from the dealer’s tray when they do a count, they know something’s up.
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it wouldn’t be fun if it was easy.
they are really stupid. the smart ones move on quickly.
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Short and to the point answer here. Hell yes. The casinos steal from us all the time!
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I’ve only done three of these ten. I need to up my game. 😉
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I have been pretty fair and honest with casinos, but the one thing I take advantage of is glitches in games that give out too many points.
One of my local casinos here already gives out points on the video poker machines that also have video Keno on them, vs the Video Poker only games where you get points at half the rate of slots. So I already only play the ones with Keno since they paytables are the same and I essentially get double points. Well I found one on accident that was giving 10x points and it had Keno on it so essentially 20x points. These were both tier points and playable points. I did this for about 2 months until they caught on, even got a royal on it on Dollar denom.
I also found a slot there too that was giving 4x points for a while, so took advantage of these as much as I could.
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RE wallets found in casinos, I’ve found two. On one occasion I was playing a slot machine and occasionally browsing around and noticed a wallet laying on the floor below a chair in front of a nearby slot machine. I put my light on and when a slot attendant arrived I asked him or her to send over a Security person. I never moved until Security arrived and I just pointed to the wallet (could have been a tobacco pouch for all I know… The other occasion was a bit more interesting. I was sitting at a circular video poker bar where I had been playing for a good while, and of course noticing what’s happening around me as a matter of habit. A man playing VP a few machines around the bend had been there for some time and got up and left, no indication that he was heading for the restroom or to grab a nearby hot dog, etc. May 10 minutes later (it wasn’t busy) I glanced over to where he had been playing and right in front of the hold keys lay what looked like a wallet. I first called over the bar tender and from a distance he confirmed that it sure looked like a wallet. I asked him to call Security and soon thereafter a plain clothes security person arrived and I pointed out the “wallet,” having never left my seat. Sure enough it was a wallet and the Security person stood nearby for almost an hour before opening the wallet, presumably to identify the owner. Security and the bartender talked and sure enough the guy had used his credit card while playing and it matched the ID in the wallet. So just as Security was leaving with wallet in hand, up walks the owner and of course he had to describe the contents, etc., and both the bartender and I confirmed that he was the one who left that machine. So I guess my bottom line on the above is just stay put and call Security…
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Some answers are simple…like the re-usable, not re-usable or gifted comp examples. Others not so much,,,.. like the line between caring if a mistake hurts a salaried employee or not, if it hurts the corporate casino’s bottom line. The point about stealing is really one of individual conscience and spirituality. You may be able to conceal your actions from casino eyes, the law, and/or others if you never confess, but you can’t hide it from yourself, or (to those of faith) your all-knowing Maker
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Is it wrong to see someone drop money and you don’t tell them?
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One casino I worked at, kicked guests out for “credit mining” looking for change or money left on machines to cash out and or play, they gave a guest a warning but never prosecuted or banned the patron. However I just read an article about one guest in Colorado now has a criminal record for supposedly carelessly playing 76 cents in addition to the $20 he himself inserted into the machine to play on, according to the article security walked right up to him told him what he did and he now has a criminal record for it.
IN a Northern California casino a guest purchased chips from the cashier, placed his money on the counter and supposedly “inadvertently” took his cash back off the counter, pocketed it, took the chips too and walked away, it wasn’t hours later until management reviewed surveillance on this guy, they had his phone number from his players card info, they called the guest and supposedly asked him to return the money, they gave him 3 days to return the money, the guest never returned it and the cashier lost his job, but nothing happend to the guest, even after the casino watched him pocket the cash and even after they confronted him about his “mistake.” I guess all casinos are different-
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