Question of the Day - 22 August 2023

Seven Thieves was released in 1960, the same year as Ocean's 11, as you suggest. Like everything else, casino-security technology has evolved since then (63 years ago). What hasn't changed is the outright fabrications that Hollywood tends to employ in movies about casinos.

Former casino executive and regulator Richard Schuetz tells us, “It is becoming more and more necessary for me to preface everything with ‘back in the day.’ 

“Having said that," he continues, "the bundles ($100,000, or 10 straps of $100 bills) we got from the bank were wrapped and had all kinds of tracing info on the outer wrapper, which was transparent. We built our own straps in-house -- one hundred $100 bills ($10,000). The straps were dated and initialed by the employee for tracing. This was all done to ensure that we had an audit trail if something was short (or long). Not too exciting, but good accounting.”

In other words, the security was all internal.

We asked Boyd Gaming about the contemporary practice for bundling paper money and they were initially cooperative, but eventually said they weren't comfortable with sharing such information, citing security reasons. 

However, we contacted one casino cage, which wished to remain nameless, whose cashier told us that yes, the cage does date the straps, whether in their own inventory or when giving them to players. But the straps are (easily) discarded soon after giving them out. Thus, so much for tracing the money.

She wasn't sure what the questioner meant by "registered," wondering aloud if it referred to inputting the serial number of each bill. "That seems crazy to me," she said, given how much cash flows through the cages of major Strip casinos and how much time and effort that would require -- for reasons unknown to her.

All in all, we surmise being discovered quickly when spending the stolen money was a plot device, and a thin one at that, invented by the screenwriters.