LAKE CHARLES, La.—The gaming industry is constantly battling against fraudulent activity and has become increasingly reliant on sophisticated technology to alert security personnel of errant behavior. But it has been difficult to figure out how to harness this technology and transform it into usable data that can improve operations.

“We do a good job of collecting video and saving it, obviously, but the big need comes from matching video with the data of other various systems throughout the casino,” said Darrin Hoke, director of surveillance of the L’Auberge du Lac Casino, a property with 1,600 slots, 60 table games and 1,000 hotel rooms. “It’s about taking that available data and turning it into usable information for us to direct our activities and have more successful operations.”

The need for better information has come as fraudulent behavior has evolved beyond just cheating at games. Player loyalty cards, which accumulate points based on the amount of money bet, average play times and other factors, can be used to pay for accommodations and dining and have become a growing way for criminals to scam the industry. “Cards can be manipulated internally, so dealers could put that a person bought in at $5,000 instead of $500 and instead of playing one hour, report they played three or four hours, which, together, could give them a significant amount of points on their player loyalty cards,” said Hoke. While the average incident only costs the casino around $100, Hoke said it was estimated that they experienced between 100 to 500 incidents a month, resulting in a significant loss.

In order to prevent such activity, Hoke’s team developed algorithms to identify fraudulent trends and alert management when player data erred from those norms. “We pull data from different systems and look for trends to identify the fraudulent behavior on the system side and match it to video,” said Hoke. So if a player’s bets are not within a certain range of points earned, for example, the system notifies management to review video footage. 

But Hoke intends to build out this type of system (referred to as “dataveillance”) even further by bringing in Synectics, an information systems consulting company, to help them integrate multiple systems into their platform. “One of the fundamentals is that there are too many cameras and too many dispersed systems and it’s difficult to sift through all that benign data to find out what’s worth looking at,” said John Katnic, chief operating officer and vice president of Synectics. “This is a means of dealing with escalating security data and what to look at and the way to look at it and what’s outside the trend.”

Currently the Hoke is beta testing a dataveillance product from Synectics that will take multiple systems, such as POS, access control, time clock, video surveillance, and integrate them together in a common database, and then write rules identifying “normal” activities. Activities that are outside of normal will automatically trigger an alert to management. One of the most common issues for companies is that data often lives in individual silos of responsibility, said Katnic, and there’s no coordination across the enterprise. “People think they’re buying a layered, comprehensive system but it all operates independently and is monitored by people who are unrelated and not communicating, so the enterprise is missing out on a true coordinated security plan,” he said.

Having more usable data can help with the overall operations of the casino, and not just to identify fraud. “Table games are more electronic than 10 years ago and there’s a card shuffle machine, a reader board and a lot of other data going on at a table,” he said. “One thing we’re working on is the ability to help table games yield more by manning them better or reducing minimum bets and ranges to get more business to the tables.”

They are also plans being developed to use the technology to identify operational needs throughout the casino, not just on the gaming floor. For example, using license plate readers to tag high rollers, the system could be designed to send a text message to the player development manager to greet the person at the front entrance. Also, using analytics to count people waiting in line could notify a hotel manager that more staff is necessary. 

While these applications of technology can be beneficial, Hoke, who has been in the gaming industry for 24 years, said this kind of reliance on technology has been a huge challenge for the industry and one that the gaming industry might not be ready for. “We’ve become a more data-driven business and that’s how we look at our operations, is through our data,” he said. “Before, typically a casino manager would go on the floor and cruise around the casino and gauge what’s going on and now we’re relying on the technology side more and more.”

Relying so much on the technology piece, “we’ve created additional issues for ourselves and I don’t know that someone who’s responsible for assets, I don’t know that they’re well prepared,” he said. “I think we as an industry have failed to have the forward-thinking vision of what technology would cost us in the long run and I don’t think anyone is positioned to deal with the fraud that can occur,” he said.