Page 10 - IAV Digital Magazine #443

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
$6 Million In Chips Stolen In Wynn Casino Heist
By Daniel Shane
Police are hunt- ing for millions of dollars in casino chips after they were stolen -- allegedly by one of Wynn's own croupiers -- rais- ing security con- cerns in the world's biggest gambling hub.
The heist hap- pened Tuesday at the Wynn Macau (WYNM F), one of the marquee desti-
nations in a Chinese territory whose gambling revenues dwarf those of Las Vegas.
Macau police told CNNMoney that a dealer at the Wynn Macau and a potential accom- plice have been arrested and that they are not currently looking for other sus- pects. They declined to iden- tify the two peo- ple by name.
Police didn't say how the stolen chips were taken past casi- no security. But local media reported that the suspect alleged- ly stuffed them intoabagina VIP room and simply carried them out.
To turn the chips into hard cash, the thieves or their associates would eventual- ly need to bring them back into the casino.
Wynn Macau is controlled
by Wynn Resorts (WYNN ), the Las Vegas casino firm founded by bil- lionaire mogul Steve Wynn. Wynn Macau didn't respond
to requests for comment Friday.
Casino opera- tors could face pressure from authorities to tighten up over- sight of gaming rooms following the theft, according to Vitaly Umansky, an analyst at investment firm Sanford Bernstein.
Rules around gambling in Macau are more relaxed than in Las Vegas, he said. Most of the high-stakes action in Macau takes place in so-called VIP rooms, which aren't run by the casinos them- selves but by separate junket
operators from mainland China.
That makes it difficult for casi- nos to manage exactly what goes on inside.
"The junkets get a lot of leeway inside the rooms in terms of how money changes hands and how chips change hands. That's something that may need to get evaluated," Umansky said.
Big heists in the city's casinos are rare, but they do happen. In 2015, a jun- ket operator said it had
been scammed out of more than $30 million. That incident also happened at a Wynn casino.
Gambling is
a big
business in Macau, a former Portuguese colony.
The city's rev- enues from
games like bac- carat and black- jack are about five times bigger than those gen- erated on
the Las Vegas strip.
Macau's casinos raked in just over $33
billion last year, an increase of about 20% from the year before.
That snapped
a multi-year los- ing streak for the gambling industry in the city. Macau is popular with vis- itors from main- land China, where gambling is illegal.
Revenues began falling in 2014, hurt by a far-
reaching crack- down on corrup- tion by Chinese President Xi Jinping. That deterred some big spenders from visiting Macau's VIP rooms.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine