Three charged with scamming Mohegan Pocono

Three charged with scamming Mohegan Sun Pocono

Pretty slick: over $400k. Of course they eventually got caught. But still, a slick operation. Waitress picks up stray players cards and gives them to the VP of Player Development, who duplicates them, adds comp cash, and gives them to a third party to play in the slots. Not sure how they got the PINs, maybe the waitress looked over the players shoulder as the number was entered. (I think the story is confused about who did what.)

Pellegrini lives near me, walking distance. Next door neighbor to our daughter's best friend. I dont know the guy, but WTF was he thinking? Nice house, nice family, all very neat and clean. Who knows.

Edited to add: the waitress would just flat out ask the players for their card and PIN. She then gave the info to the VP. It would have gone on forever, but a dealer was romantically involved with the waitress, who was also involved with the player who was cashing in the cards. The dealer got jealous and spilled the beans.

Three netted over $400k in casino conspiracy

Quote: Mosca

Three charged with scamming Mohegan Sun Pocono

Pretty slick: over $400k. Of course they eventually got caught. But still, a slick operation. Waitress picks up stray players cards and gives them to the VP of Player Development, who duplicates them, adds comp cash, and gives them to a third party to play in the slots. Not sure how they got the PINs, maybe the waitress looked over the players shoulder as the number was entered. (I think the story is confused about who did what.)

Pellegrini lives near me, walking distance. Next door neighbor to our daughter's best friend. I dont know the guy, but WTF was he thinking? Nice house, nice family, all very neat and clean. Who knows.

Edited to add: the waitress would just flat out ask the players for their card and PIN. She then gave the info to the VP. It would have gone on forever, but a dealer was romantically involved with the waitress, who was also involved with the player who was cashing in the cards. The dealer got jealous and spilled the beans.

Three netted over $400k in casino conspiracy

Perhaps casinos need to spend more time and money focusing on employee theft and less time and money trying to foil AP's. They lose much more to employee theft. Obviously they need to protect their higher limit games.

Quote: AxelWolf

Quote: Mosca

Three charged with scamming Mohegan Sun Pocono

Pretty slick: over $400k. Of course they eventually got caught. But still, a slick operation. Waitress picks up stray players cards and gives them to the VP of Player Development, who duplicates them, adds comp cash, and gives them to a third party to play in the slots. Not sure how they got the PINs, maybe the waitress looked over the players shoulder as the number was entered. (I think the story is confused about who did what.)

Pellegrini lives near me, walking distance. Next door neighbor to our daughter's best friend. I dont know the guy, but WTF was he thinking? Nice house, nice family, all very neat and clean. Who knows.

Edited to add: the waitress would just flat out ask the players for their card and PIN. She then gave the info to the VP. It would have gone on forever, but a dealer was romantically involved with the waitress, who was also involved with the player who was cashing in the cards. The dealer got jealous and spilled the beans.

Three netted over $400k in casino conspiracy

Perhaps casinos need to spend more time and money focusing on employee theft and less time and money trying to foil AP's. They lose much more to employee theft. Obviously they need to protect their higher limit games.

Absolutely agree on that one. Casinos goes ballistic if say you win $500 every half hour consistently yet turn a blind eye when the tree rots from within until it is too late.

Mohegan Sun. Not a big fan of that casino. Much prefer Foxwoods because they let natural light in with a better layout. Mohegan's dark labyrinth interior is design to keep you in where you get lost very easily. Plus that casino is such a sore loser.

Quote: DMSCR

Quote: AxelWolf

Quote: Mosca

Three charged with scamming Mohegan Sun Pocono

Pretty slick: over $400k. Of course they eventually got caught. But still, a slick operation. Waitress picks up stray players cards and gives them to the VP of Player Development, who duplicates them, adds comp cash, and gives them to a third party to play in the slots. Not sure how they got the PINs, maybe the waitress looked over the players shoulder as the number was entered. (I think the story is confused about who did what.)

Pellegrini lives near me, walking distance. Next door neighbor to our daughter's best friend. I dont know the guy, but WTF was he thinking? Nice house, nice family, all very neat and clean. Who knows.

Edited to add: the waitress would just flat out ask the players for their card and PIN. She then gave the info to the VP. It would have gone on forever, but a dealer was romantically involved with the waitress, who was also involved with the player who was cashing in the cards. The dealer got jealous and spilled the beans.

Three netted over $400k in casino conspiracy

Perhaps casinos need to spend more time and money focusing on employee theft and less time and money trying to foil AP's. They lose much more to employee theft. Obviously they need to protect their higher limit games.

Absolutely agree on that one. Casinos goes ballistic if say you win $500 every half hour consistently yet turn a blind eye when the tree rots from within until it is too late.

Mohegan Sun. Not a big fan of that casino. Much prefer Foxwoods because they let natural light in with a better layout. Mohegan's dark labyrinth interior is design to keep you in where you get lost very easily. Plus that casino is such a sore loser.

This happened in PA, not CT

How was the VP of Player Development able to load almost a half million of free play into cards without some alarm bells either at the time he was doing it, or at least on a back end audit?

Quote: MidwestAP

How was the VP of Player Development able to load almost a half million of free play into cards without some alarm bells either at the time he was doing it, or at least on a back end audit?

That was just from May '14 through April '15. It was going on long before that, according to the second article.

If you look at Pellegrini's LinkedIn profile, he's been in the industry about 20 years, holding similar positions with several prominent corporations. I guess he just found a loophole he thought he could exploit, in the comps budget. And if it hadn't been for the human element, he'd still be raking it in.

Quote: Mosca

That was just from May '14 through April '15. It was going on long before that, according to the second article.

If you look at Pellegrini's LinkedIn profile, he's been in the industry about 20 years, holding similar positions with several prominent corporations. I guess he just found a loophole he thought he could exploit, in the comps budget. And if it hadn't been for the human element, he'd still be raking it in.

I guess. I just thought there are better checks and balances on discretionary comps. I once had a host tell me he had a weekly meeting with his boss where he has to justify each player expenditure that he comped (including free play/match play offers). Now he may have been just saying that to avoid granting me what I was asking for, but still, this surprises me.

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

-Benjamin Franklin

At his level 400 k over a year is less then 10k a week/ not even close to a red flag- I know some casinos where depending on the authority level they can add 100-500-2500 without a single issue- let alone I'm sure these were strong players so the play probably justified what he was offering- it's easily hidden and goes on at a lot of places

http://www.fox29.com/news/51752445-story

487,100 in slot play. Winnings of $418,792.55

86%...not too shabby given the volume of play.


The thing I wonder about - is all those folks who left their cards behind/lost their cards - that really sort of mucks up their win/loss report. I realize most use their own journals - but if they were audited and their records differed greatly from the win/loss records, I wonder how the IRS would handle that.

Further, I kind of wonder how often gamblers are audited compared to the rest of the population. Given the over-burdened staff...well, that's another post for another time.