ABSTRACT
Every gaming property now has a player’s club. These are the frequent flier clubs for our industry. We reward our players for gambling and other spending on our property. By tracking what and where they spend we can design offers and rewards to attract them back to stay and play again. Over the years player’s clubs have grown to the point that they really are the central piece of our marketing strategy, or at least the one that is the most used and recognized.
However, as effective as they are, player’s clubs are extremely vulnerable to theft and fraud. And because the club centralizes all marketing programs and promotions, and player information and their value, when fraud does occur the losses can be enormous. It isn’t uncommon for a scam to cost a company tens of thousands of dollars and some scams have resulted in the loss of over a million dollars to the victim company.
Usually theft and fraud develops and continues in a club without being detected for a considerable period of time. This is why the loss can be so costly: because of the length of time it is allowed to continue. It is critical that methods to detect theft and fraud are in place.
In this chapter we’ll discuss club operation, types of thefts and frauds found within the club, and methods to detect and investigate them.
