Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2008 8 Casino Security We have requested Interpol to help investigate this case. “The chips are hard to tell from authentic ones, although they are slightly lighter than real ones,”he added. Precedent If the police version of events is accurate, then the Kangwon Land incident may be the first publicised case of computer technology being used by organised crime in an attempt to defraud an Asian casino. What the police didn’t say was whether the counterfeiters had made any attempt to subvert radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Previously documented cases of chip faking in Asia have been largely low-tech and low rent. Backstreet forgers have produced small numbers of conventional chips with the aim of feeding them into casino inventories to skim off small amounts of money relative to casino turnover. Low key The Gaming Coordination and Inspection Bureau (DICJ) in Macau says it has no knowledge of any organised trade in either genuine or fake casino chips originating in Macau or the Chinese mainland. Playing down media reports does though tend to be the DICJ’s standard response to every allegation of criminal activity encroaching on the gaming industry in the territory. This approach was seen most recently when the regulator publicly questioned figures quoted in a S outh China Morning Post special report on the scale of side betting in Macau VIP rooms—an issue previously highlighted in this publication. RFID is currently seen by the gaming industry as a key weapon in the unrelenting battle with casino fraudsters. Inside Asian Gaming understands that every new Macau casino that has opened since the ending of Stanley Ho’s gaming monopoly in 2002 now uses or has ordered gaming chips with electronic identification tags embedded in them. By sending radio signals between the chips and the casino’s security centre, the management can track how many chips are in circulation at any given moment, where the chips are on the gaming floor, whether anyone has attempted to take their chips outside the casino, and how patrons behave in placing their bets. Globalised fraud If international organised crime is involved in the Korean case, it may be a case of what criminologists refer to as ‘displacement’. This is when improved policing or security measures in one jurisdiction results in a crime problem being exported to another jurisdiction perceived by criminals to have laxer standards. Korea is only a three- hour plane ride away from Macau and southern China and with the globalisation of the casino industry criminal schemes can spread as quickly as legitimate business practices. Kangwon Land declined to discuss its security arrangements with Inside Asian Gaming , though it is a matter of public record that prior to the casino’s opening in April 2003,the site developer Daewoo Corporation hired Sun Services, a division of Sun Microsystems, to develop a casino surveillance and data management system. In June 2006, the Nevada-based security equipment maker VendingData Corporation received orders for ten of its Deck Checkers™ for card games played at Kangwon Land and at Seven Luck Casino in Seoul. Alert The fact the alleged gang targeting Kangwon was detected by casino staff indicates a reassuring level of vigilance on their part. Any security consultant will tell you security systems are only as good as the people who operate them. Technology experts counter though that as criminals become increasingly sophisticated, common sense alone may not be enough to guarantee casino security. RFID is seen as a key weapon in the security battle as a way of keeping a real time record of chip inventory and weeding out clones and fakes. The fact that someone attempted to pass off counterfeit chips at Kangwon Land suggests either that part or all of Kangwon’s chip inventory is not RFID enabled,or that the alleged fraudsters’fake chips were sophisticated enough to beat the system at first audit. If it’s the latter,it suggests the criminals are closing the technology gap on the casinos and would indicate that the scientific arms race to stay several steps ahead of them needs to keep going at full speed. Protection versus cure Ricki Chavez-Munoz, Senior Vice President in Korea for ACE A&G, which makes gaming products including screen-based horse racing games, says though: “To our knowledge the best solution to this type of crime is for casinos to move into RFID technology for the protection of their inventory.” Any jump in technological capability by organised crime to subvert RFID though would be particularly worrying for a whole range of industries beyond the gaming world. RFID tagging is widely regarded as a hi-tech panacea for problems including stock theft and product counterfeiting. Since 2006, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer has been attaching RFID tags to bottles of the drug Viagra used to alleviate the symptoms of male impotence in an attempt to foil fakers. At the other end of the retail spectrum, some makers of cigarettes—a medically proven cause of erectile dysfunction—have been putting RFID chips in packs of their products for the same reason. Korea’s Kangwon Land casino