Pennsylvania, USA - The Mohegan Sun Pocono casino, located in Luzerne County, has discovered an inside job thievery that made them lose as astounding amount of $419,000. There were three people involved - two were actually employees of the said casino, and one who posed as a customer to cash out the money. The scam went on from May 2014 until April 2015.
On January 19 (Tuesday), the Wilkes-Barre police arrested the casino's VP player development, Robert Joseph Pellegrini, 50, a resident of Fairview Township, on charges of identity theft, theft, conspiracy, computer trespassing, criminal conspiracy, fraud, and several other transgressions. His two other accomplices were also arrested: Rochelle Poszeluznyj, 37, a resident of Kingston, who served as a beverage server at the casino, and Mark Joseph Heltzel, 51, a resident of Dallas and described as a customer who frequently visited the casino.
The authorities stated that the scam started with Poszeluznyj. When she gives drinks to her customers, some of them would prefer to pay via their player's card. The player will then give to Poszeluznyj his card's PIN, and she will write down that player's name, card number, and lastly, the PIN.
Poszeluznyj will then give that info to Pellegrini, and as the casino's vice president of player development, he had access and the capability to create duplicates of those players' cards. He created replicas containing the player's name, card number and PIN.
For instance, if the player had $300 comp points on the card intended for Free Slot Play, Pellegrini would increase that amount to a higher value, such as $800 of comp points.
After the dirty deed, Pellegrini would hand the duplicate card over to their third conspirator, Mark Heltzel. Heltzel is the only one of the three who did not work at the Mohegan Sun casino. He would utilize the duplicate cards to play the casino's slot machines, careful to use only the excess fake money on the card so that the original card owner will not find out.
State police remarked that these three people spent almost $480,000 of fake money in order to be able to cash out an amount reaching to roughly $419,000.
Most people believe that the motive was simply because of greed.
This particular scam was uncovered when state police started to investigate the theft in April 2015 when a table dealer named Matthew Crane tipped off the police about an ongoing scheme that would cost the casino to lose thousands of dollars. Police stated that Crane and Poszeluznyj had been romantically involved during the scheme, and tensions arose when Crane found out that Poszeluznyj had been romantically involved with Heltzel as well.
source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/casino-thieves-steal-420k-mohegan-sun-slots-scam-article-1.2503014
