Australia’s Crown Resorts plans to take a closer look at the behaviors of customers at its flagship Crown Melbourne casino to better identify individuals who may be at risk of developing gambling problems.
The measures, instituted at the behest both of officials of the government of its home state of Victoria and the company’s host of social and political critics in the state, will allow management to monitor the frequency, duration and intensity of individual gambling patterns.
The policy, which will be instituted in January, also is aimed at relieving public pressure on the company to better identify money laundering and other illicit sources of gambling funds. An earlier government review of Crown Melbourne said the company needs to improve its performance in detecting gamblers who were using other people’s money.
The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation has requested that “Crown Melbourne trial for a reasonable period the use of player data analysis as an initial indicator to identify players who may be having problems with their gambling” and wants to see a copy of the report on the outcome of the trial to within three months of a similar report being considered by Crown’s own Responsible Gaming Committee.
The new policy will come into force as Crown prepares to do battle in court next year with Bendigo and Adelaide Bank. The bank is claiming $1.5 million from Crown, which the bank says a former employee stole and gambled away at the casino.
The Sunday Age also recently reported a court case of a man who fleeced a vulnerable Black Saturday bushfire survivor and her four children of almost $400,000 and then lost most of it gambling at Crown Melbourne, including $284,000 spent in two weeks.
The judge in the case said the victim had been left humiliated and bereft and that most of her money “now belongs to the proprietors of Crown casino.” He questioned what processes Crown uses to prevent criminally acquired money being gambled and lost at the casino and noted how “quickly and apparently easily it can be done.”
