Officials of MGM Resorts International, testifying before a Maryland state House committee last week in support of a bill to stiffen casino cheating penalties, warned state lawmakers that table-game cheats are targeting the MGM National Harbor property in Prince George’s County, blaming a flaw in the state’s gaming statutes.
Maryland is one of only a few gaming states that does not impose criminal penalties for casino cheating, a void addressed by House Bill 1036 sponsored by state Del. Jazz Lewis. In a hearing on the bill before the House Ways and Means Committee, MGM National Harbor Surveillance Director Michael Ruggiano testified that more than 60 percent of all table-game cheating at MGM properties nationwide occurs at National Harbor.
“Our 10 properties in Vegas had a total of 51 (table cheating incidents), and (at National Harbor,) we had 153,” Ruggiano said. “We don’t want people coming from out of state, or out of the country, to come here and take advantage of us because we don’t have any laws on the books.”
Kerry Watson, VP of government affairs for MGM National Harbor, stated at the hearing that there are “blogs online identifying Maryland as a soft spot.”
“I think it was two weeks after we opened our doors in 2016,” Ruggiano recalled, “we caught—the team is called a ‘Dominican team; that’s kind of what they are known as around the world—in a non-value roulette scam. This is all they do from casino to casino. We caught them at our property, and all we could do was evict them, so that’s what we did. A couple months later they were caught in the Bahamas and I heard they got two years (in prison).”
Lawmakers said they are seeking more information from MGM, particularly a dollar amount attached to the cheating. Del. Eric Ebersole, asked Watson why MGM is unwilling to provide that number. “You have the evidence here, you can see these people cheating, so you know how much they won,” Ebersole said. “You’ve cited 153 cases. In those 153 cases, before you ask these people to leave, how much did they take from you in total for the year?
“The dollar amount is what we’re really interested in here, because the delegate (Lewis) said one of the problems is that we’re losing money” earmarked for education.
Watson told Ebersole that MGM doesn’t want to release a dollar figure publicly, so as not to further promote National Harbor to potential cheats. Ebersole reiterated that dollar figures are needed to decide how serious the crimes are, for the purpose of sentencing guidelines.
