Why SSIN Makes Sense
By David Garcia
Here’s that big question: Are our products really good enough to catch you a cheater or a card thief? Here’s the short answer: They are.
The longer answer: Well, I’m an IT guy with military experience. I have no casino surveillance experience. None. Zip. But because I’ve played around with our products, I’m able to use them to point out a number of well-known advantage players and cheats. And here’s how this all — the usefulness of our tools — came home to me a few years ago.
I was attending a company dinner in a downtown Las Vegas casino, and ran into a person who looked familiar. He should have been familiar, he was in our CID (Casino Information Database) and listed as a known slot cheat. I had seen that face multiple times, while going through the CID, and in fact, recognized him immediately as some of the images we had on him were pretty fresh, from a recent SSIN (Security & Surveillance Information Network; it was then called Surveillance Information Network) alert.
A SSIN alert is essentially a real time alert, with each alert tracking a specific person or group of interest. In this case, that slot cheat had been previously identified and given a separate number. Under the normal course of events, if the casino we were dining in had been a preexisting customer, they would probably already have been authorized to see that alert. That SSIN alert, in turn, would have authorized everyone who saw it to view all available pictures of that slot cheat, provided some background information, specified details on his cheating methodology and aliases, and indicated who put that alert out.
But because that particular organization wasn’t already a customer, their surveillance teams didn’t have access to all this information. We did however, and though I hate interrupting dinner, this was important enough for me to help them out and notify casino surveillance immediately.
Within minutes, security was able to apprehend the gentleman, right in the act of trying to cheat a slot machine. I have to point out here that happily for us, no good deed goes unrewarded, and we soon added a new customer!
Our product tools did the work for me that day, and will do the work for you, everyday. Another point, the SSIN was historically used to track cheaters, or known associates of cheaters. Over the past year, however, it has been extended to include many other suspects — from known murders to counterfeiters, traffickers, and much more, giving casinos and other customers a much wider net to cast, while looking for people with fraudulent intent or worse.
My suggestion? Try it. We have nearly 200 satisfied customers. It makes no sense to me that casinos continue to operate without a quality games protection software, and risk being vulnerable to large financial losses.