Life up in Lake Tahoe isn't too tough for the rich and famous who own the beautiful rustic million dollar plus "cabins" surrounding the lake. They enjoy roughing it up in the mountains. Just a short ride in the Escalade to the casinos, Reno, and the coast is only a few hours. But someone has to clean the hotel rooms, someone has to deal the cards and someone has to watch everyone else that ain't watching them. So for people like the hotel workers and the dealers and everyone else working the lower paying jobs in the small tourist towns like Lake Tahoe, they have to somehow figure a way around the high priced living. The first thing they think is they'll have to drive in from towns like Carson City and Reno, or live twelve to a room in one of the few efficiency apartments in Tahoe, or somehow figure out another way to raise the monthly rent. This is the story of three who figured a way around the high price of living in Lake Tahoe. Too bad it didn't last very long.

Rose was a hotel maid in Reno. She moved from L.A. after finishing her parole from the six months she did in the L.A. County Jail after the Grand Larceny charge she couldn't defend herself against from the fall she took after looting a hotel room. She changed her name and managed to get herself a sheriff's card in Reno but couldn't manage to land anything better than a Motel 6 cleaning job which meant she had to live on a tortillas and refried beans when she had a gourmet appetite.

The job she found in Lake Tahoe was a good hour drive but it was a top notch casino and she couldn't ignore the temptation. She was on the job a week when she was assigned the penthouse suites to clean. Instead of the ten or more rooms she was expected to clean, she only had to clean a few suites a day. The room was pretty well tossed when she started. The guy who was staying there had partied the night before and had won quite a bit of money as well as polishing off a couple bottles of champagne. He left an order for the maid to clean the living room while he slept it off in the bedroom. Rose began to clean when she noticed the bedroom door open. Peering in she saw the gambler snoring louder than a stock Harley, dead to the world. She also noticed a bunch of casino chips sitting on the dresser. There was over twelve thousand in pink $500 checks alone, a stack of black $100 checks and several smaller checks. They weren't counted out in piles, just sitting spread out on the dresser and she didn't think this guy would ever notice a few missing chips. She grabbed three of the $500 checks and another $800 in other checks. Next to the checks was his wallet thick with $100 bills. She grabbed that as he snored away and took another $1,300 from there.

Then she slipped back to the living room and quickly cleaned up and left. She knew he was checking out today and just hoped he would be too hung over to remember or even notice that he was ripped off. But this guy wasn't that stupid. Although the checks were spread out over the dresser, he knew exactly how much was there to the dollar. He also knew exactly how much he had in his wallet and as soon as he woke up he notices something was missing. He might have put on a good buzz the night before but he knew he didn't lose $3,600 from the time he crashed out to the time he woke up. He called security who filled out a report and immediately went to find Rose. She saw them walking down the hall towards her and she went into the room she was now cleaning and threw the chips and the cash under the pillow on the bed but they walked in and saw her standing near the bed and immediately found the checks and cash. She was handcuffed right there and taken away. This was last Tuesday.

Wednesday afternoon when surveillance came on swing shift they took up their stations and everything was going as usual. They noticed one of the dealers on his break sitting at a dollar video poker machine slamming his fist on the glass screen. No big deal except this guy was looking distressed. On his next break surveillance noticed the same behavior from the same dealer on another poker machine. When he returned to the blackjack table they decided to keep an eye on him since there wasn't much else to watch in the casino that day. Things were quiet that day. The next day they went through the same routine.

The dealer clapped off the game and went immediately to the dollar poker machines. He popped a $20 in and began slamming the buttons. A few minutes later another twenty hit the bill changer and he was popping the buttons like crazy trying to get a few more hands in before the break was over. He lost $60 on that break and returned to the tables. This time as surveillance watched him as a player bought in for $500, he took out three black $100 checks and another $300 in green $25 checks. He only laid out two of the three $100 checks and the $300 in green and shouted out "Change five hundred" The floor man walked up to the table and wrote the buy-in down, took the players rating card from the player and wrote down his number and returned the card. They looked back to the dealer but instead of returning the third $100 chip to the rack it just disappeared.

They watched him closer now and the next buy-in went the same way. He took out a few more green chips than he needed, called the buy-in to the floorman and somehow palmed the extra checks into his possession. Surveillance called the Tahoe Police and the Gaming Authority and told them to send down a cruiser to pick the guy up after they arrested him. But the surveillance guy that was watching him told the chief to hold up. He still didn't know how he was taking the checks off the table. The next big buy-in came an hour later as one guy bought in for $1,200. He took out a total of $1,500 in checks and somehow managed to take another $300 off the table. Then they noticed what they were looking for when they turned the camera from the next Blackjack table to the right where the floor man was writing down the player's rating card number and noticed the clip board was positioned between him and the dealer and saw the dealer lay the three black checks on the floorman's clip board and the floorman slipped the rating slip over the checks and walked to the podium and slipped the checks into his pocket. It was a slick move.

These two had obviously practiced this move a few times since they had the timing down perfect. They decided to wait on the arrests. They knew they had to cash the checks in to the casino cage and only had to wait about thirty minutes after the two got off of work. They watched them walk out of the casino after punching the time clock and got into the same car in the parking garage. Soon a woman emerged from the back seat and walked into the casino. She waked up to a Blackjack table and bought in for $100. She played a few hands for $10 and proceeded to the cage to cash in $800 in checks. Weather they told her to cash in that much or if she decided that on her own it was a stupid thing to do. Although they already had her pegged from the minute she walked into the casino, they should have told her any time someone cashed out more than $500 the cage had to get an approval from the pit.

The winnings would have to be accounted for before the player would receive any cash. The undercover security along with two uniformed security guards handcuffed and escorted the woman from the cage to the back room. They then walked to the garage and approached the car from behind where the dealer and the floorman were waiting for her to come back from the casino with their cash. They were found with over $3,000 total in casino checks in their possession waiting to be cashed in. This was Grand Larceny and the casinos take a dim view of a single dealer ripping off the casino, but even less when two or more are in cahoots. This one involving a floorman was disconcerting since they did it so smoothly, how many other dealers and floormen were doing this kind of moves?

My own personal story comes in here as I was learning to deal craps. The first thing I was being taught was the stick. The stick man has many responsibilities. First he takes and places all the "prop" bets, being the hard ways (to hit a hard way means to make an even number with the same two numbers on the dice. A hard 8 would be two 4's, a hard 6 would be two 3's, etc.) He places the C & E bets, the horn and world bets, he picks up the dice with the stick and hands it off to the next players to pick two and toss them. He watches the dice come across the table to ensure a good throw; he calls the game to the dealers and the players as well as the box man. In other words, his job is probably the most involved.

He also faces the dealers and the box to co-ordinate the game. After a week dealing the stick I was just getting to the point where I could call the game and slide the two dice around the bets to the next player, but that was pretty hard in itself. The box man who does all the chip and cash transactions was an older guy who had been a box man since I was in high school.

One day he was counting out a ten thousand dollar buy-in in hundreds, lines up the bills and slides a thousand at a time in the box. As I was leaning toward the new player, one of the stacks of a thousand got rolled up in a small tube unlike the rest. I looked to the player throwing the two red checks "Hard six and eight" I turned to place the bets and the thousand was gone. Later in the shift a five hundred dollar buy in saw four hundred get dropped in the box and a hundred got rolled up into a tight tube and disappeared somewhere. The fact of the matter was if the box man got caught stealing, the whole crew would get fired.

This was common in every house. Every other game is a single-dealer game; only craps enlists four dealers to work the game. The box man, a dealer on both side of him and the stick man. If one of these people decide to steal, then the whole crew looks like their in on it, weather or not they know about it or not, it's guilt by association.

And so it was up to me to alert the shift boss. I wasn't about to get fired for being on the same game as a thief and I wasn't going to allow my name to be besmirched and labeled a thief just because this guy thought he could get away with it. When I told the shift boss that I wasn't sure but I don't remember that thousand hitting the box, he interrupted by taking me into his office and into his confidence. He had known me for 9 years and knows that I wouldn't steal from the casino.

He showed me that surveillance had already noticed the rolling of the bills. He would roll one bill tight and slip it into his shirt cuff. Then another and another. The surveillance team was on their tows. They already had the thousand he stole on tape for posterity as well as for evidence. "We're just waiting to see if the other dealers are in on it. I can tell you we were watching you too, the other dealers don't seem to notice it, and we're wondering why." They were thinking that if I saw him doing the "roll" then why aren't the two other dealers seeing it, they're closer and have a better view of it from the side.

The shift boss called the two dealers into his office, one at a time. He did it on their breaks so no one would notice.

"I'm giving you a chance to take a deal by admitting that someone is stealing off the table and I want to know who it is if you're going to save your job."

The second dealer fussed up. "He offered me a share if I just blocked for him"

"When was that?" asked the shift boss. "Some time last week."

"That's fine; if you would have come to me then you could have saved your job. Get your stuff and get out."

"I watched that first dealer, he's clean, but that second guy is as dirty as the box man, he's already gotten his share, I'll bet on that."

Then he called security and told them to send three guards to the cage behind the crap tables. He told me to go to lunch and not to say anything about what was going on. He sent another box man in to relieve the thief and as he stood up the security guard grabbed his wrists. The shift boss walked up and unbuttoned one of his cuffs and removed several rolled up bills. He broke down like a baby saying he needed the money to pay bills. But there was no sympathy by anyone.

After 23 years in gaming it ended with him being handcuffed in front of everyone and taken away. No one felt sorry for him, not the dealers or the players or anyone. He got what he deserved, what most thieves deserve. He'll spend 6 months in jail and the next three years on probation. He'll never be able to get a sheriff's card again which means he'll be banned from ever working in Las Vegas at anything more than a 7-11 cashier…no I take that back, you need a sheriff's non-gaming card to handle money so he can't even do that.

All the casinos vote a share of money each week to be set aside as an emergency account for any reason a dealer should need money. Weather it's for health reasons or even if they just can't meet their rent. The box man is considered a dealer and this guy could have borrowed as much as he needed to pay his bills. There isn't even interest charged to anyone who's in need. This is supposed to relieve any temptation from stealing. Any money borrowed from the account must be paid back, but you can take as long as a year or more to pay it back. So there's no need to steal, except that people just get greedy and in this town it's not hard to fall into the temptation of quick cash. The only thing that keeps many from taking the plunge is that once taken, you can't put it back. Once caught and handcuffed in front of everyone, knowing the next six months will be spent somewhere in Tonopah is about all that's needed to keep sticky fingers from the rack. You might find that hard to believe, but just try spending a week in Tonopah.

-Ken Pearlman