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The unwritten policy of licensed casinos paying so-called "trespassed customers" their gambling winnings has been observed by Nevada casinos for decades, but the scheme is set to be prohibited by gaming regulators.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) will review a new four-page draft of Regulation 5.095 on September 24 that allows licensees to refuse to pay any gambling winnings to individuals who have been excluded or trespassed, a commonly used term in Las Vegas for ejecting someone from a property, from a licensed casino.
Dick Tomasso, vice president of security and government affairs for Mesquite Gaming LLC, stressed that he has always been supportive of paying patrons their winnings but opposes regulators requiring licensees to pay law breakers.
Tomasso has been lobbying the control board for almost a year to implement a new regulation that would allow Mesquite Gaming, Wynn Resorts and other operators to deny payment to those who have been trespassed or excluded from a property in Nevada.
According to the draft regulation, any licensed gaming establishments in Nevada would be restricted from paying any winnings to individuals who previously were trespassed from the property unless the trespassed warning is rescinded.
The new regulation would also affect any individual placed on the state’s list of excluded persons, also known as the “Black Book,” or a patron who was ejected from a licensed casino.
Under the proposed regulation, the licensed operator would be required to inform any trespassed person either verbally or in writing that “any future wager by you is deemed void,” and that the casino is prohibited from knowingly paying them any future winnings or required to reimburse them any possible future losses.
But if a trespassed person sits down at a blackjack table with $500 but does not play a hand, the proposed regulation would allow the person to receive their money back before being escorted from the property.
Other requirements include displaying the warning against trespassing at each public entrance, as well as on a casino’s website and in their house rules.
Casinos would also be required to remove an individual’s name from any lists used for direct marketing or direct mailing, and disable any accounts, including player reward and wagering accounts, and redeem any cash owed to the individual from the accounts.
The new regulation makes it clear that failure by a licensee to comply with these rules would allow an individual “to claim that he or she is entitled to payment of winnings, or reimbursement of losses, from gaming.”
The control board next week will also review an amendment to Regulation 7A.015 that clarifies the term “patron” does not apply to any individual that falls within Regulation 5.095.
The policy debate began on October 4, 2023, when the Casablanca casino was ordered to pay Rhon Wilson his winnings of $2,045.18 from a slot machine even though he had been banned from the property.
Mesquite Gaming owns the Casablanca casino in Mesquite, some 82 miles north of Las Vegas.
The casino brought the appeal to the control board, after a hearing officer recommended the jackpot be paid despite Wilson being ordered out of the casino. The NGCB voted 2-1, with member George Assad opposed to paying the jackpot, to uphold the hearing officer’s recommendation.
Wilson had been cited six times, paid fines and kept coming back to the casino to gamble. He even won three jackpots over several months at the casino.
At the hearing, Tomasso said he was concerned that regulators had confused the “word patron with the word trespasser.”
“They are not intangible,” Tomasso said. “A patron is an invited quest. A trespasser is an uninvited guest. The state statutes and regulations were written with the patron in mind. They were not written to protect the rights of a law breaker, a trespasser, a banned individual or an uninvited guest.”
At a public workshop on October 18, 2023, the control board addressed the topic of paying jackpots to trespassed gamblers. Technically once trespassed by a licensed casino, the person is committing a misdemeanor if they return.
Tomasso stressed that Wilson and others have committed a crime, and their winnings should have been treated as ill-gotten gains.
The control board’s policy has required 384 licensed casinos to pay hundreds of trespassers banned who gambled undetected and won a jackpot. NGCB chair Kirk Hendrick was surprised that the issue has not come up for decades.
“There is no written policy so apparently the industry … has never felt the need to raise the issue,” Hendrick said. “I certainly don’t want to encourage outlaws coming here to Nevada, that they have a free pass to gamble and if they win, they get to keep their money.”
“That’s a bad message to send,” the chairman added.
