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TITO Ticket In/Ticket Out. Susan Demouy. Louisiana Casinos - 22. 1 Landbase Casino in New Orleans 15 Riverboat Casinos 3 Racinos with no Table Games, and 3 Indian Gaming Casinos. TITO History in Louisiana
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TITOTicket In/Ticket Out Susan Demouy
Louisiana Casinos - 22 1 Landbase Casino in New Orleans 15 Riverboat Casinos 3 Racinos with no Table Games, and 3 Indian Gaming Casinos
TITO History in Louisiana • In early 2001, Indian Gaming Casinos first started using TITO and were the first to go 100% TITO. • In June 2001, Louisiana’s first Riverboat Casino submitted Internal Controls for a TITO System. (Horseshoe) • Soon after, others followed.
Louisiana TITO Statistics • 100% of the 22 casinos have some TITO capability. • 95% or 21 casinos have 75% or more of their slots TITO capable. • 50% or 11 casinos are 100% TITO capable.
TITO Systems - Louisiana • Easy Play – IGT pre-configured slot machines • can be used as a standalone system or interfaced with a slot system to allow a greater control over employee theft. • Quickets -Aristocrat - works with the old CDS and newer OASIS systems. • E Ticket - Bally's system for SDS version that supports two ticket types, Type 5 (slot-created) and Type 7 (externally created). • Fast Cash - Harrah's proprietary name for e-Tickets manufactured by Bally's. • EZ Pay - IGT’s voucher validation/redemption system • Supports Handheld redemption systems, and • Can be used as a stand alone TITO system
Revenue/Jackpot Reporting • 2 Methods • Tickets Redeemed Method • Cash Basis – Louisiana • TITO Tickets not deducted until redeemed • No adjustments necessary • Tickets Issued Method • TITO Tickets deducted when issued • Requires adjustments
Tickets Redeemed Method • Revenues • Tickets counted in Soft Count. • Jackpot Deductions • Tickets in counted in Soft Count, and • Validated Tickets from Cages and Kiosks; • To take the deduction, the casino must have: • A TITO system report showing ticket validation, and • The actual TITO Ticket.
Tickets Issued Method • Revenues • Tickets redeemed in BVA’s and counted in Soft Count. • Jackpot Deductions • All Tickets Issued for the day. • After the expiration date, TITO Tickets not redeemed must be added back to revenue • Casinos have different TITO expiration periods.
TITO AUDIT PROGRAM • Included in 5 areas of our Audit Program 1. Gaming Revenue Summary Audit 2. Ticket Kiosk/Patron Self-Service Machine 3. Accounting Department Audit 4. Soft Count Audit 5. Jackpots and Fills Audit
1. Gaming Revenue Summary Audit • Trace amounts casino reported to the backup and source documents • tickets redeemed report, and • soft count validation report. • Review a sample of tickets to ensure the casino is not deducting: • expired tickets; • voided tickets, and • tickets the system is unable to validate.
2. Ticket Kiosk/Patron Self- Service Machine • Observe casino employees impressing the machines, removing money cans and tickets, and balancing the machines; • Although these machines also act as bill breakers, theses steps help ensure: • the tickets are paid correctly, and are properly validated and reported.
3. Accounting Department Audit • Observe and question casino accounting personnel during their review of TITO information and their creation of the required TITO reports.
4. Soft Count Audit • Observe count team performing test count to verify the accuracy of the ticket counter machine. • Manually count tickets from two BVA’s, and then run them through the ticket counter; • Compare the machine count to the manual count, and • Once the counts reconcile, process all tickets through the ticket counter.
5. Jackpots and Fills Audit Observe and question slot and cage employees, to determine if they know how to handle different ticket situations; • Such as tickets the system is unable to validate. • Review a sample of tickets to verify they contain required information.
TITO Problems With Valid Tickets • Duplicate Tickets, and • Tickets the system validates but the scanners cannot read.
Duplicate Tickets • Since ticket validation numbers are randomly generated, the system sometimes issues a validation number that’s already been used; • Ticket can be manually redeemed and validated; • Accounting can get the Slot department to print a report showing the validation number was re-issued on a 2nd slot machine (different asset number), and • Accounting can attach this report to it’s paper work as verification the ticket was actually valid.
Valid tickets that count scanners cannot read • Sometimes tickets that were read by a slot machine or kiosk cannot be read by the scanners in soft count or in the Main Bank/Vault. Usually a mechanical error when the counter misses some bar codes. • Accounting can compare the Soft Count report to the System Exception Report. Tickets not on the count report are considered either "missing" or "pending" (terminology is dependent upon the system). • Accounting can look up the “missing” tickets on the system exception report. • Can claim as revenue/deduction because a slot machine issued the ticket and either a slot or kiosk validated it.
Employee TITO Scam • Employee opened slot without his access card; • Quickly pulled the door switch so SDS did notread door open; • Pulled up the option menu and disabled SDS; • Took tokens from the hopper, feed them into the machine and accumulated credits; • Hit cash-out and printed a ticket, and • Passed off the ticket to a friend, who redeemed it at the cage and gave him a portion of the proceeds.
Kiosk TITO THEFT • January 2006, a patron committed a theft at a malfunctioning kiosk; • He put a $10 TITO voucher into the kiosk and it dispersed $40 in cash; • Machine dispersed $20 bills when it should have dispersed $5 bills ($5 Canister contained $20 bills). • He was arrested and, admitted to redeeming more than 38 tickets; • Received approximately $1,980 in cash from the malfunctioning kiosk; • Stated he played most of the money back, felt casino should write it off.
3 Recent TITO System Problems • 2 ACSC System Upgrade Issues; • Invalid code input during upgrade caused system to lose TITO information which resulted in: • a casino’s inability to validate about $80,000 of TITO tickets, and • a casino’s slots becoming inoperable for 6 hours. • 1 Resource Problem with SDS System; • resulted in a casino’s inability to validate about $200,000 of TITO tickets; • error occurred slowly over 5 months in small crashes, inexperienced IT personnel caused major database corruption trying to resolve the problem.
Causes of TITO Problems • Lack of trained IT personnel at casinos • Lack of casino investment in IT area (hardware, software, etc.) • Slot Monitoring Systems lack of security features to support advances in technology used in casinos today. (bonusing, promotions, smart cards, etc.)
What’s next? • Electronic Bonusing & Promotions • Bonusing - Patrons inserts player cards, play cash, and receive non-cashable bonus credits they can download to any slot and play. • Promotions – Patrons insert player cards, and automatically receive non-cashable promo credits they can download to any slot and play.
Other Issues • TITO Reports / TITO Ticket Retention -Louisiana • Five (5) years for reports, and • Eighteen (18) Months for TITO Tickets. • No IRS requirements • No Signatureson tickets
Proposed Cage Created TITO Tickets • TITO Tickets created at the Cage cannot be considered Jackpots or be deducted from revenue because they are not generated at a slot machine; • Problem: distinguishing Cage created TITO Tickets from slot machine issued tickets for revenue reporting purposes; • May resolve with 2nd phase of COINS.
Coupons Redeemable in BVA’s • Mailed or handed out to patrons; • Bar Coded like TITO Tickets; • Accepted in BVA’s • Cannot be cashed at the Cage; • Considered revenue • unlike TITO Tickets, deductions from revenue are not allowed.
What’s down the road? • CASHLESS - Electronic Cards • Patron accounts require a player card and a PIN; • Patrons can purchase credits on their accounts at Cages or at slots; • Patrons can download or upload credits from slots machines by inserting their player card and entering their PIN; • Player credits will have to be considered a liability • question of an expiration date.
Summary • The IT departments at the casinos in our jurisdiction lack adequate knowledge about the systems. • We are trying to use this knowledge to encourage the manufacturers to adequately train the regulators because they told us they do not want to train the casinos’ IT personnel. • Your thoughts on any of the items I covered today will be appreciated.
Where to Get More Information • The following information can be obtained by sending an e-mail to: Susan.Demouy@dps.la.gov • Copy of slide show • List and brief description of the different TITO systems • Louisiana TITO, Kiosk, and other LSP Guidelines can be found at on the following web site • http://www2.dps.state.la.us/PublicLightsWeb/internetAudit.jsp