Points for playing are targets of thieves — often casino employees

The Las Vegas Sun reports:

At the heart of a casino’s marketing machine lies its players club, which uses swipe cards to track gamblers’ play as they rack up points to redeem for meals, hotel stays, merchandise and even cash.

So critical are these massive, good-as-cash databases to casino profits that, if there were to be an Oceans 14 movie, the next great casino heist might target the computers that manage them.

And it wouldn’t be fiction. Casino insiders are raiding gamblers’ loyalty points, according to casino regulators and security experts.

In one scheme, says Gaming Control Board member Randy Sayre, casino employees with access to players club databases transferred points from customers’ accounts to bogus accounts from which an accomplice was able to redeem the points for tangible rewards. Employees also have created accounts and loaded them with bogus points.