Is This Really A Surprise?

If I'm supposed to be surprised by CBC's report on how easy it is to launder money through a casino, they missed.

Casinos exist primarily to exercise that most human of vices - greed. As an environment, they are intended to encourage people to part with vast sums of money - voluntarily. That means that large amounts of cash are being used all the time.

Why would it surprise me that the criminal world has figured out that a casino is going to be a natural place to quietly launder money. It's one of the few places where a person can go in, play a bunch of money and walk out with a cashier's cheque - all quite anonymously.

Like any "retail" business, casinos thrive when there is activity. Regulars throwing around money is good for casinos - thus creating the catalyst for the tacit acceptance of money laundering by casinos - what sane business is going to toss out the very activity that draws in others?

I imagine that the most blatant attempts at money laundering get called out, but when a group of people, each armed with a (relatively) small amount of cash comes in and plays some of it and then cashes out, who's to gainsay that?

Even if you suspect that those people are money laundering, it's going to be next to impossible to prove from within the confines of the casino facility - you'd have to follow those people elsewhere to find out where the raw capital is coming from. The casino has "plausible deniability" from the start.

How many private casino owners are knowingly complicit in the activities going on in the confines of their casinos is a more interesting question. Are they merely turning a blind eye, or are they being encouraged by the criminal organizations to do so - by either bribery or other forms of persuasion?