A team of Star Sydney employees tasked with following new responsible gaming regulations was found to be falsifying records in a practice the Manager overseeing the casino’s remediation efforts described today as “endemic”.
In evidence tendered on the first day of public hearings at a second inquiry into The Star Sydney’s suitability to reclaim its casino license, the government-appointed Manager currently holding the casino license, Nicholas Weeks, revealed the practice has been uncovered late last year by Liquor & Gaming NSW Inspectors who found that records documenting the interactions of so-called “Guest Support Officers” did not align with their own observations, nor with video footage of the interactions in question.
Under recently implemented time play restrictions, Star’s guest support team is required to ensure that customers do not gamble at an electronic gaming machine for more than three hours without an interaction with a team member to check on their welfare.
Instead, the Liquor & Gaming NSW inspectors found that in many instances no such interactions were occurring despite records showing they had.
According to Weeks, further investigation found that records of purported interactions on Star’s system were false.
“That identification by Liquor & Gaming NSW initiated a broader investigation by Star and it became evident reasonably quickly that a practice of falsification of records, of interactions with patrons by gaming support officers and potentially others, was endemic within that team,” Weeks revealed. “It appeared to be occurring very often and that a large proportion of the team were involved in that conduct.
“It is very concerning in the current circumstances that there’s such a significant and widespread breach related to, based on the information delivered, a falsification of records.”
Weeks also outlined details of an incident he called the “TI#O Fraud” (pronounced “tico”) when a defect in one or more ticket-in, ticket-out cash machines allowed patrons to collect more money than they were owed during a two-month period in mid-2023. The defect would be observed in instances where customers inserted two tickets at the same time: instead of paying out the combined amount and keeping both tickets, the machine would pay out the combined amount but then return one of the tickets to the customer, allowing them to withdraw that amount again.
The defect cost Star around AU$3.2 million in overpayments before it was finally detected.
“What this incident identified to me was a big cultural problem in parts of the casino in relation to the level of rigor through which controls are followed, the level of care in which work is conducted and the desire from people in the business to drill down on things in circumstances where they don’t appear to be correct,” Weeks said.
“I was concerned about the cultural issues. I was also concerned about the control environment because balancing the books and counting money was one of those things that I’d anticipated the casino would be very good at, having done it for many years.”
Asked why he believed The Star Sydney had apparently made questionable progress in regards to transforming its culture in the wake of the first Bell inquiry, Weeks pointed to Star’s failure to appoint a CEO at The Star Sydney for almost a year following the resignation of Scott Wharton in April 2022.
Star has since named Janelle Campbell as its next Sydney CEO although her official appointment is still awaiting regulatory approvals.
While Star Entertainment Group announced last July a new organizational strategy led by new operational business units at each of the company’s three casinos, Weeks said, “I think that absence of leadership has really undermined staff’s capacity to deliver on that [strategy].
“The organizational structure was announced to the broader business with the absence of CEOs in all three casinos and I think that absence of leadership has really undermined Star’s capacity to deliver that organization restructure that was put to me and the Board.
“The CEO didn’t arrive at the Gold Coast property until October last year and only at the Brisbane and Sydney properties in February this year. Until that leadership is in place with teams that are delivering that end-to-end accountability for P&L on regulatory matters, it will in my opinion continue to be an impediment to reform.”
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