Lawsuit: Casinos cuffed player, confiscated his chips

Lawsuit: Casinos cuffed player, confiscated his chips

By Mark Gruetze Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015

Ross Miller knows his way around casinos. He's gambled throughout the country and, by his account, has evolved into a skilled card counter and advantage player.

 

That has forced him to learn his way around the court system, as well.

 

Miller, 28, of Howell, N.J., filed lawsuits this month in Atlantic City and Las Vegas alleging that security guards illegally detained him and confiscated his chips at Caesars Entertainment casinos.

 

Gary Thompson, Caesars' director of corporate communications, says the company does not comment on pending litigation.

 

Although card-counting is legal, casino executives keep an eye out for counters and other advantage players who find ways to tip the odds in their favor.

 

While declining to talk in detail about his lawsuits, Miller tells Player's Advantage that counting cards at blackjack is one facet of his casino approach.

 

“Card counting is not the kind of activity that will make you millions of dollars like in the movie,” he says. “As you learn more about it, you start to learn other tricks, different advantage-play techniques. 

 

I consider myself to have a well-stocked tool belt when I walk into a casino. I can generally find a way to profit on some game in one way or another.”

 

Advantage players follow the rules but exploit casino offers or practices. For example, blackjack player Don Johnson — an inspiration to Miller and other advantage players — negotiated rebates that minimized his losses and gave him the advantage when playing $100,000 a hand. Johnson netted millions of dollars in one five-month spree. 

 

Poker legend Phil Ivey won millions at baccarat in New Jersey and London with a technique called edge-sorting, in which a confederate talked the dealer into rotating 8s and 9s — the best starting cards in the game — opposite from other cards in the deck. Because of design flaws on the card backs, Ivey could tell whether a powerful card would be dealt first, giving him an advantage on how to bet. Although Ivey never touched the cards and casino executives agreed to all his conditions, a British judge ruled that Ivey cheated. Ivey maintains the casino was lax in protecting the game.

 

“I wouldn't want to draw attention to all the ways you can beat casinos,” says Miller, who considers himself a professional gambler but also operates a website selling high-intensity automotive headlights. “A lot of casinos are just naïve.”

 

Promotions such as free bets and free slot play are valuable to players.

 

“If a casino mails you a free bet, you're not going to lose,” Miller says. “It definitely something you can take advantage of.”

 

Gambling mathematician and game consultant Eliot Jacobson, whose apheat.net website focuses on beatable casino games and promotions, writes that card-counting is a weak form of advantage play compared with poorly conceived promotions. For example, he says a casino offered a “Catch 22” promotion that paid $22 when a blackjack player busted with a total of 22. Betting only $3 a hand, he says, he made $800 to $1,000 per night by trying to get 22 instead of beating the dealer.

 

Miller's New Jersey lawsuit, in which he represents himself, says casino security staffers harassed him “for being a better gambler than the casino.” The complaint says Caesars tried to intimidate him and keep him from gambling in its casinos. It says he was handcuffed and detained on May 24, 2013, at Caesar's Atlantic City; June 20, 2013, at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas; July 11, 2013, in Harrah's Atlantic City; and Nov. 8, 2013, at Showboat Casino in Atlantic City. The lawsuit says Planet Hollywood kept $4,975 in chips that he was attempting to cash when arrested and that Harrah's kept $750 in chips.

In some cases, Miller was forcibly removed from the blackjack table, the lawsuit says. Twice, the complaint says, casino staffers took his driver's license even after they had verified he was old enough to gamble legally.

“Privacy and anonymity ... are essential to professional gamblers,” the lawsuit says.

In the Las Vegas case, Miller is represented by renowned gambling lawyer Robert Nersesian.

 

Mark Gruetze is administrative editor for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7838 or players@tribweb.com.

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Caesars was salivating to invade the Massachusetts market at Suffolks Downs.

When questions were raised, mostly about the wrong issues, Caesars was dumped and subsequently filed a lawsuit that Massachusetts taxpayers will be forced to fund.

$23 BILLION in debt?

Casino News

Peter Amsel

Caesars asset shell game has analysts warning investors to tread carefully

April 4, 2014

The asset shell game being played by debt-laden casino operator Caesars Entertainment is coming under fire from some of its creditors. Late last month, Caesars announced that certain “unidentified note holders” had hired lawyers in a bid to force Caesars to undo moves to transfer its more profitable assets away from the heavily indebted mother ship Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (CEOC) to its Caesars Growth Partners (CGP) escape pod.

Having failed (until very recently) to establish any presence in the lucrative Asian market, Caesars carries an industry-high debt load of around $23b. In 2013, Caesars created CGP, into which it transferred its Caesars Interactive Entertainment (CIE) online gaming division, the Planet Hollywood casino in Las Vegas and the under-construction Horseshoe Baltimore. Last month, Caesars announced it was ‘selling’ four more brick and mortar casino properties to CGP for $2.2b, a deal that required CGP to borrow around $1.3b to finance.

The unidentified bondholders want to reverse this and every previous transfer to CGP because Caesars has breached its “fiduciary duties” to creditors. The complaint accuse Caesars of attempting to shield profitable assets from what most observers view as a more or less inevitable bankruptcy filing, which would leave note-holders unable to make claims on the portions of Caesars that actually make money.

Caesars insists these claims have no merit, but New Albion Partners analyst Anish Vora believes Caesars investors are “getting sliced and diced right now. A judge might deem these illegal transfers of assets.” Over three-quarters of Caesars’ debt is held by CEOC, which now consists of just one property in Vegas (Caesars Palace), four Atlantic City casinos and Caesars’ numerous regional casinos, which are among its worst performing properties. Late last month, Caesars announced it was closing its Harrah’s casino in Tunica, Mississippi due to poor performance.

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Meanwhile, Caesars is looking to raise a quick packet by selling an additional 7m shares – plus an extra 1m if the first batch sells out – to the public. Assuming P.T. Barnum was right and the entire allotment sells out, Caesars stands to earn around $170m. Caesars says it will use the proceeds to pay down debt, but Caesars has already announced plans to give away $100m in what amounts to a bribe for anyone foolish enough to lend the company more money.

In order to allow CGP to raise the money to pay for those four casinos, Caesars is offering to pay 1.3 percentage points above market rates if someone will bite on $1.18b of seven-year term loans.

CreditSights Inc. analyst Chris Snow told Bloomberg the extra $100m or so amounted to a “Caesars premium,” i.e. “there is a risk of [the casinos] being clawed back in case of a bankruptcy at the operating-company level.” Snow said lenders also needed to be aware that “the sponsors would move to protect their interest over that of the creditors if operating trends go the other way.”




http://calvinayre.com/2014/04/04/casino/analysts-wary-of-caesars-asset-shell-game/

China woman gets prison in Vegas casino fraud case

Updated 3:46 pm, Thursday, January 23, 2014

 

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Chinese woman who told a federal judge she sought asylum in the U.S. after taking part in demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for her role in a Las Vegas casino baccarat-fraud scheme.

 

Irene Li's lawyer, Assistant Federal Public Defender William Carrico, said Thursday he was "virtually certain" the 53-year-old Li will be deported to China after her 47 months in prison.

 

Li applied for political refuge more than 10 years ago, but her case was denied and she remained subject to deportation, Carrico said. He said Li told him she had been active in the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement and fled to the U.S. to avoid arrest.

 

Li pleaded guilty in October to one charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a plea deal that had 28 wire fraud charges against her dismissed.

 

She asked Wednesday for leniency from U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon, saying through a Mandarin language interpreter that she felt ashamed and sorry for her crimes, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported (http://bit.ly/1fa6UKN ).

 

Gordon credited Li with participating in the demonstrations in China nearly 25 years ago, but he said it didn't excuse her criminal actions in Las Vegas.

 

The judge ordered Li to repay $2.2 million in damages to five Las Vegas casinos — the Planet Hollywood, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Mirage and MGM Grand.

 

Li's husband, Xi Sheng Zhang, 57, remains a fugitive in the case, said Natalie Collins, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden.

 

Li and Zhang were indicted in April 2011 on charges that they recruited people to open bank accounts, apply for casino credit and withdraw chips to play baccarat between 2004 and 2009.

 

Prosecutor Andrew Duncan alleged that Li and Zhang placed recruits at tables where they gambled and used a scheme known as "rolling the chips" to give chips to co-conspirators.

 

The chips were cashed, and Li gave the recruits a cut of the ill-gotten proceeds, Duncan said. The recruits then disappeared, leaving the casinos unable to collect their debts.

 

http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/China-woman-gets-prison-in-Vegas-casino-fraud-case-5169319.php

 

 

Predicting Caesars Bankruptcy

How Caesars Entertainment Has Seemingly Suckered Investors
By Travis Hoium | More Articles
July 11, 2013

At its core, Caesars Entertainment (NASDAQ: CZR ) is an extremely flawed company. It has a huge presence in the struggling regional gaming market, it has no exposure to gaming's biggest market, Macau, and it has $21.3 billion of debt strangling it. So how has it gained 130% this year, easily outpacing more profitable rivals? 

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/07/11/how-caesars-entertainment-has-seemingly-suckered-i.aspx

Caesars Entertainment plummets toward Ch. 11

by Lisa Allen | Published July 31, 2013

Caesars Entertainment Corp. is working to improve its capital structure, but despite moves to cut costs, buy back debt and pursue a spinoff transaction during the second quarter, Caesars' $23.7 billion debt load is still the elephant in the room and could push them into Chapter 11.

It's not just the size of the Las Vegas-based, private equity-backed casino operator's debt burden that is worrisome; substantial maturities in 2015 and 2016 are also a cause for concern.

However, Caesars CEO Gary Loveman promised in a July 29 second-quarter earnings call that he is "acting aggressively to improve the company's capital structure."

But debt investors aren't too optimistic. One hedge fund invested in Caesars' debt, which asked not to be named, said, "They would need a meteor to destroy the earth, or they'd need [PE owner] Apollo Global Management LLC to come in and buy billions of debt" to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection.

In fact, the hedge fund investor thinks Caesars may already have bankruptcy on the mind. "They're not acting like a company that's hoarding cash, and maybe they're figuring that the end is near."

Although the hedge fund investor is pessimistic about recoveries for creditors of the operating company Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. Inc., he thinks the situation at the property-owning unit, Caesars Property Co., is "fixable."

"We think that's covered," he said, explaining that Caesars could refinance that debt ahead of a bankruptcy filing. PropCo first-lien debt is trading at 93 or 94, up from 70, he said, counting that as a statement of faith in a PropCo refinancing. The mezzanine debt in the PropCo unit is trading at about 70 cents on the dollar, but the investor thinks there's hope for that class too.

"If I was them, I'd just tank the business, buy back debt in the 20s [20 cents on the dollar range], and equitize those notes," the investor said, adding, "I've seen people try to run down their stocks, and that's not what they were doing [on the earnings call]. They were all smiles, and 'everything's fine.'/"

Caesars did take some positive steps toward debt extinguishment in the second quarter ending June 30, by raising capital to repurchase some of its debt at a discount. The company paid $183.7 million for $225 million of its commercial mortgage-backed security loans, and $40.9 million for $51.2 million of its second-lien senior debt due 2018 held by its operating company.

However, the hedge fund investor said that he was confused by the company's decision to buy back notes due in 2018 alongside debt held in the property-owning unit.

"It makes a lot of sense for them to buy back the PropCo debt at a discount--what doesn't make sense is for them to buy back their operating company paper," the investor said. "They'd have to buy back billions of that to move the needle, and the company can't buy back all of that given where it's trading -- they're way too under water."

The investor characterized the buyback of notes due in 2018 as a "waste of money."

Because the debt load is so large, "you can't just buy up the debt and turn it into equity," the hedge fund investor said, adding, "I think this is totally terminal. I have them running out of cash sometime in 2014 or early 2015."

However, that assumes that Caesars' debt covenants would not allow it to issue another $1 billion of first-lien secured debt, a matter that is a point of contention among investors and analysts, the investor said, adding that selling assets or downstreaming cash from the parent company could keep the company alive for longer.

"We're always evaluating options with respect to our balance sheet," Caesars spokesman Gary Thompson said in an e-mail statement Tuesday. "We balance investing in growth opportunities with repurchasing debt and maintaining liquidity. When we do elect to buy back debt, we evaluate current market pricing and other factors and elect which piece of debt best fits our objectives."

Caesars has $215 million in second-lien notes held by its operating subsidiary, Caesars Entertainment Operating, and $792 million in unsecured notes held by the operating company and itself coming due in 2015. In addition, another $1.05 billion in unsecured debt comes due in 2016, according to a July 11 report from Fitch Ratings Inc.

Still, with $1.9 billion in liquidity as of June 30 and under-construction projects such as its Linq shopping and entertainment strip in Vegas still requiring hefty capital expenditures, Caesars needs a more proactive approach to address its upcoming maturities.

For now, the company is focusing all of its restructuring efforts on spinning out a new entity, Caesars Growth Partners, which will include Caesars' online gaming properties, its Horseshoe Baltimore casino and Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, along with an infusion of $1.2 billion from existing shareholders, which will include $500 million from its majority owners Apollo and TPG Capital.

The spinoff will give Caesars a vehicle for growth--the gaming market is highly competitive, and requires substantial capital expenditures to keep up properties--but it doesn't help the company pay down its debt.

Growth Partners will be a separate corporate entity from the operating company and the unit that owns the properties, and it will have a more attractive leverage profile.

Caesars' existing units are steeply levered: The operating company has a leverage ratio of 12.96, while the property-owning unit is levered at 10.4 times, according to Fitch.

Still, the Growth Partners transaction leaves the operating company's creditors out in the cold.

"They've tried to maneuver assets away from the [operating company], so the overall [operating company's] value is weaker," said Fitch analyst Michael Paladino, adding that this transaction reduces the prospect of recovery for the operating company's creditors.

"They're choosing to reinvest in assets rather than paying down external creditors--they're not looking to pay down any external creditors without significant discount," he added.

Paladino said he believes the operating company's first-lien creditors can expect a return of 70 cents on the dollar.

Once Caesars completes the Growth Partners' spinoff, which is currently awaiting regulatory approval, Paladino expects the casino operator will turn its attention to debt refinancing options.

Hiving off the assets with the most growth potential is attractive for Apollo and TPG, which will own slightly under half of the new unit if it raises $1.2 billion as planned.

Private equity firms Apollo and TPG hold 69.9% of the company, which they acquired in a $30.7 billion buyout in 2008 that included $12.4 billion in debt.

Caesars certainly has its work cut out for it. "The overall market for gaming in the U.S. has been pretty lackluster," Paladino said, adding that the U.S. gaming market is fairly mature and key areas are already saturated with competitive properties. Caesars has not succeeded in getting licenses to open casinos in the Asian market, which is performing much better than the U.S. market.

Caesars did succeed in reducing its net loss for the second quarter by 12.2% year-over-year to $29.5 million on net revenue of $2.2 billion.

Casino revenues were down by 7.5% to $116.8 million, which was largely offset by gains in nongaming revenues.

The parent company is publicly traded on Nasdaq under the symbol CZR; its market capitalization is $2 billion, and its shares closed at $16.85 on Tuesday.


Read more: Caesars Entertainment plummets toward Ch. 11 - The Deal Pipeline (SAMPLE CONTENT: NEED AN ID?) http://www.thedeal.com/content/restructuring/caesars-entertainment-plummets-toward-ch-11.php#ixzz2aoCaq3q5

Caesars: Still $21 BILLION in debt

It's unclear how the debt will be addressed......

Caesars Gets Approval To Spinoff Internet Gambling Division, Casinos Casino Firm To Make Brand New Company Out Of Three Entities

by Brian Pempus | Published: Jul 11, 2013

Caesars Entertainment Corp. received preliminary approval by Nevada gambling regulators to spinoff Planet Hollywood casino, located on the Las Vegas Strip, Caesars Interactive Entertainment, which is the company’s online gambling division, and its new casino project in Baltimore, Maryland into a separate company, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

By making the move, the company will raise $1.18 billion thanks to selling shares. It’s more than $21 billion in debt, however.

Caesars has the popular World Series of Poker brand under its control, and could be launching an online poker product in the Silver State in the near future. The World Series of Poker is currently underway in Las Vegas.

The parent company is one of the largest commercial operators in the world.

Gambling regulators voted 3-0 in favor of the move. The state’s five-member Gaming Commission will make a final decision later this month.

According to the Review-Journal, the stack of Caesars has been strong this year, thanks to some of the moves. It has more than doubled in value.

Some of the company’s proprieties include Caesars Palace and the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the state of Ohio, Caesars partnered with Rock Gaming to bring casinos to Cleveland and Cincinnati.


http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/15879-caesars-gets-approval-to-spinoff-internet-gambling-division-casinos