A 51-year-old woman named Lori Ann Mann has managed to defraud $275,000 from a number of casinos in Winnipeg. She was arrested in March and was led away from her home in handcuffs in the early hours of the morning. The police have piled on the charges, which include theft, illegal use of data, and money laundering. Online casinos like PlayAmo casino login are often much more secure than traditional casinos due to the use of encryption. You don’t have to worry about stolen money when gambling online.
Mann had her world turned upside down when the casino operator decided to run an audit and quickly found a number of suspicious transactions in the Casino Bus Tour Department where she worked. The transactions occurred from early 2017 all the way up until the company conducted the audit and handed the information to police in the middle of 2019.
How Did The Woman Steal So Much Money?
Lori Ann Mann came up with an ingenious way to steal from the casinos, which involved taking advantage of the bus tours that the local casinos used. Winnipeg casinos partnered with bus companies to take gamblers from property to property to enhance their betting experience and also allow their guests to take in the local sights.
The bus operators would get paid based on how many passengers they managed to deliver to the casinos. Mann is accused of forging passenger sheets on over 200 trips. She grossly overexaggerated the number of passengers that were traveling on the buses. She even took it a step further by completely fabricating bus trips that had never occurred and falsifying payments and refund requests.
She managed to game the system, so the extra payments from the casino were being delivered to her personal bank accounts and to a bus company that she set up in an effort to legitimatize her theft. The casinos thought they were paying for real bus trips and processing legitimate refunds but instead, they were just sending money directly to Mann for false services.
Mann’s scheme was so well thought out that the bus companies she was tricking had no idea that she was lying about passenger numbers and creating false trips. Mann’s case is currently before the courts. If convicted, she can expect a hefty prison sentence and to be banned from the casino industry for life.
Winnipeg Casinos Hurting
It hasn’t been a good year for Winnipeg casinos. Apart from losing $275,000 in the bus tour defrauding case, they have been hit hard by government shutdowns. They have had to fire and or standdown over 1200 employees. This equates to almost 50% of their workforce.
The casinos stated that due to the forced closures of their properties brought on by government restrictions related to the pandemic, they have been unable to maintain their employees. They have suffered deep financial losses and have stated that by reducing their employees, they have been able to save over $1 million, which has kept the casinos operational. They hope once the restrictions are lifted to experience a surge in demand from guests who are eager to gamble. After the demand returns, they plan to rehire their staff and expand their operations.
