Las Vegas Poker Dealer Loses Job After Rare Gaming Commission HearingPoker Dealer Kept Working Despite Being Accused Of Stealing Chips |
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A poker dealer suspected of stealing saw Nevada gaming regulators on Thursday do something they haven’t done in over a decade.
Back in early October, a complaint was filed against former Bally’s poker dealer Jesus Saucedo. The casino allegedly found that Saucedo took several $5 chips off the table during live games and discretely put them into his toke box. Despite the allegations and his departure from his job dealing poker at that casino, Saucedo continued dealing poker at the nearby Bellagio casino, which is owned by a different casino company. Bally’s is a Caesars property, while Bellagio is owned by MGM.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Nevada Gaming Commission held a rare evidentiary hearing on his employee registration because he had continued dealing in Las Vegas for months after the alleged incidents at Bally’s.
Regulators reportedly haven’t found any evidence that he stole chips in Bellagio’s poker room. As a result of the hearing, the four-member Gaming Commission voted unanimously to revoke his registration. The Bellagio then let him go Thursday, the report said.
Saucedo left Bally’s following a June incident in which security at the casino witnessed him taking a chip. Further review uncovered two other alleged incidents.
Saucedo denied the allegations at the hearing, saying one of the incidents was a mistake and that the other two didn’t actually happen. “It was not my intent to steal from my previous employer,” he told the Commission. Regulators didn’t buy the defense.
“I think you cheated the game,” Commissioner John Moran Jr. said, per the Review-Journal report. “I think you cheated your employer and, consequently, you cheated yourself because I think you’re a very skilled and good employee except for the fact that you cheated…I don’t think this was your first rodeo. I think you’ve been doing this a long time. I wish we had facts for that, but we don’t, but I don’t need anything else than your admission and what I saw on the affidavits. I’m going to believe what I saw.”
The case was the second high-profile one involving poker to be resolved this month. Earlier in February, regulators ruled in favor of a poker player in a contested bad-beat jackpot.
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