|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Muriel Labine liked her job at the Great Canadian Gaming casino in Richmond, B.C.
She was a dealer supervisor, monitoring the integrity of the gambling happening around her. Labine hoped to work for Great Canadian until she retired.
But in May 1997, the NDP government increased bet limits from $25 to $500 per hand, introduced baccarat tables and extended gambling hours.
That’s when, she says, everything changed.
Within days, Labine noticed the VIP gamblers start to come in. But it was strange, she says, that these high rollers were almost always accompanied by young Asian men who gave them cash. Many employees in the Richmond casino started to call these young men “Human Teller Machines.”
Labine judged they were loan sharks, she says, because they would bring in their own clients and sit with them at the tables, passing the baccarat players bundles of $20 bills and casino chips.
This paper money — wrinkled and wrapped in elastic bands — wasn’t likely coming from banks, she judged. When the gamblers ran out of money, she says the “human tellers” would make calls on their cellphones, setting off flurries of activity.
Someone — typically an older Asian man who was treated with respect, according to Labine’s memory of these scenes — would arrive at the casino with a plastic grocery bag. The “human tellers” would grab bricks of cash from the bag, give their clients new wads of $20s and gambling would start again.
Within months, revenue at the casino had nearly doubled. But there was a cost, Labine said. More cash, more fear.
[…]
