Blackjack Dealer at Rivers Casino Pittsburgh Charged with Dealing Fraudulent Hands

A table games dealer at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh was arrested on Friday and charged with dealing nearly 200 fraudulent hands of blackjack over the course of the past month. 

Pennsylvania State Police say that 32-year-old Jamie Smith cost the casino $21,869 between 192 hands in which she committed fraud between Oct. 26 and Nov. 2. 

Police: Suspect Overpaid Players, Didn’t Collect Losing Bets

Police took Smith into custody when she arrived for her shift on Nov. 8, after which she was taken to the Allegheny County Jail.

Smith used several different techniques to hand out additional money to players, according to police. That included overpaying players on winning bets, not collecting losing bets, and removing chips from her till and paying them to multiple patrons. The violations were found on video surveillance. 

Smith has since been released on bond. Her next court hearing has been set for Nov. 20.

“We cooperated fully with the Pennsylvania State Police in this investigation,” Rivers Casino spokesperson Jack Horner said in a statement.

Pennsylvania Casino Hit with Multiple Cheating Scandals

This isn’t the first time this year that Rivers Casino has had to deal with a cheating scandal at its resort this year.

In early 2024, police charge two employees and at least three players involved in a roulette cheating scheme. The fraud involved Interblock Roulette, a mostly electronic version of the classic casino game in which an employee still spins a ball on a wheel that players can watch. 

Rather than operate the game as intended, a casino employee allegedly spun the ball in the wrong direction, leading to an undetected spin that would have to be manually accepted or voided. This allowed players to bet after the results were known, after which a supervisor came over to manually validate the spin, allowing those players to win their bets, according to investigators. Rivers and Interblock said at the time that they were working on new procedures to prevent similar schemes in the future. 

Rivers has also had to deal with other compliance issues at some of its other properties. In May, the Rivers Casino Portsmouth agreed to a $505,000 fine as part of a settlement with the Virginia Lottery. The fine came after the Virginia Lottery found that Rivers had allowed both underage individuals and voluntarily excluded players to enter the gaming floor on multiple occasions. 

Rivers isn’t the only operator that has had to deal with cheating issues in Pennsylvania. In July, state police accused 22-year-old blackjack dealer Yadav Bhandari of working with two players to steal close to $17,000 from Penn National Hollywood Casino in Grantville, Pennsylvania over the course of a weekend. Investigators allege that Bhandari used slight of hand, improper payouts, and faulty dealing to funnel money to the two players, and that the theft was caught on casino video.