In Episode 8 of Kinectify Conversations, Paul Camacho, VP of Casino Compliance for Yaamava' Casino, shares his work experience working with law enforcement to investigate money laundering in casinos. He discusses the challenges of investigating money laundering in casinos, the importance of public-private partnerships in the fight against money laundering, and the need for casinos and law enforcement to work together to share information and resources.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Shannon Adair: Welcome to Kinectify Conversations. My name is Shannon Adair and I'm the Director of Client Success at Kinectify. Our mission is to share the experience, expertise, and insights from gaming industry leaders that comes from years of navigating the complexities and impact of compliance. On this episode, we have special guest:

[00:00:22] Paul Camacho: My name is Paul Camacho and I'm the VP of Compliance for Yamaha Casino.

[00:00:27] Shannon Adair: Also with us today...

[00:00:29] Sean Topchi: My name is Sean Topchi and I'm the Director of Business Development at Kinectify.

[00:00:34] Shannon Adair: Thanks for joining us today, and remember to like and subscribe to the podcast. You can also learn more anytime at kinectify.com. That's K-I-N-E-C-T-I-F-Y.com.

[00:01:05] Sean Topchi: Paul, thank you so much for joining us. It's a real pleasure to have you.

[00:01:09] Paul Camacho: I'm happy to be here.

[00:01:11] Shannon Adair: Yeah, we're really excited to have you here. Can you get us kicked off by giving us a little bit of your background?

[00:01:16] Paul Camacho: Sure. So I'm currently the Vice President of Casino Compliance for Yaamava' Casino. I am formerly the special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office for IRS criminal investigation, where I spent five years there running financial crime investigation, money law investigations for all Nevada and all of Utah.

[00:01:38] Sean Topchi: It's a fascinating switch from that over to the casino side. Before we jump into that though, really would like to know if there's any cases of particular interest that you worked in those days. Obviously involving casinos. Don't want you to reveal anything that's confidential, but I'm sure there's some interesting stories there where casinos were intertwined.

[00:01:57] Paul Camacho: Yeah, so when I ran the office in Vegas it was the first exposure I really had to casinos and one of the things I noted was that Law enforcement in general throughout the country seem to harbor a lot of stereotypes about what goes on in casinos. And, they watch people watch movies, they get an impression of what casinos are like.

And I really wanted to make a concerted effort to really understand the industry. So during that time and my tenure as a special agent in charge, I instituted a liaison program where I had every one of my agents assigned to certain casinos. And they acted as liaison and we would interact with the casinos.

We would try to understand their operations and then we would in turn answer any questions or help them with compliance. And that really opened my eyes to understanding that people harbor a lot of stereotypes of what a casino is about. And how you can launder money in a casino. And so that was a really fruitful endeavor.

It led to helping law enforcement really understand what you can and can't do in a casino. It helped them understand that casinos are trying their best to be in compliance and really they need as much guidance as possible to do that. And it also led to the beginnings of some really good public-private partnerships, which is now the expectation of FinCEN and law enforcement…