Scott Stanford:

Hey everybody, welcome to The Infrastructors, the premier podcast for engaging conversations with influential thought leaders in AI, tech, government policy, and smart city innovation. Today's guest, none other than the director of surveillance for the Angel of the Winds Casino, Derk Boss. Derk, thank you so much for spending a little time with us today, my friend.

Derk Boss:

Thank you for inviting me.

Scott Stanford:

I've been doing a lot of reading about you and a lot of articles that you have written. And let me just say, your resume is fantastic, and I need to know why people call you the Godfather of Surveillance in the gaming industry. That's what I'm hearing on the streets.

Derk Boss:

That's right.

Scott Stanford:

I see from your articles, I mean, you really have submerged yourself and your career into this art of surveillance. What was it, before we get into the specifics of the Angel of the Winds and basically your day-to-day operations, what is it that got you involved? Can you remember back to when you were younger that made you want to do what you're doing today? Or did it all just evolve over a period of time?

Derk Boss:

Well, yeah, that's actually a good question. So I can recall when I started in the casinos and I actually started in slots and I was a change person. That doesn't exist anymore. But I carried a change belt and walked around the floor and sold change.

Scott Stanford:

Wow.

Derk Boss:

Yeah, I mean, years ago, that was in the 1980s, and I started on graveyard. And of course, I was 21 at that point in time, and I just really liked the casino life, I mean, it was just, everything a young person could want. I mean it's party all the time, so to speak. Some fun's always happening, people around you at all times to hang out with, that type of thing. So I liked the casinos and I stayed with slots for a number of years, worked my way up there. But one thing became pretty apparent at that point in time, I was working in Lake Tahoe, South Lake Tahoe, and South Lake Tahoe at that point in time, was a real mecca for slot cheaters. Whether it be sluggers, of course, it doesn't exist anymore, but what we called handle poppers, just cheaters of every brand. But they would cheat the machines also, the old machines were pretty easy to beat. So, it came down to, I was pretty good at recognizing behaviors and people that just didn't look right, anomalies, and things like that. So I would report what I saw to the surveillance department, and so they were busting these guys. And after that went on for a while, they offered me a job and wanted me to get into surveillance. So I thought I'd try it, which was great. But there was one problem I had to move to, I couldn't work at the same property. 'Cause in those days, surveillance was supposed to be very secret. And so I had to move to Laughlin, Nevada and begin my surveillance career there. So that's what I did. That's where I started. That's how it all began. I started in a one, essentially, a one-man room with no training and some old cameras.

Scott Stanford:

Wow. That's amazing. We're talking with Derk Boss, who's the director of surveillance for Angel of the Winds Casino in beautiful Washington State. By the way, also a very respected author, instructor, and speaker, specializing, of course, in the fields of security and surveillance training. But you know what, you kind of ignored my first question, Derk, how come they call you the Godfather of Surveillance? Are you the one guy that knows the most? Because we had Tony Clarke on earlier, on our series, and he actually mentioned you and said you were one of his mentors. Over the course of the couple of decades that you've been in the business, you have really submerged yourself into this field. As it grows, you grow with it. Of course, like I said, so many articles, couple of books on the topic, so I guess sure, why not? We'll call you the Godfather of Surveillance.

Derk Boss:

Well, yeah, I appreciate that from Tony. I respect him as well. He's already making a name for himself in this industry. So I think they call me that, 'cause number one, I've been around a long time. But all kidding aside, I think I was one of the first few to really begin thinking about the proactive side. And I was just talking about this early this morning with one of my sons and when I started in surveillance, it was really, hey, just spin your cameras, see if you find something or report it. And if you don't, you don't, in fact, when I started, we didn't even look at slots. All we did was table games, everything else didn't matter.

Scott Stanford:

The tables.

Derk Boss:

And so I began thinking, I mean, I would get calls as a surveillance guy sitting in on my shift, and it'd be from Keno, for example, and they thought somebody was stealing, or I'd get a call from slots, they were having an issue with sluggers and things like that. And I just began thinking, it's like, why aren't we catching these before it becomes a problem. I mean, it was very apparent that casinos suffer from regular and consistent theft, and fraud, and cheating. That just goes with the territory. And why are we not catching all these things? Or at least getting closer. Why am I waiting for somebody to tell me this is going on? And that really began my quest to how do we become proactive? How do you detect a card counter and what do you do to do that? And what kind of behavior and tells does a slugger have or an employee, a guy who's an employee, who's going to steal, what kind of tells, behaviors are they going to exhibit? How will I know? And that really started the whole thing. And then we built training programs around that. And I've always had that in place and I've been blessed that I've had good surveillance teams and we consistently detect things, which is not always accomplished in the industry. And so I think that probably has something to do with that. And I'm very proud of that, very proud of the people I've worked with over the years, and they've carried that on to wherever they are now.

Scott Stanford:

And you mentioned right off the top how when you first started in the business your main goal was to catch the cheaters, right? And I know one of your articles, which is entitled "Not Your Father's Security & Surveillance Department Anymore", the days of looking for cheaters have really been minimized. What are some of those new responsibilities? What are the top threats now for surveillance departments like yours?

Derk Boss:

Yeah, it's a very good question. And we've gone from just worry about table games, then we went to slots and it stayed like that for a number of years. But I can tell you in the last 10 years, we've just evolved to the entire property. And that really comes from technology, number one, technology with the ability to field enough cameras and go to a hundred percent recording, which when I started we could not do, I mean, that was a big deal. We weren't recording everything that we had. So that was the first technological advances, to record every camera that we had and be able to call those up. And it's just with the way things have evolved over the years, whether it be employee theft or fraud, which has grown and grown and grown, table games cheating, slots cheating. But now we have to think about too, active shooter, and workplace violence, and how does the security and surveillance team respond to that? And even deeper, how do we prevent it from occurring in the first place? So we've changed completely. I mean, we have cameras everywhere now, except for the bathrooms and the hotel rooms, right? But we have 'em everywhere, and we can tell a story no matter what happens. And that's where we've evolved to as a department, is to protect the entire property, which brings a whole set of other issues and concerns.

Scott Stanford:

And Angel of the Winds Casino really has a unique reputation from what I'm reading in the industry. What is it that sets you guys apart from other casinos? 'Cause, obviously, I think everybody's probably dealing with the same technology. What sets you guys apart from the others?

Derk Boss:

As far as the security surveillance department goes, the departments, I should say, again, we're proactive. I mean, we take that proactive stance, which includes, we're usually the first, I would say to field new technology, new techniques. My partner in crime, the security director thinks like I do. We're very proactive. And we're gonna bring in whatever technology, whatever techniques we can to protect the property. And I think that we're willing to try that. And I think a lot of people are not. And I think that's what gets us up there a little bit. We're willing to put in the time and the money to take it. And further, I think we're supported by our tribe and our operating team or our general manager, or our CEO, they provide what we need to protect our guests and employees. And that's something you don't see all the time. So I appreciate that so much.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah. And a lot of the topic surrounds the topic of vehicles entering and exiting the property and how you guys handle that and how business vehicle intelligence, can assist your marketing department. We spoke about that with Tony as well. And of course, you work with the folks at Rekor to handle that information and technology. How does that assist you guys, especially in the marketing department by reading cars, reading plates as they're entering into the property?

Derk Boss:

Well, since we've fielded the Rekor product, the ability for us to assist marketing. And what we did was, of course, I'm an old hand at this really, I know what to do to get some of these things purchased, if you will. And it's always good to get the marketing department involved. 'Cause as we all know, they have a lot of money, right?

Scott Stanford:

Yeah.

Derk Boss:

And what I did was, along with my team, is we showed what Rekor could do, what it could provide as far as not only what I would call the criminal type information and data that we're looking for, but, hey, what types of vehicles, the numbers of vehicles, when are they coming? Those types of things. And I can tell you right away that marketing bought right into that, and it was probably our biggest supporter and probably put us over that hurdle. Because he uses that information to help him in his plans. And who are we dealing with out there, which is so important nowadays is right, knowing your customer. Who is it? where are they coming from? That was a big deal. It's like, well, where do most of our customers come from? And that type of thing. And so us being able to provide that type of information was really effective. And that was where we can join what we needed for to fight the bad guys. And with the marketing department with that, but also with, they use it now for VIP, we have very big players coming in or people that they're looking to host, that type of thing. And that type of information can be sent directly to them and they can get their hosts in place so for those types of things, it's been a blessing. We can't do it with the human eye. There's just no way. And that's where technology has really turned us around.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah. The technology's insane. Listen, I think if Ace Rothstein had this technology in "Casino" things would've turned out a little differently for a lot of people in that movie. But that's just my old personal opinion.

Derk Boss:

Absolutely.

Scott Stanford:

You know what, Derk, when you watch a movie like that, or even the "Oceans Elevens" of the world, but mainly "Casino", 'cause that was set more along the lines in old Time Vegas. Right?

Derk Boss:

Right.

Scott Stanford:

Back in the day, even today, are there times where you could walk the casino floor or one of your team can walk the casino floor and maybe catch somebody cheating just in the most basic of way?

Derk Boss:

Well, and that's old time. It really is. It used to be very obvious to us. I mean, if someone is cheating at a game or cheating a slot machine back in the day, they had to do things that were pretty obvious to us, that we could pick up through the cameras or even in walking through. I think, well, nowadays, it's more we're dealing with technology on the criminal side too. Right, right.

Scott Stanford:

Right. They're more advanced now too, right?

Derk Boss:

Yeah. So we found that the old ways don't work as well. I mean, I can't just, we call it spinning cameras. I can't just spin cameras and hope to catch somebody who's using a computer or technology to beat us. it's probably not gonna be that obvious, we're gonna have to fight it different ways. And it usually comes down to the analytics. And really surveillance departments are changing nowadays. We're going away from the live side to a large extent. I mean, we always keep someone live. We keep one of our investigators or two or three, whatever the case might be, watching what's happening on the live casino floor. 'Cause you have to, but we also have people that are just looking to the information provided by technology and 'cause we're using that to plan our attack, if you will. It's like, okay, this is happening here. We need to do this, that, or the other thing. So it's been a real change for us that I'm sure you're gonna come across a lot of progressive surveillance departments that are out there that do that. And there's a lot that haven't recognized it yet.

Scott Stanford:

When it comes to surveillance, obviously, there's always a lot of rules, regulations, and compliance. Right. Just with the law. how do you guys, as a hotel in short, adherence to legal requirements and just maintain that high level of integrity in those surveillance operations?

Derk Boss:

Well, using systems like IRE Corp, of course, we use facial recognition and things like that that we use to protect our property. The regulatory side is a real big side to things. For a couple different reasons, Title 31, money laundering, Bank Secrecy Act, we have to be on top of those types of players that may be trying to launder money or do something they shouldn't be doing. So we can't afford to have 'em on our games for example, and playing for a while without us knowing that they're there. And in the old days, we would have to find 'em. That's what it would come down to is, hey, there is that guy we were looking for, right? He is on BJ1 or he's over at the ATM and I just happened to spin my camera and find him. That doesn't work nowadays. So now, we're using the technology, it's like, okay, that guy Joe that we're looking for, he just pulled into our parking lot. He's on the west side, he is probably coming into this door and we're gonna be waiting for him. And now we can pick him up, do our investigation, whatever we need to do, and determine how we're going to respond. So I can't tell you how valuable that is to us. Let me put it this way, I often use this in some of my talks in trading, but surveillance people, I always thought that we did a good job at recognizing and detecting people on our property. 'Cause we always, that was important to us. we assigned people to do it live. Look for this guy, look for that guy, that type thing.

Scott Stanford:

Sure.

Derk Boss:

And I thought we did well, maybe we picked up four or five a day type of thing, and we called that good. But when we turned on our LPR and our other technology like facial rec., we were picking up 30, 40, 50 people a day that we did not know were on our property. And that could have been all the way from just a guy stealing tickets to somebody we're really looking for. But those were all the people we were missing. And it really opened my eyes. It's like technology is just the way to go. A human blinks his eyes, has to take a break, has to have vacation, and whatever. But the camera and the technology does it. They're always live, they're always working so big eye-opener for most of us in surveillance. And that's why we're turning to all these systems is because they're effective.

Scott Stanford:

Does the emergence of, and I shouldn't even say emergence 'cause it's already, it's here in a big way. The online gambling, the mobile gambling, does that affect you guys in a, new challenges for you in addressing potential threats or protecting against those things? Or that's not your area?

Derk Boss:

Well, it's going to become one I can tell you just because that's the way things go. But it's like, we'll have sports betting, they can be remote. We can have it on kiosk. When I was in Las Vegas, they could bet on certain things from their hotel room. So that is an issue. And I'm sure you guys have seen what I see on the news about people cheating online and different things. And the casinos will move to that at some point because it's a profitable thing to do. And we're gonna have to have analytics to be able to protect the property. They may not come in the property, but there will be some analytics that at least tracks their wins and losses. Those types of things that we'll have to look for because they will try to beat 'em. No doubt in my mind.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah. Derk, I gotta ask you, and again, we spoke to Tony Clarke about this, when trying to recruit people to come work on your surveillance teams, right, and your security teams, and he had a very interesting answer. He said right now he's looking for youngsters who are video game experts. Are you kind of that same mindset 'cause you don't need the experience in law enforcement to come do surveillance and security. Are you kind of in that same mindset if you're looking for people outta college, early-twenties, who are big gamers to come maybe work with you guys?

Derk Boss:

Actually, that's something that we do consider, I mean, we don't hire for experience, Tony's exactly right. I mean, it's not out there in the first place.

Scott Stanford:

Sure.

Derk Boss:

It's usually not the right kind of experience that we're looking for. So when we do hire, it is the younger groups that want to get into it. And I think that's a good way to go. We don't ask that question specifically, but I know that, like the team I have now, I know that, well, it's like my manager is a gamer.

Scott Stanford:

Right.

Derk Boss:

I mean, he's of that age and that type of thing. But I agree with that. We don't need the former dealer or their former slot guy. I mean that's always good to bring 'em up from the floor 'cause they have some casino experience, but it isn't necessary. I mean, we can train 'em to do what we do and the computer technical background would be a godsend.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah. No, it's amazing. And the one other thing I wanted to ask you before you go, and this is really for my own benefit, and I got the Godfather of Surveillance here, so I might as well ask, when it comes to counting cards, I understand it's illegal for someone to have a partner somewhere and they're communicating with each other. But if there's just a person who's doing it in their brain, right, how do you guys prove that that's exactly what's going on? That that person is cheating?

Derk Boss:

Well, so, I mean, it's not illegal. It's what we call advantage play. If they are counting in their brain, it is a skill that we recognize and we treat it as such. How we catch them is we do what they do. I mean, so we all count cards. So if someone gets on the game and we suspect they're showing the indicators that they might be, and that would be, there's a couple different things. One, they're using the right, what we call basic strategy. They know how to play 21 at an expert level so they double down when they should, they split, everything that they should do, they do.

Scott Stanford:

Got you.

Derk Boss:

But the biggest thing is they move their money. so if you come into a casino and you play $25 a hand for like 25, 25, 25, and all of a sudden you go up to a hundred, we're gonna wonder why you did that. And so what we would do is we're gonna count right along with you. It's just a number line. I'm just gonna count and see, hey, if you're gonna raise your bet when I would, that tells me something. And if you're gonna lower it, when I would lower it according to the count systems, then we were starting to get the information we need that, hey, this guy's following the count is what we call it. But we really do treat it as professional. We just ask 'em not to play nowadays. There's no more back row meeting, throwing and putting them in handcuffs. It's just, they're gonna leave as soon as they can. 'Cause they know, by the way, with technology, they know that we're taking their pictures and I'm gonna get their license plate and I'm gonna get their picture and it's going to all the casinos up and down Highway 5 here. And so when you pull into the next casino, north or south of us, they already know.

Scott Stanford:

They know.

Derk Boss:

If they have that system, they already know and they're waiting. So it works, and further, we actually have technology, we have a computer application that when we want to use it and we use it at certain higher levels, but we can enter into the computer all your play and it'll break down mathematically exactly what your value is, positive or negative to our property. And we'll make a decision based on that, whether you're gonna play or not or whether you'll get comps or whatever the case may be.

Scott Stanford:

Sure.

Derk Boss:

It's pretty really relatively easy to detect.

Scott Stanford:

And so Joe Pesci's not in the back room saying, I'll break your skull wide open.

Derk Boss:

Nope.

Scott Stanford:

No, none of that.

Derk Boss:

Yeah, not anymore.

Scott Stanford:

Only in the movies. Derk Boss is the director of surveillance, Angel of the Winds in Washington state. Author, instructor, speaker, and he is, of course, the Godfather of Surveillance in the gaming industry. Derk, listen, thank you so much for your time. I know you got a lot to do and we appreciate you taking a few minutes, my friend.

Derk Boss:

Thank you. And thank you for working with me. It was a pleasure speaking to you.

Scott Stanford:

You too, buddy, have a great time.

Derk Boss:

All right, take care.