New Zealand casino operator SkyCity Entertainment Group is wiping egg off its face after one of its high-rolling gamblers was accused of being a key player in a methamphetamine ring. Zhi Wei Yang was one of over 30 people sought by police when they launched raids in December in an investigation dubbed Operation Ghost, but Yang was overseas at the time and has yet to return to answer to the charges. Yang is accused of being a “substantial wholesaler” of pseudoephedrine, which, as Breaking Bad fans will recall, is a key ingredient in meth production. Police seized 330kg of pseudoephedrine during their raids.
Yang was one of four Chinese-born suspects in the ring whose faces were familiar sights at SkyCity’s VIP lounge. According to casino records, the 51-year-old Yang had a ‘buy-in’ of $2m and his gambling turnover topped $14m in just 19 months. During this same time frame, Inland Revenue records show Yang’s reported income was just $4,217.
Following the raids, police seized property belonging to Yang including several bank accounts containing nearly $700k, a mortgage-free home worth $1m and 33 pieces of jewelry, including a $43k diamond ring and a $33k pearl necklace. The New Zealand Herald quoted a police report stating that the assets appear to have been “funded, at least in part, through criminal activity.”
SkyCity officials say they’ve cooperated fully with the police investigation but legal restrictions prevent them from saying much more. A casino spokesman said SkyCity placed “a very strong emphasis on surveillance and security, spending millions of dollars on this each year.”
SkyCity is hardly the first casino to be embarrassed in this way. Last February, Echo Entertainment’s Sydney casino The Star was called on the carpet for accepting $4m in deposits from a gambler whose tax records showed annual income of $120. In August, Las Vegas Sands agreed to pay a $47.4m fine for not asking enough questions when a suspected Mexican meth supplier wanted to transfer tens of millions of dollars from mom-and-pop money exchange booths to casinos in Vegas. Sands and MGM Resorts were also criticized for allowing a Fry’s Electronics VP with an annual salary of $200k to transfer $120m to Vegas. All of which kinda puts Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson’s insistence that online casinos are ripe for money laundering in 20/20 hypocritical perspective, don’t it?
