An Indiana Gaming Commission internal probe prompted by a Times investigation has found one of its own compliance enforcers was hiding gamblers' complaints against Indiana's 13 casinos for a year or more.
The commission now is investigating and responding to all unanswered casino patron complaints from 2009 and taking "appropriate action" against the accused employee, according to a statement issued last week by commission Deputy Director Jennifer Reske.
"What we found was surprising and unacceptable," Reske wrote in an e-mail to The Times. "It is our policy to respond to every complaint submitted to the IGC. We take our role as regulators very seriously and this incident does not reflect the pride with which we, as an agency, do our work."
An Aug. 8 Times investigative report revealed almost half of casino patrons filing written complaints against the five Northwest Indiana casinos in 2009 never received any type of response from the Gaming Commission. Last week, The Times inquired with commission Executive Director Ernest Yelton about 39 other unanswered complaints from 2009 filed against Indiana's eight other casinos.
Reske would not name the staffer who hid the complaints, other than to say it was the person responsible for responding to them in 2009. That staffer had filed away the complaints unanswered and then provided "inaccurate and misleading information" to make it look like they had been answered, according to the Gaming Commission's statement.
The disciplinary action taken against the employee has been referred to the State Personnel Department for final approval, Reske stated. She would not answer a question as to whether or not the employee had been fired.
Unanswered complaints
The Gaming Commission's investigation now has revealed that 81 complaints went unanswered in 2009. The commission also intends to review complaints from 2008 once all issues from 2009 are resolved.
Still, some gamblers who filed complaints against casinos in 2009 and were contacted by The Times early last week said they still had not heard from the commission.
Harold Turner was one of them. The Westfield, Ind., man thought he had hit a winning progressive jackpot combination worth up to $25,000 on a Hoosier Park Casino slot machine on Jan. 9, 2009. But casino personnel at the Anderson, Ind., gaming facility said no, the reels were not exactly aligned, according to his complaint.
He put it all in writing a few days later and submitted it to a Gaming Commission agent at the casino. He called the agent back a few months later to see how the investigation was going.
"(The agent) said, 'We haven't reviewed it yet. We'll get back to you,'" Turner said when contacted by phone last week. "Well, I haven't ever received a letter or even a phone call. I'm feeling they are a bunch of crooks."
'Just completely broken down'
Of Indiana's 13 casinos, five are located in Northwest Indiana. The eight others are located in the central and southern part of the state.
In 2009, those casinos booked combined a revenue of almost $2.7 billion, with 27.5 million people streaming through their turnstiles to gamble. They generated almost $875.7 million in tax revenue for the state.
Gambling experts have expressed shock at the Indiana Gaming Commission's lack of action on casino patron complaints, as the written complaint process is an important part of the regulatory framework in gambling jurisdictions across the nation.
"I have never heard of another state with this situation, where the complaint process has just completely broken down," said noted gambling law expert Nelson Rose, a professor at Wittier Law School in California. "It's all fairly easy to do."
Casino general managers across the state expressed surprise at what The Times investigation uncovered, and said it was not consistent with what they had experienced in dealing with the commission over the years. But they also emphasized the integrity of the complaint process was important.
"It's useful to us in the suggestions we receive, so we can improve our service," said Jim Brown, general manager at Hoosier Park. "And it's useful because our customers have this avenue to voice their concerns."
The commission's compliance division is responsible for handling casino patron complaints, according to its annual report. The division also regulates promotions, tournaments, electronic gaming devices, table games and the voluntary exclusion program for problem gamblers.
As of Tuesday, the commission had sent out responses to 60 of the 81 complaints pending from 2009, Reske said. Five others were found to already have been resolved.
Reske stated investigations already had been completed on a number of the 2009 complaints last year, but no answers were ever sent to complainants. New procedures instituted by the commission have whittled down 2010 complaints so that none has been pending for more than 30 days.
