Don't mess around with markers at Nevada casinos

LAS VEGAS -- The gambler in the fraying pink jacket has no emotion left. It has spilled from her, heavy black makeup smeared into the deep-set lines of her 40-something face.

It's nearing midnight on a Wednesday, and the West Texan's $100 blackjack chips are dwindling and her purse, which had been clenched under her arm, has run dry. She casually motions with her right hand to a Bellagio casino host for a marker, a note that looks like a small check that denotes a loan.

The host confers with a computer in the center of about a half-dozen tables, then walks by with a $3,000 marker that she signs quickly. She doesn't read the fine print -- which says a failure to return the money is a criminal offense.

The transaction is rapid and subtle, lost amid the building hubbub on the casino floor.

Had she instead used her credit card, collection of the debt most likely would be a civil matter. But failure to pay off a marker can leave a debtor facing prison time or, more likely, probation for a felony conviction. An alternative is to commit to a rigid schedule to pay off the debt -- plus an administrative fee to the district attorney's bad check unit.

What amounts to a civil dispute in most of the nation is a criminal matter in Nevada, as encouraged under a 1983 state statute and practiced since the late 1990s. That statute equates a marker to a check. Thus, an unpaid marker is equivalent to a bounced check, and bouncing a check is classified as theft.

"It's a crime to steal from somebody," says Bernard Zadrowski, who heads the bad check unit. "Because the victim happens to be a casino, so what? Casinos have a right to justice just like individuals do."

Under state law, prosecutors must prove "mens rea," a Latin phrase meaning intent to commit a crime, in this case fraud, in bad check cases. Some expand that definition to include those with outstanding markers who know there aren't sufficient funds when accepting that debt, says District Court Judge Stewart Bell.

But what if those prosecuted had money at the signing of the marker but ran out when the casinos came calling?

Las Vegas lawyer Robert Langford argues that most people with outstanding markers never intended to defraud casinos. "They've lost their shirt," he says. "If they could pay back their debts, they would ... often, so they can gamble again."

Justice Court Judge Douglas Smith says Nevada is offering a reasonable solution for everyone involved: "Pay it back and we'll dismiss it."

Proponents and critics alike say the practice is another example of the Silver State's striving "to establish itself as a corporate-friendly state," as Las Vegas lawyer Kimberly Maxson-Rushton notes in February's Casino Journal magazine. She encourages other jurisdictions to follow suit. "It is convenient and effective" for gaming establishments "to use law enforcement as a tool to accomplish the end result -- collection of the money," she writes.

The casino industry infuses Nevada's coffers with more than half of its annual revenue, and "Vegas feeds off the gambling industrial complex," as one longtime Nevada lawyer puts it.

Maxson-Rushton says that without the bad check law, foreign debtors to Nevada businesses could more easily avoid paying up than their American counterparts.

But complications related to extradition spare debtors abroad from prosecution.

In recent years, for example, Chinese gamblers have failed to repay upward of $80 million to Clark County casinos, the second-highest debt among residents of a single nation, Zadrowski says. Only U.S. residents owe more. Yet only one citizen of China, Jing Wei Li, has been extradited to Las Vegas for prosecution, whereas hundreds of Americans have been bused here for failing to pay off markers. It often costs more than $1,000 to bring a debtor back to Vegas.

Zadrowski, who worked in a different division of the district attorney's office at the time of Jing's extradition, speculates a deputy noticed a warrant was out for Jing's arrest when he was in custody in Hong Kong a few years ago. Jing owed $4.84 million to two MGM Mirage properties, the MGM Grand and the Bellagio.

But all other foreign debtors will avoid extradition, according to Zadrowski. He says that doesn't amount to selective prosecution, however.

Nevada's statute allows debtors to enter the bad check unit's diversion program to avoid the criminal process -- an alternative Zadrowski says is unavailable to anyone extradited to the United States. Foreign extraditions require the assistance of the State Department, the Justice Department and Interpol, agencies that he contends "have no appetite for negotiation." They expect immediate criminal proceedings.

"It's contrary to what the statute says," Zadrowski says.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)