Former Tulalip Casino supervisor charged in thefts from gamblers

A former supervisor at the Tulalip Casino has been jailed on a federal charge of stealing thousands of dollars from a player-reward program he oversaw.

Federal prosecutors say Walter A. Moses, a Tulalip tribal member, was using his rank as a Rewards-Club supervisor at the huge casino outside Marysville — and using family members as unwitting accomplices — to drain cash from the accounts of some of the casino's best customers.

Moses has been indicted in U.S. District Court in Seattle on one count of theft by an employee of a gaming establishment on Indian lands. On Friday, he was ordered held in detention until his arraignment next Thursday.

The Rewards Club program at the casino offers incentives to gamblers such as cash rewards, merchandise and other prizes based on the amount of money they play at the table games and slot-style machines.

Players insert their cards in the machines to record how much they are gambling and accumulate points that they can later redeem.

According to prosecution documents, a casino regular in May 2008 noticed that she was suddenly missing about $500 worth of points from her Reward Card balance. She reported it to a casino manager, who then assigned Moses to look into it.

Four days later, Moses hadn't done anything about the complaint, so a different supervisor was asked to look into it, the documents say.

That manager then discovered several other so-called "VIPs" reported similar problems, the documents allege. She then noticed that Moses had tinkered with some of their accounts, the documents allege.

An investigation by casino agents found that Moses had been issuing vouchers on the players' accounts in the names of his family members and friends. As a supervisor, he would then sign off on the slips and give them to the friends and relatives to cash at the casino and split the money with him.

The vouchers ranged between $300 and $800 each, the documents allege. All told, about $20,000 was drained from the players' accounts.

The documents say the friends and relatives thought the transactions were legitimate because Moses was a supervisor at the casino and they trusted him.

Moses resigned from his casino job in June 2008 after the thefts were discovered and apologized to his bosses, the documents say.

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com