Ask the Slot Expert: Are casinos sanitizing cash?

Question: Your story on 12/9 about twice meeting up with the same grifter reminded me of a similar incident a few years ago. I was playing at the Flamingo at a bank of VP machines which were close to another. Some dude came up to me and excitedly said that I could have his hit on a machine in that other row because he had an emergency to take care of. His goal was to distract me or make me get up from my seat so he could then cash out my play. I told him to buzz off and he left. Out of curiosity, I cashed out for the moment and took a look at his machine. It had no credits on it.

The very next morning, I was at Planet Hollywood, playing more VP. The very same guy came up to me with the identical "emergency" and offered me his "winning credits". I told him he didn't get away with it the night before at the Flamingo and he was out of luck again. He dashed off and I went to security to report him. I gave them a complete description but I have no idea if they followed up. I never saw that guy again. Maybe he went to Red Rock Casino to find a pigeon.

Answer: No credits on the other machine. Gee, what a surprise?

The scam is illogical, if you think about it. Let's say he had both a hit and an emergency. How long does it take to hit the cash out button?

The only thing he'd have to wait for is a handpay. Today, because ticket-in/ticket-out has eliminated hopper fills, the only time a machine requires a handpay is when a tax form is needed. Are you going to claim another person's jackpot knowing that you're going to get a tax form?

Question: We usually visit Vegas several times each year, but have not been there since the pandemic broke out. We have read about the casino re-openings and the safety steps they have employed for their guests.

My question has to do with the handling of cash and currency in the casinos. This would include taking out a marker upon arrival, cashing out a ticket either through a machine or through one of the change personnel on the floor, to (if one were lucky enough) being hand paid for a nice jackpot. Are any steps taken, or even available, to sanitize the cash in any way?

Thank you, and be safe.

Answer: To witness firsthand any procedures used to sanitize cash, I redeemed a ticket at a kiosk and at the cage, took out a marker, and hit a handpay (well, the handpay was just lucky -- got dealt four aces playing dollar five-play 8/5 Bonus Poker).

Kiosks dispense currency just as they always has. This casino is one of the casinos that is conserving coins, so the cents part of the ticket I redeemed was paid with another ticket. There was a little bit of a hiccup printing the ticket and one of the numbers in the value was a bit smushed. Unfortunately the hiccup also smushed the bar code, so none of the machines I tried would accept the ticket.

I returned a few days later with enough change to make an even dollar and went to the cage to cash the ticket. I told the cashier that machines can't read the ticket.

She tried to read the bar code with her bar code scanner. When that failed, she rotated the ticket to read the ticket number and entered it by hand. (When I was doing projects with Optical Character Recognition, we always printed identifiers in two orientations on a form, so if there was a glitch in printing or scanning, one of the identifiers would still be complete and readable.)

The system verified that my ticket was good. She counted the change I had given her, then reached into her drawer, pulled out a dollar bill, and put it down on the counter in front of me.

I said, "Don't you have to put that through the counting machine?"

She said, "I think I got this one right."

The marker I took out was given to me in a ticket, so that doesn't say anything about the casino's currency procedures. The handpay, though, was just like any B.C.E. (Before Covid Era) handpay, except for the masks and gloves. The only thing remarkable was when the casino employees recognized me. Glad to see that another regular was okay.

I asked the employee who gave me the money whether the casino was cleaning the cash or taking any other precautions with currency. She said that she didn't know of any.

The re-opening guidelines from the Nevada Gaming Commission does not specifically address currency, but it does talk about sanitizing cards and chips. The CDC's document COVID-19 Employer Information for Banks does not say anything about sanitizing currency. (Maybe all the cocaine on the money kills the germs.)

We've learned much about SARS-CoV-2 since the disinfectant/toilet paper panic-buying days at the beginning of the year. Fomite transmission, transmission via objects or surfaces, is now thought to be theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. In Coronavirus on Surfaces: What's the Real Risk?, Dean Blumberg, MD, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children's Hospital says, "You'd need a unique sequence of events." First, someone would need to get a large enough amount of the virus on a surface to cause infection. Then, the virus would need to survive long enough for you to touch that surface and get some on your hands. Then, without washing your hands, you'd have to touch your eyes, nose, or mouth.

A few months ago, I wrote about the case in Germany where they thought that Patient A infected Patient B when Patient B asked to borrow the salt from Patient A. They were sitting back to back in the company cafeteria and that was the only interaction they had. I wonder whether the real route of transmission was through the air, even though I don't know if anyone else who was in the cafeteria at the same time got sick. If you look at the infections arising from Trump's superspreader events, some people get sick, some don't, even though everyone was in the same place at the same time.

Casinos in Nevada are not taking any special actions with currency. (If your casino is, please let me know.) The risk of getting sick from currency is very low. And we know what to do decrease the risk further -- wash our hands or use sanitizer frequently.

You be safe too.

Here are the latest figures from https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases.

Over a million new cases each week. Over 2,000 deaths per day. What is there to say? I'll just repeat what President Trump has said about the worsening pandemic.