September 03, 2015
SugarHouse and two other Philadelphia-area casinos are being fined a total of $72,500 for violations that include mailing ads to people banned from casinos and giving a jackpot prize to the wrong person, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board announced Wednesday.
SugarHouse is being fined $50,000 for allowing 11 people banned from casinos to get cash advances in 2013 and 2014. The people were on the Board's self-exclusion list, meaning they had voluntarily banned themselves from all gaming establishments in order to tackle their gambling problems.
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"By law, casinos must establish procedures to deny self-excluded persons from receiving check cashing privileges and other similar benefits such as cash advances," the Board said in a statement.
"We respect the decision of the gaming board and have made changes to our procedures to help prevent recurrence,” said SugarHouse spokesman Jack Horner.
SugarHouse is nearing completion on a massive expansion that has more than doubled its size from 108,000 to 260,000 square feet.
The Gaming Control Board also announced that it was fining the Parx Casino in Bensalem $15,000 and the Harrah's Philadelphia Casino in Chester $7,500.
Parx's violation was mailing promotional material to 146 people on the self-exclusion list. Although the ads were distributed through a third-party vendor, the Board said it is the casino's responsibility to make sure no one on the list gets such material.
Harrah's was fined because of an incident in October when it paid the wrong person the winnings from a slot machine's jackpot.
