Police search for casino employee who walked out with £10 million cash

Following yesterday’s news of an underground illegal casino den shut down in Thailand, we bring you more news of criminal casino activity within Asia.

South Korean police are currently searching for a woman suspected of stealing nearly £10 million in cash from her workplace, casino resort Jeju Shinhwa World. Police believe she, or accomplices, have erased CCTV footage of the crime.

Last week the casino discovered that it had been robbed of ₩14.56 billion (£9.8 million).

Investigators have confirmed that several billion South Korean Won was found at the home of the casino employee. Her identity has been protected, but it has been revealed that she is a middle-aged Malaysian woman that left on holiday at the end of last year and never returned. 

Some unidentified cash has also been found in a safe at the casino. The Jeju Provincial Police Agency are in the process of analysing whether these banknotes are connected to the money that went missing last week.

Having secured camera footage from the casino, police are now searching for the employee, whose job gave her access to the casino’s funds. However, local reports said that video from the time the suspected crime took place had been erased. A report in the Korea Times also suggested that the theft was carried out over a long period.

“The management of the group is unable to reach the employee in charge of the funds,” the Hong Kong company Landing International Development, the owner of the casino, said in a statement last week. “The company has immediately reported the incident to the police in South Korea.”

The Times reported yesterday that police believe that the woman had accomplices, if for no other reason than to help her carry the volume of cash stolen. Assuming that it was made of 50,000 won notes, South Korea’s largest denomination, there would have been 291,200 notes, weighing at least 280kg.

Police believe the money could still be on the island, a popular holiday destination with sandy beaches, luxury hotels and several casinos at which only foreigners are allowed to gamble.

“The money seems to have been taken away over a period of seven to eight months,” an unnamed police officer told the newspaper. “But it seems that the theft was not noticed as a large amount of cash was always stored in the safe.”

This may seem like a farfetched movie plot, but it is not the first time an employee has stolen from a casino. In 1992, a 35-year-old man named Bill Brennan walked out of the Stardust casino in Las Vegas with $500,000 in his bag. He has never been found.

We will be sure to keep you posted if any updates of this story are released.