While warmer weather may be a relief to most especially after this years exceptionally bitter winter for casinos and police the surest sign of spring is not green buds on trees or migrating geese but rather an up tick in frauds.
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In the last week local Wendover police made two major arrests for either credit card fraud are cashing hot checks after almost an entire winter of relative calm.
Last Thursday Elena Rawman of chula vista California was nabbed at a local casino on over 20 felony counts, 12 of them possession of stolen credit cards after the owner of one of the cards called the casino to inform them that the card was being used at the casinos ATM.
Rawman was booked into the Elko county Jail on $110,000 bond.
Two days later police were again called when a man, later identified as Troy Manning of Clearview, Utah tried to pass a bad check written to a fictitious identity. manning was charged on eight felony counts, five of them related to phony checks.
He was booked into the Elko County Jail on $57,500.
Crime especially fraud and theft traditionally increases after winter especially in tourist stops like Wendover as the warmer weather brings more people and more people brings more thieves looking for easy targets.
“It is very hard to rip off a teller or pick a pocket if you are the only one in the room,” said an Elko Detective. “In a crowd or in a line with all the distractions it is much easier.”
But given the devastating winter a little bit more crime with warmer weather is the very small downside.
January’s record bitter cold bit into Wendover’s gaming industry which posted on of its largest declines in gaming win since the Great Recession.
According to the latest report from the Gaming Control board Wendover total gaming win plunged 15.63 percent to just under $11 million.
While there were other factors to the decline such as a loss in football betting and a later Chinese New Year, the arctic like weather that included five major snow storms and just one day of above freezing temperatures was certainly the major factor at least in Wendover’s decline.
“Markets like Wendover that rely so much on road conditions are especially vulnerable to weather,” said senior research analyst for the Gaming Control Board Michael Lawton.
The month of below freezing temps was the longest since accurate records began to be kept in the region in the 1920’s. The previous record was set during the winter of 1992/93 when in December and again in later January and February the temperature stayed below freezing for three weeks.
Apart from the general discomfort the unprecedented cold caused thousands of dollars in damage around Wendover mostly due to frozen and broken pipes.
