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Ontario’s premier says the province’s auditor general must “hold his line” after he hired undercover operatives to test money laundering protections at casinos.
Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk said she hired mystery shoppers who got casino checks in a way that proved they could launder money.
But he also said customers at a casino were caught by security in their attempts to launder their money.
Premier Doug Ford said Lysyk should focus on value-for-money audits and stay away from offensive operations.
Lysyk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ford said he welcomes audits that see where his government is wasting money.
“The auditor general needs to stick to his line and focus on where there’s a waste of money,” he said at an unrelated news conference Thursday.
“You can’t do a sting operation, you can’t suddenly commit yourself and think you’re the secret service going around doing sting operations – that fail by the way and they get caught.”
Mystery shoppers part of AG probe
In the auditor general’s annual report, Lysyk said his office hired mystery shoppers from a consultant agency to test money laundering protections at the four casinos.
“The purpose of the mystery shopper assignment is to test whether casinos have verified mystery shoppers’ play and casino winnings before issuing checks of $3,000 or more,” Lysyk wrote in his report.
Lysyk said undercover operatives entered the two casinos with cash ranging from $5,000 to $11,000.
With limited play and no proof of winnings, Lysyk said customers were able to cash out casino checks of $4,900 and $10,600.
“These funds can be considered ‘laundered’ because the check can be represented as casino winnings as a source of funds for deposit in a bank,” Lysyk wrote.
The auditor general admitted Wednesday in a news conference that the Ontario Provincial Police was not satisfied with the sting and asked him to stop because it took away their resources to investigate it.
But Lysyk defended the surgery.
“We believe this is a worthwhile exercise to revisit the internal controls that inform casino operators, which are large casino operators in Ontario, how to ensure that they restrict as much as they can money laundering to happen in Ontario casinos,” he said.
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