Chinese Casino Heist Update: $258 Million Lost In Macau Heist
China is already suffering an economic meltdown and now a mega casino heist in Macau has sent shockwaves through the city.
According to news reports, a whopping $258 million dollars has been swiped from under the noses of a junket, Dore Holdings, operating in Wynn Macau. Right now the main suspects seem to be some of the junket's employees themselves.
Interestingly, the casino released information to Bloomberg revealing that they haven't lost any money but a Yahoo report states that the damage has been done nevertheless. The stock for the casino has dropped by 9%.
These casinos were until very recently part of the gaming boom in Macau which was a great source of income for the region. Yahoo reveals that the growth has also seen a drop in the growth rate by 30 to 50%.
The experts over at Daiwa Capital Markets have weighed in on the issue and the Hong Kong based investment bank also reported the news about the $258 million heist.
In the report the experts revealed that this gaming industry hasn't quite recovered from $1.3 billion heist from the junket Kimren, and it seemed like history was repeating itself.
"As a whole, the junket segment never recovered from this liquidity squeeze since. We are already seeing signs of this today, with individuals purportedly rushing to the junket (Dore) in an attempt to withdraw funds," they write.
Additionally the report revealed that this might spur the closures of junkets, explaining: "Wynn may still face some form of bad debt in the event that the junket's remaining capital base is unable to absorb the loss. Continued junket closures are a real possibility, and as previously highlighted, we have already witnessed an acceleration of junket closures in the past 2 months. There are at least 11 VIP rooms slated for closure in Aug/Sep 15 alone, based on our count."