June 19th, 2019 by WCBC Radio

In October 2018 the Maryland State Police and the Allegany County Combined Criminal Investigation Unit (C3I) initiated an investigation into allegations, first reported to the MSP, of theft at the Rocky Gap Casino after being contacted by management at the resort.

During the course of the investigation C3I Investigators learned that a now former employee had conspired with a regular customer to use "free play" cards to utilize on the different video games, which resulted in the customer winning a large sum of cash prizes. The "free play" cards are routinely given out to customers as an incentive/reward for being good customers, but each employee has a limit on the value of the cards that can be given out. In this case, the suspect employee issued cards to the customer utilizing several other different customers account numbers in order to try to conceal the transactions. The former employee received a small sum of cash from the customer in exchange for cooperating in the conspiracy.

A complete review of the records by management and C3I Investigators revealed that the loss to Rocky Gap Casino exceeded over $170,000.00 in winnings utilizing the "free play" cards.

As a result, C3I Investigators obtained charging documents charging the 36 year old former employee, Teandra Skye Smith, of Cumberland, with Theft Scheme over $100,000.00 and Conspiracy to Commit Theft Scheme over $100,000.00.

Investigators also obtained charging documents charging 50 year old Grant Russell Long, of Huntingdon, PA, with the same charges, Theft Scheme over $100,000.00 and Conspiracy to Commit Theft Scheme over $100,000.00.

Smith and Long were recently served criminal summonses, and both are free pending their next court appearances.