The Live! Pittsburgh casino was slapped with two fines totaling $30,000 Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, which also imposed penalties on Parx Casino and a truck stop chain that hosts VGT machines.

At its monthly meeting, the regulator announced consent agreements in which each of those violators agreed to the findings by PGCB investigators.

Live! Pittsburgh, located about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County, is one of the state’s four “mini-casinos” allowed 750 or fewer slot machines. It is owned by The Cordish Companies, which also owns the larger Live! Philadelphia property.

The board issued Live! a $20,000 fine for two instances in which individuals who were on the state’s voluntary self-exclusion list for problem gamblers were able to access the gaming floor to gamble. A $10,000 fine was also imposed for allowing an underage gambler.

While the underage gambler and one of the self-excluded gamblers were quickly detected and escorted out, a 56-year-old woman on the self-excluded list was on the gaming floor for seven hours and was able to complete multiple transactions at the cashier’s cage before being removed. Those who have placed themselves on the self-excluded list for their own good, which currently amounts to more than 20,000 individuals, are deemed to be trespassing if inside a casino.

While Live! officials at the hearing said a cashier should have identified the woman as excluded when she presented her ID for a cash advance as her first transaction, they also said it’s hard otherwise to identify self-excluded older adults who are present, since no IDs are required of them at security-staffed entrances.

“We may have self-excluded [individuals] in there and we may not have a clue,” a casino representative said in noting it’s typically only use of a player loyalty card or other ID that creates a red flag. “If they’re 56, they walk by and we welcome them in. … We have people come in all day long who may be self-excluded.”

The two other fines issued did not involve customers but, instead, the more technical aspects of meeting board regulations.

Parx, owned by Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment and operator of two casinos including the state’s largest in Bucks County, was fined $18,075 for failing to submit license renewal applications in a timely manner. Meanwhile, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores Inc., which provides VGTs at five truck stops, was fined $25,000 for failing to notify the board of a change in its ownership structure.

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