A former Dotty's casino employee in Nevada, Thomas Tonar, age 61, was sentenced to term of eight to 30 years in state prison after admitting to embezzling nearly $715,000 from the chain.

Court records show he received six to 20 years for four counts of embezzlement involving amounts over $100,000, to run concurrently, plus an additional two to 10 years for two counts involving less than $100,000.

Tonar worked at multiple Dotty's locations, where surveillance footage captured him stealing bricks of cash from office areas. Investigators later determined that he embezzled a total of $714,713.59 from six casinos.

After the thefts were discovered in June 2025, Tonar left Nevada and was arrested days later at a motel in Sacramento, California, in a joint operation by Sparks police, Reno police, and California authorities, who recovered about $677,069 and three firearms.

Prosecutors emphasized the impact on Nevada's gaming industry and characterized Tonar's conduct as motivated by greed. The sentencing judge noted the seriousness of repeatedly stealing large sums from casino employers.

Source: https://www.casino.org/news/former-dottys-employee-sentenced-to-30-years-prison/

Commentary

For cash-intensive businesses, the above case illustrates how long-running internal theft can occur even where cameras and controls exist but are not used proactively.

Employers can tighten monitoring of high-risk roles by:

· Ensuring surveillance coverage of cash rooms, safes, counting areas, and change machines, with regular supervisory review of footage focused on exception periods such as shortages, voids, or unusual adjustments.

· Linking video systems to access-control and alarm logs so investigators can quickly match who opened safes, kiosks, or back offices with specific time-stamped transactions.

· Using exception reporting from point-of-sale and cage systems to flag patterns such as repeated no-sale opens, high manual payouts, or after-hours access by the same individual.

· Establishing clear rules that high-risk staff never work alone when handling large amounts of cash and that any override or manual count requires dual sign-off documented in the system.

· Training managers to treat anomalies as early-warning signs, escalate them to loss-prevention or compliance, and preserve digital evidence for potential law-enforcement action.

The final takeaway is that employers in cash-intensive operations reduce the risk and duration of embezzlement when surveillance, access logs, and exception reports are actively correlated and reviewed, not merely collected for use after a major loss surfaces.