The History Channel had a wonderful show about this guy out of Providence, Rhode Island who spent nearly two years and over $100,000 of his own money perfecting counterfeit $10, $25, and $100 casion tokens.
They even had a representative from the
ANA explaining how coins are made and all of the details that are involved.
His first attempt failed and he couldn't undertand why his $10 token wouldn't work. After coming home, he accidentially dropped his token along with a real token and noticed they had differant sound pitches. Re-energized, he spent more of his savings to produce the exact metal content of real tokens and finally came up with a sample that was "close enough". Now came the momemt of truth, into the slot (at Foxwoods, CT) goes the token and the machine takes it!
This guy was smart. He knew he simply couldn't walk into a casino and head right to the cashier, he played the machines and in many cases, won! Also, he stated that he knew he would bring too much attention to himself if he a started cashing out hundreds of thousands of tokens, so he then started counterfeiting tokens from casinos all over the country. Reno, Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwoods...he counterfeited them all. He went from casino to casino and took $1500 here, $2000 there. Him and his girlfriend netted $30,000 to $50,000 per weekend!
Now one casino detective smelled a "rat", especially after inventory of their $10 tokens yielded a surplus of 24,000 units and believed that tokens were being couterfeited. Relentless, he even sent samples of tokens to the manufacturer and the very manufacturer claimed these tokens are authentic [Some people believe the manaufacturer was embarassed because they claimed to the casinos that their product cound not be counterfeited.]
The casino detective increases video taping around the $10 slots and weeks later comes in our counterfeiter to play $10 slots.
How did he caught? He put $30 (3 coin pull) of his tokens into a faulty slot machine where it got jammed. Instead of complaining like any other gambler that the machine "ate" his money, he simply walked away. Now the casinos had a face, but no name or anything. Our counterfeiter takes off and hits the other casinos and cities with no issue. Still, the detective was not deterred and by chance, takes a walk to Ceasar's in Atlantic City and low and behold, the very guy is at that casino playing $10 slots.
He then follows him out to his Ford Tempo car, gets his tag number and now they have his name. One thing lead to another and he got caught.
Punishment? He served over 4 years in jail. His girfriend got 4 months and his buddy that was helping him prepare the blanks turned state's evidence and served no jail time.
Current Status? Consultant to the US Mint! Girlfriend that accompanied him to the casinos was mad and dumped him the day he was released from jail. He is called the "King of Counterfeiters"
Check it out on the History Channel. BTW...the casinos still to this day cannot account for all of these counterfeit tokens. Many are still out there being played and being paid.
Posted 04/17/2005 3:30 pm
