While I agree with this article on the difficulty of manufacturing counterfeit casino checks, I would think that it would be incredibly easy to cash in $100 checks a few at a time at a busy casino.
I cashed out probably over $2000 once and the teller just had to have someone else verify the right amount was being given. I don’t think either of them had any idea where I got the checks from; I suppose it’s possible that when the pit sees someone pick up a huge amount of money in checks from a table (and they generally will supervise when a player “colors up”) they let the supervisor in the cashier’s cage know about it. I’ve never actually heard about such a thing happening, although I suppose for high enough amounts it would. The “trick” is to get in under that amount.
I’ve cashed out $200 all the time without the cashier even looking up. I’ve also brought $200 or more in checks to a table from another tables and had them exchanged without anyone apparently caring. I admit that the supervisor is generally hollered at when they send out chips, but they do that constantly. Sure, if you do it long enough people might catch on, but without a player’s club card you’d be difficult to track and your action would probably get lost in the crowd.
All that said, it’s possible that casinos have much more security than they let on. It just seems as though if you could make checks that were flawless matches, it wouldn’t be hard to get cash for them as long as you did it a little at a time and put a little action in as well.
Sell your counterfeit chips to those on the other side of the IQ spectrum.
Why go through the risk of cashing them in at a casino? Sell your $100 chips for $25 to someone with enough of a risk taking personality to do something as stupid as trying to scam a casino.
Yeah, not that I’m about to go off and try to scam a casino, but this part doesn’t really ring true:
I don’t see a big problem with that. Just last month in Atlantic City, I played blackjack with a bunch of chips I’d previously gotten at a craps table, and then brought my stash back for more craps later. Nobody batted an eye at me for moving the chips around.
Or, you never have to put them on the table at all. Say I have a few bogus chips in my pocket. I just gather up some legit chips by playing here and there, and eventually make my way to the cashier to exchange my fake chips mixed in with the real ones. The counterfeits don’t see the light of day until I’m at the window.
Having said that, I do of course realize it would be illegal and incredibly stupid to try it. And I’m guessing that no matter how good a replica you think you’ve made, casino employees must be highly trained to spot the fakes and you wouldn’t get away with it anyway.
Very interesting article. I’m a bit confused by the line at the end: “In most states, it’s a federal offense to attempt any form of cheating in a casino.” While I guess there’s enough of a jurisdictional hook in the casino’s relationship to interstate commerce to support a federal crime, how would it be one in some states but not in others? Unless it’s the Indian thing–I’m finding a FBI press release that mentions “conspiracy to steal money and other property from Indian tribal casinos.”
There was a program on this not long ago. A retired tool maker went through a lot of trouble making chips that were perfect. He was successful. He made a lot of them and played slots. They were so good that the casinos said they had no idea how many perfect counterfeits are in the casinos.
Yup. I saw it too. It was when casinos used special coins instead of print-out tabs. The casino started noticing a problem when the coin counts kept coming out too high. They ended up catching the guy because he tried one of his counterfeit coins and it didn’t work…they caught him on video walking away from the machine and not complaining about the $10 coin the machine just stole.
We’ll check on the federal/state thing. I’ll let Ianzin describe himself, but he’s a professional magician of high repute… and he’s a Brit, which may be why the federal/state comment slipped the fact-checking.
I saw one too, could be the same. IIRC he had to buy the special alloy from overseas (UK?) because the slot machines checked electromagnetic properties with each coin deposited. When they caught him, the casino guy said basically, “Well the coin is the right weight, right electromagnetic signature, looks authentic, but something’s wrong.” Like he couldn’t put his finger on what but from handling them a human in the business could detect what sophisticated machines couldn’t.
It seemed like an awful lot of work. If you’re just trying to cash in $100, it would take forever to make that first million. Going to the same casino over and over, you’re bound to attract attention, become a really familiar face, and so on. Working in your favor would be that a few hundred bucks is small potatoes to them but repeatedly returning to the scene of the crime is just asking for trouble.
I bet Ianzin is mostly wrong, but pulling this stunt a hundred or a thousand times just stops making sense. Anything less, and it’s not worth it. So it doesn’t get done. Casinos aren’t magical bastions of omniscience.
I would imagine that people who live and/or work in Vegas/Reno/AC come into contact with chips all the time in their daily lives, apart from the casino. Say you’re a waiter at a restaurant (not at a casino) and a customer tips you with a chip. Surely you can just walk into a casino and exchange it for cash, independently of having to play games?
Time For an Old Joke
The Catholic churches in Las Vegas have a tendency to wind up with a lot of casino chips in their collection baskets. Since it would be tedious and time-consuming for the parish priests to take the various chips to the various casinos all over town to get the cash, the churches in Vegas outsource this job to a low-ranking brother in a local monastery. This guy has the job of sorting the chips by church, then by casino, then going to the casinos and getting cash, then taking the cash to the appropriate churches.
The guy’s job title: The Chip-monk.
Thank you, I’ll be here all week. [sub]Try the veal, it’s delicious.[/sub]
I don’t have much experience with casino gambling so I have a simple question. Is it frowned on for someone to leave a casino with chips? I understand that going into a casino everyday and cashing in is going to raise eyebrows, but, in general, are gamblers expected to cash out before they leave?
“In most states it is a federal offense to attempt any form of cheating in a casino, and the penalties can be severe.”.
This statement is intriguing and a bit suspicious…
Is it even possible that there could be a state in which it is NOT a federal offense to attempt any form of cheating in a casino? I understand some states may have laws against gambling and therefore there are no casinos. But in those states wouldn’t it still be a federal offense to attempt to cheat if there were any casinos?
Doesn’t federal law apply to all areas of the united states including all states? And doesn’t federal law supersede state law in specific situations as granted by the constitution? As we have seen the federal law is being enforced in places where state law conflicts with federal law such as with the medicinal marijuana laws in California.
Here’s a related question: are we sure this is fraud? As I understand it, gambling debts are not legally enforceable. That is, the government does not consider them valid. If private people choose to honor them, so be it. But you can run up gambling debts in Vegas, and they will send you officious-looking letters on the stationary of high-priced lawyers, but the debt is not valid and they can’t compel payment. They won’t want to pay out to you or offer you any credit until you do, of course.
This makes something of an od question as to whether its considered fraud to make fake chips. I don’t know if there’s any contractual relationship which requires people to use only casino chips in their machines and table games. This aspect fot he law is well beyond my extremely limited expertise (which ain’t very expert anyhow).
WAG (and the joke about Vegas churches is true to a point: they will gladly accept chips and cash them in, albeit probably not with a chip-monk)–I would guess that casinos are glad to have you leave with their chips, as they’ve already got your cash for them, and the cash is worth more than the chips. I think they might not be amused if you walked in, got $50,000 worth of $5 chips and then carted them out in a wheelbarrow, but they’re not going to care about a few chips here and there.
