Casinos prefer using branded chips instead of real money during the game. However, convenience is not the only reason – they also hope clients will let go of plastic chips much more quickly than cash.
However, every casino player understands that chips are money.
Meanwhile, cheaters find chips advantageous—they are much easier to fake than cash and have multiple remedies. History records many famous and successful attempts to counterfeit casino chips.
Lucky Casino Cheater
Against the background of the most famous forgers of this kind, Charles O'Reilly successfully cheated at Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s and 1970s of the last century. He forged black $100 chips and kept boxes of fake chips in his garage, perfectly imitating chips from various casinos.
However, his resourcefulness fully manifested not in chip manufacturing but in how he cashed them out.
After all, to successfully make such cheating a reality, one should not only care about the quality of the fakes but also explore the inner workings of the casino and everything related to chip accounting, storage, issuance, and so on.
Without this information, he would reveal himself soon, so Charlie decided that he needed help from the inside.
Partners in Crime
O'Reilly was handsome and could easily make a good impression on the opposite sex. So he started to charm female cashiers at the city casinos without caring about their appearance and age. The most significant thing was that they had access to the chips.
- He found out that many casinos stored 100$ chips in the vaults.
- These chips were rarely used in the game.
- Although these chips were widely used, they were mainly involved directly at the tables.
- Winners changed them for 500$ and even 1000$ chips to bring to the cashier.
- Cashiers also rarely gave 100$ chips.
It turned out that the cashier kept many black chips that had rarely been checked or left in their boxes. Charlie just had to involve some of his girlfriends in his enterprise.
Girls in love with him (or just greedy ones) switched the real 100$ chips and fakes, hiding them away in the hope no one needs them any time soon.
O'Reilly had hoped to get hefty cash and leave the country before the casino found the fake chips.
Fall of the Grand Scam
But his plans were not destined to materialize fully. Instead, forces of nature helped to disclose the cheating. After many days of heavy rains, Caesars Palace casino's leaking roof allowed water to reach the cashier, soaking the chip boxes.
During the cleaning, cashiers who were not engaged in fraud revealed fake chips and reported them to the casino management.
It resulted in an immediate investigation with the assistance of the authorities and even the FBI. Charlie O'Reilly was caught among the last and spent ten years in prison.
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Fake Chips in Modern Casinos
Today, faking casino chips is much more difficult due to modern technologies. Sometimes they are even embedded with RFID. This technology is also used in printing money in some countries, making it easy to determine the authenticity of chips.
However, some cheaters manage to forge even these chips because their ingenuity and greed know no limits.
Have you ever faced such a scam? Please share with other Casinoz readers.
