Macau Casino Scam: Manipulating Gambling Chips, Inflating Their Value Dozens of Times
An unnamed casino in Macau suffered a loss of approximately US$200,000 after scammers managed to manipulate gaming chips into changing their denominations.
Macau's Criminal Investigation Bureau (PJ) said on Tuesday that the scheme involved altering ordinary casino chips worth HK$100 ($13) so that each chip appeared to have a face value of HK$10,000 ($1,300). Investigators confiscated a total of 33 tampered chips and arrested five suspects, all of whom are mainland Chinese.
Three others fled to the mainland and were arrested there. At least one suspect remains at large, according to police.
PJ spokesperson Hannie Lee did not provide details on the specific nature of the modification, saying only that the organization took advantage of the color similarity between the HK$100 and HK$10,000 chips.
Planned Dissolution
Ray said the chips have radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags embedded in them, making them harder to counterfeit. The signals from these tags can be detected by RFID readers installed at gaming tables and casino cages.
Police said some of the chips were used by the four suspects at a baccarat table and then cashed in around 10:30 p.m. An eagle-eyed croupier uncovered the scam when he was handling a stack of HK$10,000 worth of chips and noticed some looked slightly different.
Another suspect was arrested after trying to exchange three tampered chips for cash in a casino cage, police said.
Fake Chip Flood
Cases of fraudulent casino chips have increased in recent years as it has become easier to purchase real, counterfeit chips online, often through the dark web.
Last August, Macau authorities arrested two Chinese nationals on suspicion of selling counterfeit goods to China Galaxy. During the two-hour crazy gambling process, at least 493 counterfeit chips were circulated in the casino, each worth HK$10,000.
This is more than the total number of counterfeit chips confiscated by the Macau casino industry in 2019, which was not affected by the epidemic at all last year.
During the two hours, the suspect placed numerous bets and exchanged chips with ten unsuspecting players in the casino lobby.
The scam is believed to have cost the casino at least HK$5.6 million (US$700,000).
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Source: www.casino.org
