Carolina Man Caught With Millions In Fake Poker Chips

POSTED IN Poker News + Poker Tournament | no comments

It was a busy day for a casino in New Jersey, as they caught Christian Lusardi from North Carolina who brought millions of dollars in counterfeit poker chips to use in a tournament. The worst, or best, part is how they caught him. It happened when he was trying to flush the chips down the hotel toilet, and clogged it.

Lusardi pleased guilty to trademark counterfeiting and criminal mischief and got a plea deal where he would only serve 5 years in jail. There was a total of $3.6 million worth of tournament chips were ultimately found, clogged in pipes.

The two casinos involved will be getting monetary reimbursement:

• Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa: $463,540 for revenue lost for cancelling the tournament.
• Harrah’s Casino Hotel: $9,455 for damaged pipes.

With all of the trouble that Lusardi caused, he had only won $6,814 in the tournament, hardly worth the effort. Many should know that the chips used during tournaments are not used to cash in for their face value, but rather only used when playing, and players will only get paid from the overall prize pool.

I am glad that this did not happen at a much larger event like WSOP or WPT, but then again, they would have much stricter security when it came to their poker chips. Casinos continue to create elaborate chips to deter and make it much harder to counterfeit.