Question of the Day - 14 June 2022

Counterfeit casino chips are rare, given that great steps have been taken toward increasing casino-chip security, but they're not unheard of.

Casino pit, security, and surveillance staffs are always on the lookout for any suspicious activity, such as someone trying to introduce bogus chips into a game, so that's the first line of defense.

Also at the basic level, every casino has a unique set of chips, even if it's part of a greater company and, outside of Nevada, a chip can usually be cashed only at the cage of the casino that issued it. That means that staff are very familiar with their chips and are inclined to spot an anomaly, in the same way that fake ID is far more likely to be spotted in the state where it's meant to have been issued, where security staff looks at authentic cards every day, than in another part of the country, where the look of the card is unfamiliar.

The majority of casino chips today are made of a mixture of clay-like materials -- similar to cat litter -- and are compression molded at approximately 10,000 psi at 300 °F, making them highly durable. The exact process for constructing them is a closely guarded industry secret that varies slightly from one manufacturer to another, but several key elements discourage counterfeiting. 

First, they all vary, to a certain extent, in design and markings, weight, and color. The colors, in particular, can be difficult to reproduce, with an almost infinite number of shades. And most chips sport a number of colors, especially the stripes along the edges. In addition, the edge spots, called "inserts," aren't painted on. Rather, the clay is removed and replaced by a different color, an expensive process requiring very specialized equipment that is difficult for a counterfeiter to acquire and master.

These days, any inlay artwork on the chip (added prior to the compression process) tends to be of very high resolution and, combined with the distinctive custom-color combinations on the edge spots, helps to clearly distinguish them.

Other security features can include UV markings on the inlay, microdots, color-shifting ink, even holograms on very high-denom chips, along with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. In the latter instance, each chip contains a unique tag encoded with its monetary value, making it instantly identifiable when it comes in contact with an RFID reader.

In addition to constituting a high level of security protection, RFID technology improves the accuracy of chip counting and cage-inventory procedures. It's virtually impossible to make a fake RFID chip from scratch and even if someone were able to fabricate one -- and install the exact same RFID tag inside the chip -- the fake wouldn't pass in the casino; the readers would detect that the chip was not in the system. The only way it could pass is if someone on the inside, with access to the system, was involved in the scam and entered the fake ID into the database, so the chip would register as legit when it was scanned. That's not impossible, but we're talking Oceans Eleven-style sophistication and planning.

Easiest, relatively speaking, to counterfeit are the lowest-denomination chips, for example the $1 variety, which tend to be uniformly white. Of course, it's hardly worth the effort and expense to phony up thousands of $1 chips. Meanwhile, casinos keep very close track of higher-value chips and notice quickly when something is amiss with them. 

That's why most counterfeiters, at least as far as we know, don't try to pass off the faux chips on the casinos themselves. Rather, they try to con gamblers outside the doors into trading the chips for cash. When unsuspecting visitors are approached by con artists with some story about not being able to cash chips at a cage and offering a discount for cash, greed can kick in quickly. This has been a favorite scam since chips were introduced in the 1880s. 

Even then, some chip counterfeiters try to get away with it inside the casinos. 

For example, in 2009, a Missouri man was jailed after pleading guilty to stealing almost $30,000 from an Oklahoma casino. The man admitted to bleaching legitimate 25-cent chips, then dying them to match the Seneca Cayuga Grand Lake casino’s $500 chips. He introduced the fakes into play at a blackjack table, or even exchanged them for cash, until casino security officials eventually noticed a significant increase in the number of $500 chips in circulation and worked with surveillance to identify the culprit. (Obviously, this casino was not yet employing more sophisticated technology to protect its chips.)

That same year, Macau police arrested six mainlanders at Wynn Macau and seized 38 counterfeit gaming chips, each with a face value of HK$10,000. The five men and one woman had successfully passed off 16 of the chips, but were caught when trying to cash the remaining 22 at the cage, where the RFID scanner detected them.