Casino chip forger gets five years in jail

A man who brought $2.7m-worth of counterfeit casino chips to a tournament in Atlantic City has been sentenced to a five-year prison term.

Christian Lusardi (43) was also ordered to pay $463,540 in restitution to the Borgata Hotel Casino, which was forced to cancel the tournament when the counterfeit chips were discovered. He pleaded guilty to the charges in August and has been gven the maximum possible jail sentence.

The casino was subsequently ordered to refund all the players and distribute the prize pot of $1.5m to 27 players who had made it through to the final stages of the Borgata Winter Poker Open.

Lusardi's scam was discovered after he lost his nerve and tried to flush nearly 500 counterfeit $5,000 chips and nine fake $25,000 chips down the toilet of his hotel room, which was also awarded almost $10,000 to repair damage to its plumbing.

This is not the first time that Lusardi has fallen foul of the law for counterfeiting exploits. Earlier this year he received another five-year jail sentence and ordered to pay more than $1.1m in restitution to companies affected by a multimillion-dollar DVD bootlegging operation.

"While Lusardi’s bungled attempt to dispose of his phony chips was suitable for a Hollywood comedy, the truth is he committed very serious crimes in carrying out his high-stakes counterfeiting scheme,” said New Jersey Acting Attorney General John Jay Hoffman.

Lusardi bought his counterfeit chips from a Chinese manufacturer and then printed Borgata stickers himself to ape the casino’s legitimate gaming pieces. The casino has since implemented tighter anti-counterfeiting measures, including the introduction of more sophisticated chips which can be checked using ultraviolet light.