Escrito por Tim Lavalli
 LAS VEGAS/06-Sep-2007

Sometimes the truth is just much funnier than any jokes we could possibly make up. Take this for instance.
Last week in Las Vegas, a husband and wife team was indicted for putting $60,000 in counterfeit $100 bills into video poker machines at Caesar’s Palace. Apparently the fake bills were of such high quality that the bill scanners on the slot machines accepted about 600 of the bogus currency over the course of four days before the money laundering plot was uncovered.

But what makes this story interesting from a security perspective is how the alleged perpetrators were caught. It wasn’t the ubiquitous “eye in the sky” – the network of thousands of cameras watching every moment of action on the casino floor. The bad guys were foiled by the player’s club card they were using to “earn” discounted show tickets and free buffet passes from gambling with their phony bills.

The player’s club program lets the casino electronically track your gambling and in return you get credit towards “comps,” like free Celine Dion tickets or cheap eats at places like the celebrity restaurants of Bobby Flay or Guy Savoy.

When casino security began looking through their massive surveillance systems to see who’d been pumping the funny money into those video poker and approximately a dozen other slot machines, they were able to identify precisely when the bills were inserted.

That’s when investigators noticed that the criminals were using their player’s club cards. Naturally, it didn’t take long for investigators to assemble enough evidence to make the arrests. When the trap was sprung, the couple had about $27,000 in genuine cash in their possession, and about $30,000 in fake bills stashed in their SUV.

We don’t think they enjoyed their “comp” dinner that night in the County Jail.