\nWayne Parry, Associated Press
\n\tATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) \u2013 Talk about a royal flush!<\/p>\n
\tA clogged pipe at an Atlantic City casino hotel room led to the discovery of counterfeit poker chips with a tournament value of 2.7 million that had been flushed down a toilet.<\/p>\n
\tThat, in turn, led authorities to a man they say sneaked fake chips into a poker tournament at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, prompting the cancellation of one of its events last week.<\/p>\n
\tChristian Lusardi, of Fayetteville, N.C., was arrested Friday at a motel in Atlantic City on charges including theft and rigging a public contest. It was unknown if he had a lawyer. A phone registered to his name in Fayetteville was answered by a recording indicating it was no longer in service.<\/p>\n
\tBorgata senior vice president Joe Lupo said the first indication that anything was amiss came when his casino received a call from Harrah\u2019s, nearby it in the city\u2019s marina district, about a mile away from Atlantic City\u2019s Boardwalk.<\/p>\n
\tBorgata staff then checked the chips being used in the Borgata Winter Poker Open and found 160 of the counterfeit poker chips with a tournament value of 5,000, totaling 800,000, among the genuine casino chips. The compromise forced officials to cancel Event 1 of the tournament, while dozens of uncompromised events were allowed to continue.<\/p>\n
\tThe entry fee for the tournament was $560, but the chips the players used in the tournament don\u2019t have any value as U.S. currency.<\/p>\n
\tThe state Division of Gaming Enforcement temporarily froze the prize money involved in the canceled event. Lupo said that edict from the state remains in effect.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe are very pleased that the New Jersey State Police Casino Gaming Bureau has apprehended a suspect in connection with the counterfeit chip activity that compromised Event 1 of the Borgata Poker Open,\u201d Lupo said. \u201cWhile this is a very positive development, the investigation by the (Division of Gaming Enforcement) and the state police is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe Division of Gaming Enforcement couldn\u2019t immediately say what would become of prize money or buy-in fees paid by players.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe division is committed to ensuring confidence and integrity in all gaming operations and will continue to work with Borgata and the New Jersey State Police until this case is closed,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\tThe investigation revealed evidence that Lusardi introduced the counterfeit chips into the tournament on multiple occasions, state police Trooper Jeffrey Flynn said. It also was determined that Lusardi won $6,814 during the tournament.<\/p>\n
\tLusardi was jailed on $300,000 bail, with no option to pay 10 percent in cash to gain his release.<\/p>\n
\tThe event under scrutiny is the tournament\u2019s Big Stack, No Limit Hold \u2018Em event. It began on Tuesday and there were 27 people remaining in the contest when play was suspended.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wayne Parry, Associated Press ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) \u2013 Talk about a royal flush! A clogged pipe at an Atlantic City casino hotel room led to the discovery of counterfeit poker chips with a tournament value of 2.7 million that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}