Originally Posted by
Extra Innings
Saw that episode on The History Channel
Louis “The Coin” Colavecchio
In the late 90s law enforcement agencies from various states, the FBI, Secret Service, and others, descended upon the home of Louis Colavecchio. There, and at his orthotics business, they found thousands of manufactured slot tokens from dozens of casinos throughout North America.
What sets Colavecchio apart from other counterfeiters is that he was able to duplicate just about anything made out of precious metals or stones. The slot coins found weren’t just counterfeits, they were precisely the same as the real things in every way; they essentially WERE the same thing.
In order to pull this off, “The Coin” needed some seriously specialized equipment. These hard-to-obtain things included: precious metals such as copper, nickel, and zinc, laser-cutting tools to cut, shape, and create dies to stamp out the coins, and a 150-ton press from Italy.
He was so good, that when coins were brought by officials to one of the casinos Colavecchio had hit, security experts there did not even believe they were counterfeit. He was able to decimate casinos in Las Vegas before law enforcement had any perception of his crimes. They finally became aware when large surpluses of coins showed up on casinos’ inventory in other parts of the continent and Colavecchio was suspiciously cashing in large sums of coins.
It took weeks to sort out just how much “The Coin” stole from the dozens of casinos he had made coins for. It was impossible to ascertain a definite amount since those in Las Vegas refused to even acknowledge that they had been cheated. Estimates range from $100,000 to $500,000, and it was clear he had no intentions to slow down. The government had to rent two storage facilities just to store all of the loot they found in Colavecchio’s possession.
A plea deal was reached when he promised to show law enforcement exactly how his operation had worked in order to help in the prevention of future, similar assaults on casinos.