Part IV: Financial Fraud · Chip, Cash & Ticket Fraud
Buying Third-Party Chips (Secondary Market)
How it works
A launderer approaches other players on the casino floor and offers to buy their chips for cash at more than their face value for cash. This accomplishes two objectives: it converts the launderer’s dirty cash into clean chips that can be redeemed at the cage as legitimate winnings and it provides the chip seller with immediate cash without visiting the cage (where they might be identified or reported). This keeps the chip purchase out of the casino’s records, because the transaction occurs on the gaming floor between private parties because the transaction occurs entirely on the gaming floor between private parties.
Where it appears
Gaming floor, high-limit areas, poker rooms
On the record
Buying chips or winnings from other patrons is described as a laundering method in the 2009 FATF/APG casino typologies report and FinCEN lists chips passed between patrons as a red flag.
Detection & preventionADVISORY
The paid halfHow a monitoring room catches buying third-party chips (secondary market), and what stops it recurring, written for the desk, not the reader.
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Published as a detection reference for surveillance, compliance and gaming-operations professionals. Thresholds and tuning are set by the property. Nothing here is instruction: the method is described so it can be recognised.