Physical tokens issued by casinos representing defined monetary values for wagering in table games or redeeming for cash.
Main/
Casino Chips
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Code
IN0001
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Name
Casino Chips
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Version
1.0
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Category
Fiat (Physical/Digital) & Paper-Based Payment Instruments
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Created
2025-03-12
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Modified
2025-04-02
Related Techniques
- As part of 'Casino Mule Networks,' criminals instruct mules to purchase chips with illicit funds, engage in minimal wagering, and redeem the chips for seemingly legitimate winnings.
- This process reintroduces illicit capital as casino payouts, complicating the paper trail and obscuring the true origin of the funds.
- Criminals purchase chips with cash derived from illicit sources, spreading transactions across multiple individuals (mules) to evade reporting triggers.
- Chips can be passed between different patrons or consolidated into higher-value denominations, masking the original source of funds.
- Minimal or no gambling play is needed before redeeming chips, enabling the quick conversion of illicit cash into a casino-issued instrument perceived as legitimate winnings.
- Criminals introduce large volumes of illicit cash into casinos by purchasing chips.
- After minimal gambling activity, these chips are redeemed as "winnings," obscuring the original source of the funds.
- This process converts bulk smuggling proceeds into seemingly legitimate payouts, hindering investigators' ability to link the money back to human smuggling.
- Criminals purchase casino chips with counterfeit bills, converting forged currency into gaming tokens.
- Winnings or cashouts from these chips appear legitimate, obscuring the counterfeit origin of funds.
- Casinos with insufficient scrutiny of incoming banknotes facilitate this exchange, allowing large sums of fake money to enter the financial system as seemingly valid payouts.
- Criminals purchase gaming chips using illicit proceeds and then immediately redeem them for cash with minimal betting activity.
- This rapid cash-out effectively replaces a traceable deposit (e.g., bank transfer or card payment at the casino) with anonymous physical currency.
- High-volume casino operations make it more challenging to detect the true origin of funds.
- Criminals purchase chips using illicit funds, make a small volume of bets or offset wagers, then redeem the chips as legitimate payouts.
- Because chips are tracked as standard gambling transactions, the funds' illicit origins are concealed behind normal casino activity.
- The resulting receipts or checks label these proceeds as lawful gambling winnings.
- In physical casinos, illicit funds are exchanged for chips and then purposely lost to an accomplice at the table.
- The accomplice redeems the chips as legitimate gambling proceeds, obscuring the illicit source.
- Repeated or structured chip losses complicate investigations, making each transaction appear as ordinary gameplay rather than orchestrated collusion.
- Junket VIP patrons receive high-value chips purchased with unclear funding sources under private junket credit arrangements.
- Criminals can convert chips back to cash or pass them between accomplices, enabling illicit funds to reappear as legitimate gambling winnings.
- Criminals exchange illicit cash for casino chips, converting physical funds into a recognized casino asset.
- They conduct minimal or staged betting, then redeem the chips for purported 'winnings,' masking the original source of funds.
- Opaque chip transactions help criminals disguise illicit proceeds as legitimate gambling payouts.
- Underground gambling rings issue chips instead of directly handling cash, allowing criminals to convert illicit currency into chips without raising suspicion.
- After minimal or staged betting, criminals redeem chips as gambling winnings, obscuring the origin of the funds.
- The informal nature of these venues typically lacks robust customer identification or transaction logging, enabling criminals to present their payouts as legitimate gains.