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On Saturday a 54-year-old man from Singapore was charged with possession and use of counterfeit casino chips. Toh Hock Thiam was arrested on December 31 in Malaysia by the Singapore Police Force. Toh is believed to lead a syndicate that is responsible for counterfeit casino chips in Singapore, according to a news release on Friday by the. Marina Bay Sands Casino, Singapore: 'Can you take home some casino chips as souvenirs?' Check out 5 answers, plus see 1,299 reviews, articles, and 411 photos of Marina Bay Sands Casino, ranked No.137 on Tripadvisor among 3,017 attractions in Singapore. The 55-year-old was the brains behind the operation that was Singapore’s biggest casino chip scam since both casinos opened in 2010. Back in 2015 on Nov 22, Toh had 16 runners cash in his counterfeit chips at the MBS casino. Apparently, the fake chips were of the “best quality”, according to the Casino Regulatory Authority.

My local casino keeps track of which players have $100, 500, 1k, 5k chips pretty accurately, with extreme emphasis on the 1k and 5k chips. The most feasible counterfeiting would be to take lower value chips and turn them into counterfeit $25s, but it would truly take you an eternity to launder a significant amount without staff or camera.

Three men and a woman were arrested this week for using fake casino cash chips to defraud three men out of HK$4.9 million (MOP 5.05 million), Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Mark Sou Sio Keong said at a special press conference on Wednesday.

The four suspects are a 38-year-old jobless local woman surnamed Lok; a 27-year-old jobless local man surnamed Che; a 38-year-old male mainlander surnamed Ling who told the police that he works as a driver; and a 31-year-old male mainlander surnamed Shen who, according to Sou, worked as an illegal currency exchange dealer until his arrest.

According to Sou, three local men along with three of the suspects (Lok, Ling and Shen) went to a police station on Monday. The local trio told the police that they had been defrauded out of HK$4.9 million by the three suspects. The first victim told the police that he wanted to repay debts of HK$5 million to a local casino VIP room and heard from his friend (the second victim) who works in the casino that Lok was able to exchange HK$4.9 million in cash into casino cash chips worth HK$5 million.

As the first victim had only HK$4 million cash with him, he asked his two friends (the second and third victims) to lend him HK$200,000 and HK$700,000 respectively. The three victims took the HK$4.9 million in cash with them and met Lok and Ling in a car in Areia Preta on Monday afternoon. Ling suddenly told the three victims that the deal must be settled in yuan so he asked Shen to meet them so that he could exchange the HK$4.9 million into yuan for them.

Shen then gave the cash to an accomplice who took the money to assist him in exchanging the HK$4.9 million into 4.02 million yuan. The accomplice transferred the yuan in two tranches to a bank account in the mainland. After the first transfer, Lok gave 20 HK$100,000 chips to the victims who then asked a friend to come to the scene to take the chips to the VIP room to repay part of the debts, Sou said.

After their friend had given the cash chips to the VIP room, the casino staff later found out that the chips were counterfeits. Their friend immediately called the three victims to inform them about it when the second transfer had just been completed. At that time, the three suspects gave the remaining 30 – bogus – chips to the victims, Sou said.

According to Sou, the three victims then took Lok, Ling and Shen to a police station and reported the case. The victims gave the 30 chips to the Judiciary Police who confirmed that the chips were fakes.

The three suspects denied any wrongdoing and refused to cooperate with the police. PJ officers seized HK$125,000 in cash from Lok.

Thanks to CCTV footage and the suspects’ text messages on their smartphones, the police believe that the suspects worked as a team and had their own roles to play. Sou said the suspects suddenly asking the victims to exchange the Hong Kong dollar cash into yuan was just part of their strategy to delay the deal and to distract the victims’ attention.

The Judiciary Police discovered that there were other possible suspects involved in the case and they arrested Che when he entered Macao via the Macao-Zhuhai Cross-Border Industrial Zone checkpoint in Ilha Verde on Tuesday morning. PJ officers seized HK$18,000 from Che’s home.

Sou said the fake chips are high-quality counterfeits and therefore difficult to detect. The Judiciary Police are continuing their investigation to look for other suspects who were on the run at the time of the press conference, as well as the whereabouts of the money, according to Sou.

The quartet were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Wednesday, facing charges of fraud involving a considerable amount, officially defined as exceeding MOP 150,000, according to Sou.

(The Macau Post Daily/Macao News)
PHOTO © The Macau Post Daily/Iong Tat Choi

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His ruse caused a loss of $1.3m for Marina Bay Sands casino

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Toh Hock Thiam’s ruse was realised only a week later, when an eagle-eyed cashier noticed a slight discolouration in one of the 1,291 counterfeit chips. By then, MBS had suffered a loss of $1.291 million.

Yesterday, Toh, now 55, was jailed for seven years and four months.

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After a 14-day trial, District Judge Luke Tan convicted him last month of 13 counts of engaging in a conspiracy to exchange the counterfeit casino chips for cash at MBS. The court heard 161 similar charges involving the chips and one count of an immigration offence were taken into consideration during sentencing.

The counterfeit chips were exchanged for cash at the casino between the evening of Nov 22, 2015, and the early morning hours of Nov 23, 2015. Deputy Public Prosecutor Asoka Markandu said Toh was directly responsible for 420 counterfeit chips, but the court heard he could be indirectly held accountable for the total losses MBS sustained.

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DPP Asoka said: “As the counterfeit cash chips were all the same, an inference can be drawn that Toh was either involved in the manufacture and distribution of all the counterfeit cash chips, or he had liaised with an unknown syndicate member who had manufactured and delivered the counterfeit cash chips to him and others involved in the scam.”

Toh was directly responsible for recruiting two accomplices – Seow Piak Long, 65, and Chia Wei Tien, 48.

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Seow helped Toh to distribute the chips and collect the money, while Chia contributed by recruiting 16 runners. The runners and Seow were promised cash rewards for their effort. Chia, on the other hand, was promised a percentage of the total amount that was exchanged for cash by the runners he had recruited.

Shortly after all the runners carried out their unlawful tasks, Toh deposited cash totalling $335,400 into his bank account on Nov 23, 2015.

When he realised that police were looking for him eight days later, he withdrew all the money from the account and fled to Malaysia. None of the money has been recovered.

Toh was nabbed in Malaysia on Dec 31, 2015, with the help of the Malaysian police and the Macau Judiciary Police. He was handed over to the Singapore police the next day.

For taking part in the scam, Chia was jailed for five years, while Seow was jailed for a year. Toh could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined up to $150,000 for each count of engaging in the conspiracy to exchange counterfeit casino chips for cash.