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Louis Colavecchio, a.k.a. ‘The Coin’, was born in North Providence, Rhode Island in 1942. The son of an Italian immigré father, he graduated from Providence College in 1964 and embarked on a career as a jeweller. However, having inherited tool-and-die making skills from his father, Colavecchio later applied his penchant for metallurgy to manufacturing high-quality counterfeit slot machine tokens – virtually indistinguishable from the originals – which he used to defraud casinos in Connecticut, Atlantic City and Las Vegas.

Colavecchio calls himself the ‘World’s Greatest Counterfeiter’ and, to be fair, his deception only came to light during an annual audit of slot machine tokens at Caesars Atlantic City. Having discovered a surplus of $10 slot machine tokens, staff informed the Division of Gaming Enforcement and, following an investigation, Colavecchio was arrested. He served 27 months of a 7-year sentence handed down for manufacturing counterfeit slot machine tokens but, following his release in 2006, was arrested again for a similar offence just a few months later. In 2015, he received a 7-year suspended sentence for possession of marijuana and, while serving that sentence, in 2018 he was arrested again for possessing counterfeiting equipment and $24,000 in counterfeit $100 bills.

In a case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Richard Marcus nowadays lists his profession as ‘Casino Table Game Protection Consultant and Trainer’, although it is interesting to note that his own website bills him as the ‘World’s #1 Casino and Poker Cheating Expert’. In any event, Marcus is infamous as a ‘professional’ cheating expert and has perpetrated scams, including the celebrated ‘Savannah Roulette Scam’, in casinos in Las Vegas, London and Monte Carlo down the years.

By his own admission, the ‘Savannah’ is a simple scam, which involves hiding a $5,000 chip beneath two $5 chips, in such as way as the bet appears to be three $5 chips. Typically placed on column bet, at 2/1, if the bet lost, Marcus would quickly replace the original chips with $5 chips or, otherwise, collect $10,010 in winnings, safe in the knowledge that any surveillance footage would reveal that the original bet was legitimate. Marcus claims to have continued this ‘trademark’ scam for five years in the late Nineties, right under the noses of casino security staff in Las Vegas, but was eventually caught in 1999, by which time he is believed to have defrauded casinos of a total of $5 million.