Chinese Pair Guilty of Roselli Brothers Type Casino Credit Scam on Baccarat Tables!

I don't know if this Chinese duo read about the infamous Roselli Casino Credit Scam on my Scam of the Month Page (scroll down to it), but if they did, they should've probably picked up a copy of my book "The World's Greatest Gambling Scams," where the greatest version of the casino credit caper is detailed down to the most minute detail. I'm not saying they wouldn't have been caught had they read my book, but...who knows?

In any event, read about there casino credit baccarat attack and compare it to the Roselli's massive casino credit scam that destroyed casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City back in the mid '90s. I have called the Roselli casino credit scam the best casino scam of all time!

Source: Review Journal

A Southern California man was sentenced Monday to six years in federal prison for defrauding Station Casinos out of more than $1 million in a baccarat credit scheme.

De Rong Shang, 51, also was ordered to pay $1,011,400 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release when he gets out of prison. Prosecutors had sought a nine-year term behind bars, but Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt said he didn't believe a tougher sentence was needed in this case. Both Shang and family members tearfully begged Hunt in court for leniency. The Chinese-born Shang, who also faces deportation after he gets out of prison, showed remorse and apologized to the judge.

"I'm really sorry for what I did in the past," he said through an interpreter. "Your honor, I guarantee to you that for he rest of my life I will be a law-abiding citizen."

Shang, dressed in jail garb and chains, was convicted March 27 of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 22 counts of wire fraud after a two-week trial. His co-defendant in the case, Yuli Eaton, 47, of Southern California, pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Hunt sentenced her in July to five months in prison and five months of home confinement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Duncan revealed in May that Shang was the target of a new FBI investigation into a similar, but larger, baccarat credit scheme on the Strip. Multiple casinos, including Paris Las Vegas, were alleged to have lost millions of dollars in a scam by Shang's group. Duncan alleged that Shang got involved in the new scheme while waiting to be tried in the Station Casinos scheme.

In court papers seeking a lighter sentence, Los Angeles defense lawyer Anthony Brooklier described Shang as a "loving father and husband whose life careened out of control" because of a gambling addiction.

"He is not criminal by nature, but rather a decent family man who, in the throes of gambling debts, made the desperate and ill-advised decision to participate in the fraudulent conduct that brings him before this court," Brooklier wrote.

In a written response, Duncan called Shang "a greedy, selfish man unconcerned with the consequences of his actions to himself, his family and other supporters." He said Shang, a Chinese citizen who came to the United States in 1991, "preyed upon members of his own community" in the Station Casinos credit scheme.

"This group of mostly Chinese immigrants were easily taken advantage of and were left with ruined credit histories and, in some cases, criminal charges in the Nevada state system," Duncan wrote. In court Monday, Duncan described Shang's crime as a "large-scale fraud" and said he had "no respect for the law."

Brooklier told Hunt that Shang's arrest was a "wake-up call" for him. "Is there no room for redemption?" he asked. "Is there no room for saying I'm sorry?" In handing out the sentence, Hunt said he agreed with prosecutors that Shang's actions were "driven by greed." He told Shang that he should have sought treatment for his gambling addiction rather than trying to defraud Station Casinos.

The scheme unfolded between December 2006 and April 2007 at three of the company's resorts, Red Rock, Green Valley Ranch and Palace Station, prosecutors said. Shang and Eaton recruited people to open Bank of America accounts funded by Shang. Then, Shang helped the recruits apply for lines of credit at the casinos. Once the lines of credit were approved, the recruits transferred the money from their accounts to Shang's account, prosecutors alleged.

The recruits withdrew chips from their lines of credit and played baccarat at the casinos. They carried out a scam known as "rolling the chips" to make it look as though they were losing money, when in fact they were just hiding chips and giving them to other co-conspirators. Shang then cashed in the chips, prosecutors alleged. By the time the casinos tried to collect the unpaid markers, the accounts were drained or closed.

My take: Well, this Chinee duo weren't exactly the Roselli Brothers, who might have been even more greedy than them, but the Roselli Brothers, who ripped the casinos off for nearly $40 million, were obviously also smarter than the Chinese casino-credit scammers.