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| Bogus Casino Credit App |
A 54-year-old woman named Vivian Wang just pleaded guilty to a million-dollar national casino marker/credit scam by using stolen identities to obtain casino credit for which she and her already-convicted partner in crime, 49-year-old Frank Luo, bilked casinos countrywide for more than a million bucks.
They used a plan which I described in the writing of the infamous Roselli Brothers Casino-Credit Scam that was pulled off by a trio of New Jersey brothers in the late 1990s. The Rosellis were a bit more successful, though--about 37 times more successful. Their take was in the neighborhood of $37 million.
And they never got caught.
And their giant scam was hushed-up by Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos looking to avoid the bad publicity.
The first step in this Wang/Luo version was the same as the Rosellis'. They stole identities of people to open up bank accounts and set up credit lines with the casinos. However, they differed a bit. Whereas the Rosellis resorted to the pilfering of credit histories belonging to established well-to-do people, Wang and Luo used those of migrant workers.
Then they went and established small credit lines under various names and corresponding bank accounts, then showed the casinos false action on the tables via offset-betting procedures at craps and baccarat, in which their losses on one side of the table were recovered by cohorts on the other side betting against them.
The next step was to get their credit lines raised, which they did by paying off all their markers in timely fashion. This process was repeated many times, each time getting an increase in their credit lines, until they finally "busted-out" the casinos when their credit lines reached a high-enough limit.
Like the Rosellis, Wang and Luo used several "employees" posing as the bogus high rollers.
I do not know how they were finally busted after the six years (2008 to 2014) they scammed the casinos.
Lou pleaded guilty last year and received 3 years in prison. Wang, on the other hand, is facing 20 years and a half-million-dollar fine.
To read about the Roselli giant casino credit scam go to my Casino Scam of the Month Page here and scroll down to Credit/Identity Scam.
My take: First of all, Wang and Luo had to have worked very hard to turn histories of migrant workers who surely had no credit ratings into very creditworthy people--at least as far as the casinos were concerned. This fact brings to light the lack of casino thoroughness in deciding who they issue credit to. Perhaps they just look at credit-scam losses as just another cost of doing business, the same way giant retailers expense shoplifting losses.
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