Home Printer Spits Out Counterfeit Cash

Consumer printers are improving all the time. Maybe too much for some casino operators.

The California Attorney General’s office announced late Thursday the arrest of two counterfeiters caught feeding fake $100 bills into slot machines at a Tribal Casino in Mendocino County.

“These two bandits used home printers to make fake bills that tricked casino slot machines into paying out more than $100,000,” said California Attorney General Jerry Brown in a statement.

A spokesman for the A.G.’s office said the scheme involved bleaching legitimate $1 bills till they were blank and then using them as stock to print out $100 bills in the old pre-watermark style. The bills probably wouldn’t have passed muster in most retail establishments, which is why the counterfeiters targeted the slot machines.

“It didn’t feel like a real bill, but it fooled the bill validator sensors,” the spokesman told InternetNews.com. He could not provide further details as to what type of printer was used except to confirm it was of a class that’s readily available in computer stores and consumer electronics outlets.

During a raid of an Extended Stay Hotel in Richmond California where one of the suspects was residing, investigators said they found two printers, a scanner, rubber gloves, chemical bleaching solutions, a stack of bleached bills, and a pile of baseball caps the suspects used to disguise themselves on their visits to different casinos.

Jack Daniels Ewing, 27, and Mikael Inturbe, 27, were arrested Wednesday at the Sho-Ka-Wah Casino in Hopland on charges of conspiracy, counterfeiting and burglary. The arrests followed a four-month investigation by the A.G.’s office, which said the counterfeiters bilked at least 20 casinos in Northern California and Nevada out of more than $100,000.

While under surveillance, the suspects were observed passing off large quantities of counterfeit “old style” $100 bills through the bill validators of gaming machines at Northern California and Nevada casinos. The suspects demonstrated familiarity with the security features of the bill validators and were proficient at avoiding detection, according to the A.G.’s office.

In most cases the suspects fed bills into the machine, cashed out, and left the casino. Occasionally, the suspects used the fake bills to play the slot machines, sometimes winning up to $4,000.

Both suspects were charged with 182 PC (Conspiracy), 475(a) PC (Counterfeiting) and 182 PC (Burglary). Bail is set at $300,000 for each defendant.

According to FBI statistics, there are approximately 100,000 forgery and counterfeiting charges filed in the United States annually. The Division of Gambling Control’s investigation into this case remains active and ongoing.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020