Chinese crime ring ripping off Strip

Chinese organized crime may be pocketing more than $500,000 in Strip casino money each month, say Metro Police detectives who are chasing a scam that suckers cash out of the hands of unsuspecting casino cage operators in exchange for fake checks.

The Chinese suspects who detectives have been able to catch -- among them a man who ripped off almost $750,000 from several casinos in one night last spring before he was hauled away in handcuffs -- claim Asian organized crime sent them.

If their confessions to police are true, these suspects are merely the few who've been caught out of a much larger pool of pawns purportedly traveling to Las Vegas nearly every weekend for underworld bosses around the world, cashing in on what's become "easy money."

"It's a big-time problem for us here in Las Vegas," Detective Paul Evans said. "Rob a bar or a convenience store, and you might get away with $1,000. With this, they can get as much as 10, 15, 20 grand a night."

The heist is typically pulled off with a cashier's check, the person to whom it is made out presenting the document at the cage along with his driver's license or passport as supporting identification.

When the cage cashier calls the issuing bank to insure there is enough money in the account, all checks out OK. This is because the document is OK -- or so it looks.

The numbers often match up to a real account that exists in a real bank, and the check was originally drawn up at a time when the account had several thousand dollars in it, Evans explains.

The trick, however, is in the paper the check is printed on. Through careful duplication with a scanner and computer, scam artists have been able to make multiple copies, replacing the original amount on each fake check with smaller figures.

"If there's $15,000 in the account, they might do one check for $7,200, another for $6,500," Evans said. "Instead of giving the person cash, the cage operator will open a line of credit. So the person will go off, gamble a while, then come back and cash out. Then they're out the door, off to another casino to do it all over again."

Between January and November 1998, Metro's forgery detail worked on cases -- including those thought to involve Asian organized crime -- totaling $8,681,014 in losses. Police attribute approximately 70 percent of that figure to counterfeit checks. The remaining 30 percent included credit card fraud and "identity takeovers" -- cases where criminals assumed innocent parties' identities for financial gain.

Metro has been successful in catching many bad-check passers, their cases supported by fingerprints and casino surveillance video footage.

A few are caught the day they commit the crime. Some victims aren't aware of the loss for several weeks. The damage thieves do is enough to put small mom-and-pop shops out of business. Bigger outfits like casinos may be able to write off the loss, and the bank caught in the middle lessens its sting by passing the cost off to consumers through inflated rates.

"It's the crime of the future occurring today with the resources of the past," forgery Sgt. Robert Sebby said. "The risk of going to prison is so low, and the amount of money they can get away with is so high. Of those who get caught, most are given probation rather than a prison sentence."

Such was the case with Tian Sang Ma, 47, one of the first people Metro was able to link to Chinese organized crime when a rash of counterfeit checks started surfacing in early 1998.

Ma had passed off a handful of bad checks worth $750,000 on the April night that he was arrested. His punishment: probation.

Detectives were able to trace Ma's gambling habits back to California poker houses known to be run by Chinese gangs. Ma admitted having racked up a huge debt there, police said, and that the scam he attempted in Vegas was to be a source of repayment.

Where the Italians and Mexicans have their Mafias, Chinese organized crime operates through triads or tongs.

Triads are Chinese criminal societies with ancient roots. According to the Office of International Criminal Justice, they developed in China before the days of Christ as secret societies formed to overthrow unpopular or tyrannical rulers.

Modern triads, however, are likened by authorities to hierarchical street gangs with their hands in everything from extortion and loan sharking to credit card fraud, forgery, video piracy and some prostitution.

Triads based in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Communist China are known to have branched out to Canada, England and the U.S., as have fraternal organizations known as tongs.

There are at least 60 known triads. The more well-known include the Big Circle Boys, the Wah Ching and the Black Dragon.

Authorities say that triads and tongs run gambling halls in Northern and Southern California -- the two main locations where Metro Police say Chinese bad-check passers have been coming from.

Police, though, are quick to caution perspective: Although the fingers of Chinese crime are creeping into Las Vegas, the majority of Chinese tourists who travel here are good citizens without any criminal ties.

Furthermore, Chinese organized crime accounts for a scant proportion of casino losses.

Metro has worked cases in the past year involving counterfeit checks and credit card fraud involving Russians, Vietnamese, Armenians, and YACS -- Yugoslavians, Albanians, Croatians and Serbians -- as well as black organized street gangs like the Crips and Bloods out of California, and groups from Mexico and Canada.

"We're also seeing a high number of violent offenders turning to financial crimes," Sebby said. "Murderers, sex offenders, armed robbers, kidnappers. We've caught eight-, nine-, 10-time convicted ex-felons committing financial crimes because the system works in their favor."

Case files in detectives' swelling cabinets show that bad-check passers keep coming to town -- confirmation of the claims suspects have made during interrogation.

A man and woman were arrested this past November at Circus Circus after hitting at least seven casinos with bad checks worth $50,000 in a matter of hours. They told police that the Chinese triads, or the Chinese "Mafia" were behind organized trips -- either by air or car -- into Las Vegas every weekend to pull the same scam.

The couple told police a story much like Ma's -- that they were recruited into committing the crime as a means to pay back large debts from California gambling houses tied to Asian organized crime.

The recruiters, or "handlers" as police call them, bring the suspects to Las Vegas, set them up in a hotel room, and give them the bad checks. Detective Evans said the handlers stay in a different hotel and keep in contact with their recruits by pager and cell phone.

"When we've run (hotel room) phone bill checks, very rarely do we find that they've made telephone calls to other hotels," Evans said.

Authorities are typically tripped up in their efforts to trace the crime back to individuals heading up the organized rings, often because of an intricate ploy to avoid detection.

"Say you're in organized crime, and I'm you're trusted friend," Evans explained. "I hire someone who hires someone else to recruit people to work for us. Those people only know the recruiter. If they ever get caught, the only person they know is the recruiter, and by then the recruiter's long gone. There's no way to trace it back to you and me."

The suspects Metro has linked to Chinese triads have been mostly males between 25-50 years old. All have been Chinese -- some nationals, others immigrants -- who speak little English, dress casually and basically look like any other tourist wandering the Strip.

The suspects have told police that they were tailed from casino to casino by their recruiter, who took from them the amount of the checks each time they were cashed and permitted them to keep whatever winnings they made at games like baccarat and poker.

Every Strip casino except the newly opened Bellagio has been hit by suspected Chinese triads, police said, adding that downtown casinos appear untouched.

Strip properties contacted by the Sun declined to comment.

Steve DuCharme, chairman of Nevada's Gaming Control Board, said that local casinos "have been victimized by a number of organized groups over the years."

"Calling them the Chinese Mafia may be giving them too much credit, but there are Asian organized groups that are coming here, plying their trade in casinos ... they are becoming a bigger problem," DuCharme said.

A casino cage cashier foiled an attempt last month when some detective work of her own unveiled duplicity of the same check number a couple had cashed in. Police say the woman received the check at a Strip cage and all checked out when she called the bank, but she took an extra step by calling the hotel where the couple was staying and discovered the hotel, too, had that same check.

"Because we're a 24-hour town, large checks don't set off any bells at cages because of the large numbers of legitimate Asian gamblers we get here," Metro Intelligence Officer Mike Givens, who investigates Asian crimes, said.

"They'll move between Vegas and Atlantic city, and be gone by morning."

Metro has been working with the FBI and Secret Service to break the sophisticated ring, yet their case files keep piling up.

Much relief has come with the help of casinos, whose employees are trained by police in spotting counterfeit checks.

Metro also works with banks and casinos, making available to them copies of forged documents known to be circulating in Las Vegas and elsewhere in hopes that a careful eye will catch the criminal in the act.