Christian Lusardi, the man who brazenly counterfeited chips and profited from them at the Borgata in January 2014, is finally being brought up on charges for his scheme. After being sentenced for completely separate wrongdoing, he is now being charged in federal court for his crime that derailed the 2014 Borgata Winter Poker Open.
In a press release issued Wednesday, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office said that the 43-year old Lusardi “….was indicted by an Atlantic County grand jury on charges of second-degree trademark counterfeiting, second-degree attempted theft by deception and third-degree criminal mischief.”
The two second-degree charges carry with them potential sentences of five to ten years in state prison and fines of up to $150,000. The third-degree charge brings with it a sentence of three to five years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000.
The story of Lusardi’s run-in with the law is a crazy one. On January 14th, a $500 tournament with a $2 million guaranteed prize pool that drew 4,811 began at the 2014 Borgata Winter Poker Open. Two days later, counterfeit chips were discovered at the tables. All told, a total of 160 chips with $5,000 (tournament dollar) denominations had been slipped into the event. After a short investigation, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement made the difficult decision to cancel the tournament with 27 players remaining.
Lusardi was caught fairly quickly, but it was not because he was spotted with the chips during the tournament (he was seen later on security video). Rather, plumbing problems at a competing Atlantic City property did him in. The Harrah’s Casino Hotel had received complaints from guests about plumbing and after tracing the issue, staff found that the pipes had become clogged because Lusardi attempted to flush chips down the toilet in his hotel room. He had obviously figured out that the chips had been discovered, so he tried to ditch the evidence. Nearly 500 $5,000 denomination chips were recovered from the pipes, as well as nine $25,000 Borgata tournament chips. The chips caused $10,000 worth of damage to the plumbing, which unfortunately could not be paid for with the chips because a) they were tournament chips and no inherent value and b) they were fake.
The Borgata found 22 more $5,000 chips that Lusardi had flushed down a public toilet.
Interestingly, the charges stemming from the counterfeit chip case were delayed because law enforcement authorities were busy dealing with another Lusardi case. In April 2015, Lusasrdi was sentenced to five years in prison for counterfeiting DVD’s. As per the Wilmington, North Carolina U.S. Attorney’s Office:
Investigation revealed that several boxes of counterfeit DVDs mailed from China were intercepted by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The boxes of counterfeit DVDs were controlled delivered to the identified address. Shortly after the controlled delivery was complete, agents made contact with LUSARDI which resulted in the subsequent search of LUSARDI’s residence. The search resulted in the discovery of over 35,500 counterfeit DVDs. Investigation revealed that between June 2010 and July 2012, LUSARDI was in the business of receiving, manufacturing, and selling counterfeit DVDs in both the United States and Canada. It was determined that LUSARDI received over $1.3 million in his PayPal account during this time period.
