Like so many others in Las Vegas, Nolan Dalla made the unfortunate mistake of assuming that casino chips are liquid, just like cash. It turns out they're not, and the lesson he's learning might cost him $5,000.
Dalla, who's the media director for the World Series of Poker and for Harrah's WSOP circuit poker tournaments, received a $5,000 chip from a major Las Vegas casino as payment for a gambling debt. When he tried to cash it at the casino cage, it all went horribly wrong.
When asked how he had gotten the chip, Nolan told the employee in the cashier's cage that he was given the chip to settle a debt. They person who gave Dalla the chip was phoned, but he told them that he received the chip from someone else.
Because neither Dalla nor the person who gave him the chip could prove that it had been obtained legally, it was confiscated by a cage supervisor and all Dalla has to show for his efforts and his $5,000 chip is a receipt.
The sad truth of this fiasco is that chips are not currency, and today's Las Vegas is not the same as it was in the good old days, when casino chips were essentially parallel currency. Though chips still circulate as parallel currency throughout Las Vegas, they are not legal currency.
The use of chips for any monetary purpose outside the casino is prohibited by law, and while chips are considered a stand-in for cash, it is only when they are used for gambling.
According to Dalla, "...it's very scary for gamblers that the burden of proof is on us. It's like the IRS. They think everyone's a cheat."
Despite the seizure of his $5,000 chip, there is some light at the end of Dalla's dark tunnel. While the burden of proof is initially on the person trying to cash a chip to show how he obtained it legitimately, once a chip is seized and the customer complains to state regulators, the burden shifts and the casino must prove its case.
Still, it's a sobering and somewhat frightening picture that's prevalent in many casinos today, particularly since the advent of procedures designed to stop money laundering, and we'll see how this all plays out in the months to come. In the meantime, it's probably advisable not to color-up chips to denominations greater than $100. Better safe than sorry.
