A man with almost $60,000 worth of casino chips is unable to cash in after they were ‘pilfered’ by an employee of a company who was supposed to have destroyed them.
The New Jersey appellate panel made the ruling decision at the beginning of April, with the total sum of chips amounting to $59,500.
The man bought the chips from an online auction from a now-defunct casino and he tried to cash them in with the state Treasury Department’s Unclaimed Property Administration in January 2023 – almost 40 years after the casino closed.
The department was responsible for covering the redemption value of outstanding chips that the Playboy Hotel and Casino had given to patrons while in operation between 1981 and 1984.
New Jersey casino chips were bought from an online auction
When it closed, the casino transferred funds to the UPA department to cover the necessary redemptions. Once the man tried to cash them in, the New Jersey State Police are reported to have determined that a company had been hired by the casino to supposedly destroy the chips.
It’s now said that a former employee of that company “had pilfered several boxes of unused chips” around the year of 1990 and put them in a bank deposit box.
It’s then reported that the box was forgotten about and the ex-employee had filed bankruptcy. After the box was opened at the bank where it was stored in 2010, the chips were confiscated and then eventually sent back to an auction house.
When the man first presented them to the UPA two years ago, the department rejected the claim in June 2023 as they noted the chips hadn’t been issued to patrons in the normal course of business.
Even after appealing the decision, the most recent ruling found that the man was not entitled to the funds because the chips hadn’t been issued to him by the casino while it was in operation.
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