Posted on 04/10/2025 6:44:32 AM PDT by xxqqzz
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A man cannot redeem nearly $60,000 in chips from a now-defunct casino that he bought at an online auction because they were “pilfered” by an employee of a company who was supposed to destroy them, a New Jersey appellate panel has ruled.
The man tried to cash in the 389 chips in January 2023 with the state Treasury Department’s Unclaimed Property Administration, which was responsible for covering the redemption value of outstanding chips the Playboy Hotel and Casino had issued to patrons while in operation from 1981 to 1984. As part of its closing, the casino had transferred funds to the UPA to cover such redemptions.
Man unable to redeem chips due to them being pilfered by a company employee The man cannot redeem the chips because they were they were “pilfered” by an employee of a company who was supposed to destroy them.
The man told the UPA he had bought the chips at an online auction and did not know their source.
The man told the UPA he had bought the chips — which were worth $59,500 — at an online auction and did not know their source. New Jersey State Police eventually determined that the casino had hired a company that was supposed to destroy the chips after it closed, but a former employee of that company “had pilfered several boxes of unused chips” sometime around 1990 and put them in a bank deposit box, the appellate panel noted.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
So he bought stolen merchandise and didn’t know it.
Still sucks for him.
That’s what greed will get you.
It never occurred to him that the seller would not have sold them if they could be redeemed? Not too bright, if you believe his story. I don't believe his story.
Yeah, it’s one thing when someone takes one of each dollar amount as souvenirs, and another when someone takes boxes of them.
The bank got the money, less fees, from the auction house, apparently, after the box renter declared bankruptcy. Did the bank send the proceeds to the state unclaimed dept.? ??????
I don’t know that I would put it that way. I assume it’s a reputable auction house; they don’t appear to have done anything wrong. Sometimes genuine easy money opportunities do present themselves. I wish the article told us how much he paid
How many did he buy & much did he pay for them?
The buyer should have seen red flags everywhere with this purchase. Someone is going to sell him casino chips and he thinks he can make a quick buck converting them to cash? If that was the case, why didn’t the original owner simply convert them to cash?
There have to be other options then for him to recover his money.
You’d think going after the employee who stole the stuff would work.
The only lawyer who will take this case is a 35% contingency lawyer. So the lawyer took a long shot on this unlikely case.
He was ignorant then. I went to auctions for years , do your homework ! Especially since it was online, do some interweb work and save your self some grief.
Perhaps he can have them embedded in a coffee table with the clear resin finish, so he can display his casino chip collection
The man appealed the decision, claiming in part that the UPA had relied on insufficient evidence
C’mon man, the chips were from 40 years ago ! The buyer acted out of ignorance. I wonder how much he paid for them ! 😂
> Yeah, my big score in life was buying an old acrylic toilet seat that had US coins embedded for $12 at an auction. The coins were all pre-1964 silver so I knew it was worth more than the $12 I paid.
I took it to the flea market to show a vendor that sold old coins. He looked it over and said there was about $150 in silver in there if I could extract the coins form the acrylic.
Another customer piped in and offered me $100 for the seat as-is. My wife was happy to see the saga of the used toilet seat end right there.
I do t think so. No “privity” of contract with the employee, and no fraudulent statements made by the employee to induce the sale. The auction house has genuine title passed by the bank after forfeiture of the contents of the box, and undoubtedly they sell their stuff as-is
Yeah that would have been my first question and the answer would be that these chips weren’t convertible to cash and thus unless one wanted the bunny logo on some casino chips of a now defunct casino that is all you would get.
Something like this would have been sold as a souvenir or as Playboy memorabillia.
What a DUMBASS crook.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.