By Andy Ostmeyer
Globe Metro Editor
—
A Southwest Missouri man whose experience as a sign maker gave him the expertise and tools he needed to counterfeit poker chips was sentenced this week in federal court in Oklahoma to five years of probation for using those chips to steal from a casino.
William Reece Lancaster, 50, Webb City, will serve the first six months of the probation in home detention, according to federal officials. He also was ordered to pay restitution of $70,000.
Lancaster was sentenced Thursday by Chief U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan in the Northern District of Oklahoma. Lancaster pleaded guilty last December to a charge of theft from a gaming establishment on Indian land in excess of $1,000.
Lancaster admitted during the sentencing that he was addicted to gambling, said Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Trent Shores, who prosecuted the case.
Lancaster also admitted in his plea agreement that he obtained 25-cent poker chips from the casino and then used a special process to bleach and re-dye them to match $500 poker chips. He would then use the counterfeit chips at the blackjack tables or exchange them for cash at the cashier windows.
Lancaster also admitted that on several occasions between Sept. 11 and Oct. 8, 2009, when he was caught and arrested, that he used the counterfeit chips at the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe’s Grand Lake Casino, near Grove, Okla.
Shores said the chips looked like the real thing, and the government used forensic experts to tell them apart.
“Flaws in the chips were difficult to see with the naked eye,” he said.
The casino had 200 of the $500 chips in circulation, but Shores said Lancaster tipped his hand by flooding the casino with 140 additional chips of that denomination.
After the tribe detected the extra chips, it used video surveillance to identify Lancaster as the source of the chips.
Lancaster was facing up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
The crime was investigated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Law Enforcement.
Shores previously said the crime is not a common one, and that his office worked with the casinos in Northeast Oklahoma to alert them to the problems so that they could take appropriate steps with regard to their chips and surveillance.
Officials at the casino did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Federal crime
The prosecution of William Reece Lancaster for theft from a casino proceeded in federal court because the crime took place on Indian land, bringing it under the jurisdiction of the federal government.
