Episode
Featuring Cop Who Arrested Louis – Jerry Longo –
And
#COINMAN Screenwriter Jack Chaucer Airs This Weekend
Louis the Coin was a genius in metallurgy whose
estimated haul from producing counterfeit slot tokens and chips easily exceeded
$3 to $4 Million from casinos around the country. Some casinos admitted it, and
many, most of which were in Nevada didn't.
He sat at the right hand of New England Mob Boss
Raymond Patriarca – one of the most powerful gangsters in U.S. history – with
direct access to his family members. Louis was a friend of theirs and talent,
not a made man.
Louis was neither your average jeweler nor your
average mob associate. He began his criminal career as a teenager and went on
to earn a business degree from Providence College. In the years before his
death, Louis attended community college in Rhode Island because he loved
learning.
His expertise ranged from making jewelry and fixing
printing presses to orthotics and of course, counterfeiting slot machine tokens
and currency.
Colavecchio
could duplicate or create almost anything made out of precious metals or
stones. All he needed was a sample. The samples were analyzed professionally
for content, weight and availability.
Foxwoods had been booming for about five years when
Colavecchio set his sights on Connecticut; Mohegan Sun had just opened.
Colavecchio never talked about his friends – at
least to police. But one of the important numbers in his personal phone
directory was for Louis “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, then the reputed Mafia boss of
Rhode Island. Manocchio lived in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood, where
he once operated the Café Verdi restaurant. He was convicted of a mob hit in
1968, but that was overturned by the Rhode Island Supreme Court. In 2015
Manocchio was released from federal prison to a halfway house after serving
five years for his role in an extortion plot.
Before Colavecchio could move on the casinos, he
needed to do some homework. He also needed some serious equipment.
Colavecchio's expert analysis revealed he needed the following: precious metals
including copper, zinc and nickel; a 150-ton press from Italy; and
laser-cutting tools to cut, shape and create dies to stamp out the coins. The
coins were tokens, to be used in Las Vegas, Loughlin, Atlantic City and the
Tribal Casinos in Connecticut.
When state police brought a sample of Colavecchio’s
product to Foxwoods, the experts did not believe it was counterfeit. Some
called it a masterpiece. State police advised the casino to keep track of
inventory; the token counts were bound to be off because of the surplus.
Meanwhile, the inventories at Atlantic City casinos were multiplying like
rabbits.
“We know that he hit Vegas hard,” an investigator
said. “But since many of the directors of security there were former FBI
agents, they denied it. The problem did not exist. It never happened.”
Evidence mounted. A surveillance team comprised of
detectives from Las Vegas, New Jersey and Connecticut waited for Colavecchio to
hit New Jersey or Connecticut again. He chose New Jersey. This time he used
only $100 tokens. It was easy. There were fewer machines to watch.
Colavecchio was arrested in Atlantic City in late
December 1996. The pinch did not make the papers for about a week. In his car,
Colavecchio had 750 pounds of counterfeit tokens, a fake police ID, disguises,
a handgun, maps of casinos and various casino documents.
The FBI, Secret Service, three state police agencies
and Providence police took inventory at Colavecchio’s Providence operation. The
government had to rent two storage facilities to store all the loot that was
seized.
Everyone took their turn arresting Colavecchio. He
hired a former Rhode Island attorney general and a respected New London attorney
as his lawyers.
Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun acknowledged finding a
total of at least $50,000 in fake tokens. Investigators borrowed microscopes
from local high schools to inspect mounds of tokens. It took them weeks just to
determine that Colavecchio hit one Mohegan Sun jackpot for $2,000.
Worked out by Connecticut based Detectives, Secret
Service and prosecutors, Colavecchio ended up in a conference room and getting
VIP treatment at Mohegan Sun. His lawyers had worked out a deal. Colavecchio
showed law enforcement how he did the job, and promised to help the casino
tribes and the state ward off any future raids. They say he was a hero in
Providence as well. Colavecchio served a relatively short federal sentence at
Fort Dix in New Jersey and did not “rat out” any of his friends.
The New York Times and Providence Journal also
reported Louis was hired by the U.S. Mint upon his release from federal prison
for the token scheme a couple decades ago. That was because his dies in coins
were of better quality than government production. The U.S. government paid
Louis about $18,000 as a consultant.
Louis died on July 6, 2020 at his daughter’s home in
Cranston, RI. He had gained a compassionate release from federal prison weeks
earlier after serving time for counterfeiting $100 bills. He was 78, as noted
in his New York Times obituary. He counted among his friends the detective who arrested him in Connecticut.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/louis-colavecchio-dead.html
The Connecticut State Police Museum, in cooperation with The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, is developing a Louis the Coin exhibit. A detailed announcement about the exhibit is anticipated later this year.
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