Family convicted of money laundering at Monaco casino
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29 Sep 2024 •
Reading time: 3 minutes An Italian family has been convicted of money laundering in Monaco’s famous Casino Café de Paris. The family deposited large amounts of cash into slot machines without declaring them legal. With almost €72,000 in cash and suspicious actions on the slot machines, their behavior attracted the attention of casino staff, leading to their arrest and conviction by the Monégasque court.
Suspicious actions with stacks of cash
On August 29, 2023, a family consisting of an Italian businessman, his partner and his 19-year-old son, stood out at the Casino Café de Paris in Monaco. The woman had so many bundles of banknotes in her bag that it was bulging. The three family members hardly played the slot machines but each time put in €20 notes, pressed the button to print a voucher after a few minutes, and repeated this as many as 33 times within an hour.
Each time, no more than €500 was entered, the limit before you are required to show your identity via a membership card. After collecting the vouchers, they went to the cash register to collect their ‘winnings’ in cash. These suspicious transactions led to the casino security alerting the police.
Large sums of cash during arrest
When the man was arrested, the police found €57,020 on him and another €14,965 on the woman. In total, the family was carrying almost €72,000 in undeclared cash. CCTV footage showed that they had put between €15,000 and €18,000 in small denominations into the slot machines. The Italian businessman was charged with laundering money from an unlawful source, while his wife and son, who worked for him, were also implicated.
The family claimed to be in Monaco to attend the Champions League draw and wanted to exchange their small notes for larger ones. When they were unable to do so at the cash register, they decided to do so via the slot machines.
Unexplained origin of the money
The court asked them probing questions about the origin of the money. The businessman, who made his fortune producing ice cream and chocolate, claimed that the money came from customers who paid in cash without invoices. He estimated that he received around €10,000 in unrecorded cash payments each month.
However, the public prosecutor, Stéphane Thibault, ruled that the family used the slot machines to launder illegally obtained money. He demanded sentences ranging from a suspended one-month prison sentence for the son to a year’s imprisonment for the father, with a fine of €20,000. The woman, who lied during her interrogation but later retracted her statement, was given a five-month suspended prison sentence and a €7,000 fine.
Defense claims innocence
The family’s lawyer, Me Grégoire Gamerdinger, insisted that there was nothing illegal about their actions. According to him, it was simply a ‘problem of rich people’ who prefer to pay in larger denominations to show off. He stressed that the family had no intention of committing a crime and that they simply wanted to exchange their cash.
However, the court ruled otherwise and convicted the three family members for all offences. The father was given a 15-month suspended prison sentence and a €15,000 fine. The woman was sentenced to five months suspended and a €5,000 fine, while the son was given a one-month suspended prison sentence.