Rhode Island State Police recently uncovered a plot by a man with an extensive criminal record to pass counterfeit Plainridge Park Casino free slot mailers and use them at the Tiverton Casino Hotel in Rhode Island.
Joseph C. Clement, 49, of Massachusetts, sold or traded counterfeit mailers to more than two dozen people who used them to play up to $600 in free time. This allowed them to make money on the casino’s money.
Clement took free slot mailers for $25 and altered them to increase the amount and change the dates. He successfully passed $500 of the counterfeits twice last October and once in December.
State police observed a man Clement worked with enter the Players Club at Tiverton and pass a counterfeit Plainridge mailer for $500 in December.
State police took 22 of the counterfeits to a U.S. postal inspector who was able to trace where they had been mailed from. They interviewed a manager of a Staples store in Fall River (which is a few miles from Tiverton) who recalled him using copying equipment multiple times.
They worked with Bay State police assigned to Plainridge Park and learned more details about their free slot play mailers.
State police arrested Clement in December when he was visiting Tiverton Hotel Casino and secured his cellphone. He has been charged with 15 charges of forgery and counterfeiting. As a condition of his bail he is ordered not to enter either the Plainridge or Tiverton casinos.
Several of the people Clements worked with have also been charged and pleaded no contest to the lesser charge of obtaining property valued at less than $1,500 under false pretenses.
