Louis Colavecchio: Counterfeit Coin Con Artist

Louis Colavecchio was extremely intelligent, and he became the first person in his family to actually graduate from college. In 1964, Louis graduated from Providence College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business because he inspired to open his own store just as his father had.

Louis saw a steady rise in the popularity of the jewelry market, so he opened up a store called Trop Jewelry Co. in Providence.

After many hours of hard work, this company finally started making a profit nearly ten years after it had opened up. From that point on, his company grew at a steady rate and Louis could finally afford his dream home. Louis brought a $130,000 house in a ritzy neighborhood.

This development was packed full of luxuries; tennis courts, a golf course, and a swimming pool that were available for residents only. They also had an elegant country club that only served high quality foods; Louis quickly grew accustomed to a certain lifestyle.

Unfortunately a few years after he moved, his life started crumbling before his eyes when Trop Jewelry Co. was broken into. Louis was at the store when everything was happening; the thieves tied him up and brutally tortured him.

Louis was left unconscious, only to wake up in a hospital bed and be informed that they took everything. Although the police were dedicated to finding out who did this, Louis and his company had to file for bankruptcy shortly after and none of the jewelry was ever recovered.

It took Louis a few years to get back on his feet, but he was still passionate about running his own business. He managed to open up a second jewelry store named, “Diamonds in the Sky,” which was filled with high quality diamonds and top of line security features.

A plethora of vendors came in and out of the store, to the point that his neighbors became suspicious; they wanted to know what was truly taking place in that store after hours.

They also were curious about the small, black sign that was always posted on the door of the jewelry store, as it mentioned nothing about jewelry. It read,

Most jewelry stores were more open to the public, and nearby store wondered why there were never any customers in the store.

The neighboring store owners never would have guessed that most of his money was actually coming from the casinos and not his jewelry business.

Louis was often travelling to Atlantic City on what he told his friends and family to be business trips, but in actuality he spent most of his time spent there playing the slot machines at Caesar’s Palace Hotel and Casino. Starting off, he had some success but he realized he didn’t have a big enough bankroll to support his new addiction.

He started looking for ways he could manipulate the machines into letting him play without inserting any coins, but his efforts were useless.

Finally, he thought there might be a way he could use some of his equipment from the jewelry store to make counterfeit coins to use in the machines. He gathered a couple of their coins and took them home to see what he could do.

Louis had an electric discharge machine that was used for developing different molds that could customize jewelry with various words, logos, or numbers. Before he went straight into the slot machine coins, he first tried to see if he could replicate poker and blackjack tokens, as he was less likely to get caught using this method.

Although he was able to do this with ease, he realized there was a lot more money to be made in the slot coin business, so he went back to focusing on that.

During the counterfeiting process, Louis was very meticulous about every detail that went on the coin, as the symbols on the coins had to match perfectly or the machines would reject them.