French Casino Cheat Extradited Back To Singapore
September 18, 2012 9:54 amA Frenchman charged with cheating at a Singapore casino has finally been extradited from German to the southeast Asian country where he will now serve a 9 month jail sentence.
Back in April, 2010, Reynald Georges Victor Lasnel, 63, along with two accomplices managed to get away with S$13,400 (US$10,960) in roulette winnings from the Resorts World Sentosa casino after hatching a plan to place ‘past-post’ bets on numbers.
In what was described as a “well planned and premeditated scam” by the Deputy Public Prosecutor Ma Hanfeng, at 2.40pm on April 2, Lasnel distracted the pit supervisor allowing his accomplice to place a late bet of $3,100 resulting in a $6,200 profit. The following day at 1am, the men then used the same technique to relieve the casino of another $7,200 of their money.
However, a Resorts World Sentosa patron apparently saw the men cheating and so reported them to casino staff who after studying surveillance video arrested the men the next time they returned to the casino. As a result, the men were charged in court before having their passports impounded and released on bail. Nevertheless, they still managed to flee Singapore and have been at large ever since until the German authorities and Interpol apprehended Lasnel at Frankfurt Airport at the beginning of this year.
After being extradited to Singapore and pleading guilty to two counts of cheating, Lasnel requested leniency, describing himself as a “weak, tired and sick old man” who has suffered from heart problems and prostate cancer recently. He also said that following his wife’s death he has had to support his two teenage daughters in France, and that he has already spent 8 months in a German jail awaiting extradition.
Despite receiving 9 months in a Singapore prison, Lasnel’s sentence could have been worse as the law would have allowed 10 years behind bars anda $10,000 fine for each of his offences. Meanwhile, his two accomplices French national Thierry Laurent Michel Fabrice and Spaniard Pintado Jose Lopez are still at large.