Man, I remember how smart I felt back in the day when I realized you could basically put anything roughly quarter-sized in an arcade machine. Of course I didn’t exactly have bags full of quarter substitutes lying around — I think I dug up a couple quarter-sized washers and that was it, but it was enough. I had put one over on the man. I’d gotten a game or two of Star Wars pinball for free.
Well, turns out I was committing a serious crime! Or at least I was according to Chinese officials who have thrown a woman in the clink for eight months for using fake gaming tokens.
34-year-old Zhang Lili had become addicted to a specific fishing game at her local arcade, so when she discovered a website that let you order custom tokens, she sent them a picture of a token from her arcade and ordered a whopping 30,000 copies. She was eventually caught because the arcade didn’t have anywhere close to 30,000 tokens in the first place.
Eight months for using fake tokens — pretty harsh. Even worse, I bet they confiscated all the tickets she won. Hopefully she traded them in before she was caught and stored all her pocket combs, finger puppets and knock-off Scooby Doo plushies away in a safety deposit box.
via Kotaku