Three UK gamblers have been sentenced to lengthy stints in prison for a scam that took a Monte Carlo casino for nearly €3.7m.

On Monday, a Monaco court sentenced Sajid Rashid and Qamar Hussain to 30 months in prison, while Zahidul Haque Khan received a 10-month sentence.

Prosecutors accused the trio of running a year-long scam which involved passing off €10 casino tokens as €1k tokens at roulette tables in the Casino de Monte-Carlo, a property run (like all of Monaco’s gaming venues) by the state-owned Société des bains de mer de Monaco (SBM).

The scam preyed upon a vulnerability at the casino’s roulette tables, where the tokens issued have no face value. Surveillance footage revealed that the trio had been slipping tokens purchased at €10 into their pockets, then sneaking the tokens back into play after upping their buy-in value to €1k. Adding insult to injury, the three supposed high-rollers had been comped a suite at an SBM hotel during their exploits.