Bellagio Robbed $1.5m - You don't see that often!

[theDotster]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11996825

[poppo]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11996825

What a moron by stealing chips:

The truth is that it’s at least as hard to create counterfeit casino chips as it is to create counterfeit money, and maybe even harder.

To begin with, the manufacture of genuine casino chips (known in the trade as "checks") is more complicated than one might think – as you suspect, they're not just discs of colored plastic. They are created, machined, and finished using very specialized equipment, and generally feature several antifraud measures ranging from serial numbers to embedded microchips, as well as each individual casino’s own logo and related branding.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2895/whats-to-stop-me-from-making-counterfeit-casino-chips

I'm sure the higer denominations have more security than the lower ones, and that is what he had to have grabbed to get that much money. Probably going to have a hard time cashing them in.

BTW, I got married at the Bellagio. I got robbed too.   

[Brianzz]

yeah, those chips will end up on Craigs List or ebay.. some sucker will really get screwed

[StatFreak]

You can rest assured that all of the Bellagio's higher denomination cheques have RFID, serial numbers, and most likely black light security printing. Modern casinos put RFID scanners under the counters at the cashiers' cages which automatically scan the cheques when the cashier counts them out. It not only helps detect counterfeits, but also ensures that the cashier has counted them correctly.

Even so, that doesn't mean that they were on the ball enough to know the ID's of all of the stolen cheques, or that they have a program in place to search for and flag counter transactions involving specific ID numbers, but who knows?

Another simple anti-fraud policy is to use the fact that most high stakes players will go directly from the table to the cage when they're done playing, especially if they aren't staying at that hotel. If they are, then the casino can still track the cashing of the cheques at a later time. The pit will often call the cage to let them know what was colored out to the customer, or sometimes the cage will call the pit. I have personally experienced this several times with $500 and $1000 cheques, so I can imagine how they treat $5k and $25k+ cheques. Anyone who just walks up to the cage from nowhere to cash large denomination cheques will be suspect, and subject to closer scrutiny. That doesn't mean that the casino won't cash the cheques, but it does raise flags.

[jay]

If it was me I would be going for the $25.00 chips at most but it seems like a high risk venture for little reward.

I would be much more interested in the drop box, excusing the pun this would be a real crap shoot as they swap these things out pretty frequently that you would never walk out with more than 10k assuming you hit it just before collection time.

A collection of drop boxes would be a decent score but with the obvious casino attention to the collectors it would never be possible. They make these things heavy and bulky for a reason.

I think at the end of the day it would be easier to open a casino and let the money come to me.

[staz]

how could one table have 1.5 million in chips i never saw that at foxwoods or mohigans here even at the high stake tables there ant that much on them......

[poppo]

how could one table have 1.5 million in chips i never saw that at foxwoods or mohigans here even at the high stake tables there ant that much on them......

Places gets robbed and the decimal point tend to magically move. 

[StatFreak]

how could one table have 1.5 million in chips i never saw that at foxwoods or mohigans here even at the high stake tables there ant that much on them......

Places gets robbed and the decimal point tend to magically move. 

Isn't that what they call floating point calculation?     

[jay]

LAS VEGAS, Nev. - The scenes that led to the Bellagio casino bandit's downfall look less like "Ocean's Eleven" and more like "America's Dumbest Criminals."

Bragging about a big gambling score with high school buddies over rounds of shots in Colorado. Emailing pictures to a total stranger — dated and signed "Biker Bandit" with two $25,000 Bellagio chips. Losing $105,000 gambling at the scene of the crime in Las Vegas, but cashing out nearly $209,000 and apparently hoping the casino wouldn't notice.

The deceptively simple burglary lit up the Internet — appealing to anyone who's ever had fantasies about pulling off a major score against a casino giant. But police say Anthony Carleo's shoddy plan after stealing $1.5 million in chips unfolded like a badly played poker hand.

"At one point I think he asked me, 'What do I do?'" said Matthew Brooks, a poker enthusiast from Washington, D.C., who went to the FBI after trading emails and phone calls with Carleo. "And I'm like, 'I don't know what to tell you, man.'"

Carleo, the 29-year-old son of a Las Vegas municipal judge, declined to comment to reporters Friday.

Police say he's the helmeted bandit who entered the Bellagio on Dec. 14, brandished a gun and made off on a motorcycle with the chips in denominations from $100 to $25,000. He was arrested Wednesday, a day after an undercover officer bought four $25,000 chips from him, then offered an invitation — to become part of a crew that would rob casinos, including the Bellagio.

Carleo's response to officers: He'd already robbed the place.

In between the brazen heist and the arrest, as Carleo gambled and partied, the police were hot on his tail, according to an arrest report.

Two days before Christmas, Bellagio security told police that a bell-ringer for the Salvation Army tried to cash a $25,000 chip along with a friend. The worker told police the chip was dropped into his pocket from an unknown man while he took donations from a walkway between the MGM Grand and New York-New York casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

Police confiscated the chip.

Just after Christmas, Carleo spent time in his childhood hometown of Pueblo, Colorado, buying "beer and shots for everybody," according to a friend.

"He had a lot of money on him and he told us, you know he lives in Vegas and that he had just gotten lucky gambling and that he won $80,000 gambling," Tiana Woodruff told Pueblo station KOAA-TV.

By New Year's Eve, Carleo was back at the Bellagio, losing $72,000 in one night and spending a week in January at the casino living for free on the casino's dime as a high roller.

A source told police that Carleo liked to play poker and frequented the Bellagio's no-limit Texas Hold 'em tables with $10 and $20 minimum bets.

On Jan. 4, Carleo lost an $11,000 pot, then left and came back a short time later with $5,000 in chips, the source said.

His activity at the tables didn't match what he was cashing out, and casino workers noticed.

Casino chips are like gift cards — they're extremely limited in where they can be redeemed. And the Bellagio swiftly replaced its line of $25,000 chips on the floor and announced they would no longer circulate those like the ones stolen.

That's why Carleo was trying to get rid of them on a secondary market, and he sold stolen chips to an undercover officer twice in the days before he was arrested.

After losing big at the Bellagio, Carleo told people he knew from the poker tables he was behind the heist. A police informant told officers he'd heard about Carleo from a friend.

"The friend also told the confidential informant that Carleo had mentioned that he was hurting for money and might have to do something drastic in the next several days," the report said.

On Jan. 16, Carleo approached Brooks on Two Plus Two, a popular Web forum where the heist was a hot topic, with players discussing how the bandit might try to turn his chips into real money, Brooks said. Eventually, they talked by phone.

At first, Carleo spoke vaguely about the chips, Brooks said, but gradually he became more specific.

"That's when I kind of got more pointed in questions and asked specifically: 'Did you do this? Is this your deal or did you just get some of the chips and you know the guy?' And he said, 'No that's me,'" said Brooks, 29.

[jay]

Carleo emailed several pictures to Brooks depicting two $25,000 Bellagio chips — affectionately known as "cranberries" to gamblers because of their colour.

"Cranberries are good for the liver!" reads the postscript on the note in the picture.

Brooks called the FBI, local police and the casino.

Carleo was arrested Wednesday night without resisting, and admitted his involvement in the robbery, police said.

Despite the suspect's seemingly unplanned actions after the heist, his return to the Bellagio wasn't all that surprising, said Dave Schwartz, a former casino security officer in Atlantic City who now runs the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Usually, he said, casino burglars come back to the scene of the crime to cash in chips or to try to steal more.

Schwartz said the case showed how casinos and police are more measured and methodical than hasty when it comes to catching casino thieves.

"It's not like they're going to chase the guy down in a shootout or do that kind of stuff, but they are going to follow through and eventually lead people to get tripped up," Schwartz said. "You've got to wonder what you can get away with."

It was evident, Brooks said, that Carleo didn't have much of a plan.

"It was not Brad Pitt talking to me," he said, referring to one of the stars of the heist film "Ocean's Eleven." ''It was not George Clooney."

[uniman]

The police are now investigating his doctor who perscribed him five oxycontin pills a day!! This guy liked his drugs as much as his gambling.
I'm just glad he didn't hurt (shoot) anybody!

[staz]

theres no way any one would get away with something like that....he will  be playing strip poker now with big bubba in jail lol

[jay]

I would think that anything over a $100 chip would be pretty hard to get past the casino cage in any kind of quantity.
You could probably cash in 1K worth of $100 chips about 3 times in one day.... beyond that I suspect that they would flag you as suspicious and Casino security would do a follow your footsteps trace.
Just to make sure your casino play supported your cash out.
You certainly would raise some flags if you tried to do that 3 days in a row.

You might throw in a $500 chip for good measure but would never think of trying to cash in anything larger.
You could probably get away with cashing in $1k-$2k, 3 times per year, and if you had 20 years I might be able to extract 120K...... but considering they change the high denomination chips about every 3 months to pervent countefits from showing up they would seriously limit their losses.
$6K is a rounding error..... and 20years in the clink if you get caught.

Smash and grab has got to be the worst way to hit a casino.

[knagl]

Smash and grab has got to be the worst way to hit a casino.

Especially when all you get are pretty looking chips that can't be redeemed for cash.