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What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

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Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#41

Post by hugh3 »

bryanh wrote: post #12
toolate wrote: post #7

Couldn't he gamble with them? Put one or two chips down at a time, keep the winnings as "clean" chips and gamble with the dirty ones until they're all gone?

Sure, I'd imagine so. However, just waltzing in and not visiting the counter for exchanging cash for chips might seem odd. Easily taken care of by bank rolling your trips with some real money and "peppering" in your stolen chips.

Except that this plan involves having hundreds of thousands of dollars in "real money", and this dude probably isn't that rich (because if he were, he probably wouldn't be risking the whole armed robbery thing).

Also, I'm just guessing what he looks like under that helmet, but I'm guessing your typical armed-robber type wouldn't fit in well at the high roller table.

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#42

Post by hugh3 »

mey wrote: post #5
ghshephard wrote: post #4

I've always been impressed that Circus-Circus in Reno would cash $25 chips six years after I had originally won them. I wonder if the US Govt Tracks the money supply that is tied up in Poker Chips from casinos...

Imagine how much money is made by a Casino in interest on money that they are retaining for more then a few days at a time.

If I learned only one possibly-inaccurate thing from Ocean's Eleven it's that the casino is required to keep an amount of cash on hand equivalent to all their chips in circulation.

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#44

Post by blantonl »

toolate wrote: post #7

Couldn't he gamble with them? Put one or two chips down at a time, keep the winnings as "clean" chips and gamble with the dirty ones until they're all gone?

Anyone who shows up and throws down anything larger than a $100 chip at a craps table is going to draw serious attention to themselves from the pit boss and the folks upstairs.

People just don't show up at a pedestrian craps table and throw down $25,000 chips, much less $1000 chips.

There were probably a very small amount of > $1,000 chips at a craps table anyway, and their only real use would be to pay out to a big winner.

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#45

Post by sgrossman »

hugh3 wrote: post #42
mey wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how much money is made by a Casino in interest on money that they are retaining for more then a few days at a time.

If I learned only one possibly-inaccurate thing from Ocean's Eleven it's that the casino is required to keep an amount of cash on hand equivalent to all their chips in circulation.

Definitely inaccurate, but how inaccurate is a bit cloudy. The NV gaming control board/gaming commission isn't exactly transparent when it comes to what the cash requirements are (on-site or in the bank) for non-restricted casinos.

http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/06feb23_bankroll_instr.pd...

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#46

Post by catshirt »

biot wrote: post #38
roadnottaken wrote: post #36

The article doesn't answer the question posed in the title. What is the point?

As the article concludes that such an exercise is mostly pointless, the question serves as a rhetorical device and does not need a direct answer.

The question is rhetorical thusl the article doesn't need to answer it directly. I'm still curious of the answer. I think we can assume someone capable of robbing a casino like this would have considered all this ahead of time.

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#47

Post by iuygtrftghyujik »

jrockway wrote: post #31
acgourley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're being paranoid - why not use them to frame someone.

That sounds like it will work: Person A: Great work. This week, you're being paid in casino chips. Person B: What the fuck? OK, fine, $25,000 is $25,000, I guess. Person A: Later that day: Casino Employee: OH HAI. What can I do you for? Person B: I won this $25,000 chip and would like to cash it in. Employee: OK, no problem. Let me just scan it with my scanomonizer over here. B: Curses, Person A! Later that day in th…

Something like this happened in Belfast a few years ago. Terrorists (or loveable rouges if your American) robbed a bank and accidentally stole $50M - they hadn't realised how much was in the boxes. The bank simply changed the design of the notes making them worthless.

But when the bank issued the range of stolen serial numbers it forgot that a small local firm had paid it's wages in cash from the same batch earlier that day. For weeks there were Police raids on small corner shops when a little old lady used a 'stolen' note.

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#48

Post by bradleyland »

btilly wrote: post #14

I know for a fact that professional poker players are willing to play privately with chips from well-known casinos, including the Bellagio. And the Bellagio doesn't discourage them by being too particular about which poker player returns which chips. I'm sure other kinds of gamblers do the same. This gives them real street value. And if a random professional poker player shows up with a random stolen chip that was wo…

Yeah, but we're talking $1.5 million in stolen chips. Circulating that much money is going to take a lot of effort. I mean, I can't imagine you just walk in to a private poker match toting a case of $25k Bellagio chips and everyone just assumes you're legit. You're going to be vetted... big time.

I just don't get the angle. Why steal poker chips when there are other big-ticket items that are much more easily liquidated. Hell, gold has been well over $1000/oz for some time now. A 100 lb gold haul from a few jewelry stores will produce the same market value. You're going to take a haircut when you fence it, but who says you're not going to take the same haircut when you try to pass $1.5 mil in poker chips.

I can reach only one conclusion: dumb criminal.

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#49

Post by geebee »

btilly wrote: post #14

I know for a fact that professional poker players are willing to play privately with chips from well-known casinos, including the Bellagio. And the Bellagio doesn't discourage them by being too particular about which poker player returns which chips. I'm sure other kinds of gamblers do the same. This gives them real street value. And if a random professional poker player shows up with a random stolen chip that was wo…

the big difference here, as a few others have pointed out, is that the guy who stole this chips is an outlaw pursued by the police and the casino is aware that these chips were stolen.

the laundering thing you described actually worked on a large scale for the MIT blackjack team (at least according to "bringing down the house"), but that's because the casino was unaware that these chips were illicit (it also helps, of course, that the MIT blackjack team members were operating within the law - there's a huge different between the casinos wanting to bar you and the feds wanting to arrest you, a fairly major point lost in the movie adaptation).

Re: What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio?

#50

Post by btilly »

kiiski wrote: post #30
btilly wrote: post #14

I know for a fact that professional poker players are willing to play privately with chips from well-known casinos, including the Bellagio. And the Bellagio doesn't discourage them by being too particular about which poker player returns which chips. I'm sure other kinds of gamblers do the same. This gives them real street value. And if a random professional poker player shows up with a random stolen chip that was wo…

Maybe I misunderstood your point, but the second paragraph doesn't seem quite right: > They can refuse to accept the chip back, ..., or they can ... not accept the chip. So do they accept those chips or not?

Erm, yeah. That's what I get for posting in the middle of the night while I have insomnia.

But you know what I really meant. And no, I don't know whether they will accept them back.

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