Posted on 12/30/2010 5:49:45 PM PST by rawhide
Las Vegas casino bosses are serving notice to the bandit who made off with $1.5m in chips from the Bellagio: Try to redeem those worth $25,000 soon or they'll become worthless.
Bellagio owner MGM Resorts International is giving public notice that it's discontinuing its standard chip valued at $25,000 and calling for all gamblers holding the chips to redeem them by April 22.
After that, gambling regulators say each red chip with a grey inlay won't be worth more than the plastic it's cast from.
'The bottom line is that they're not money,' said David Salas, deputy enforcement chief for the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
MGM Resorts first posted notice of the redemption last week in the classifieds of the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper.
That's one week after a robber wearing a motorcycle helmet held up a craps table at gunpoint and made off with a bag of chips of varying denominations.
Police and casino officials have been working since the December 14 heist to try to locate the bandit and keep watch on anyone trying to cash in the chips, which ranged in denomination from $100 to $25,000.
MGM Resorts spokesman Alan Feldman told The Associated Press the chips were switched out at the tables within an hour of the robbery, and the Bellagio immediately filed to discontinue the chips.
Feldman said the move was designed to avoid inconveniencing players using the high value chips.
'Obviously, anyone walking with one of the old series is going to be subject to a certain amount of questioning as to how they obtained them - assuming it isn't someone we know,' Feldman told the AP.
'It's pretty unusual for someone we don't know to come strolling up with a handful of $25,000 chips.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Tax deduction. This guy was as stupid as the NM teachers stealing a truck full of TVs then selling them on craiglist.
He is lucky if he does not end up like that guy in the movie Casino when Joe Pesci put his head in the vice.
Sell them to someone the Bellagio ‘knows’ for 60-70 cents on the dollar.
Just had a vision of me with a 25K chip. Crap table, 25K pass line bet. Roll. 2 crap..line away. “Thank you for your play tonight, Sir”. “##*&%^&*”
I was in Vegas years ago when a guy walked past the roulette table and threw down a couple of hundred dollars on black and kept walking. It came up red of course.
This robbery stuff would have never happened in Vegas’ old days.
“Just had a vision of me with a 25K chip. Crap table, 25K pass line bet. Roll. 2 crap..line away. “Thank you for your play tonight, Sir”. “##*&%^&*””
Or he could play my classic hand in AC.
25 pass. 8. come bet and double odds. 6. double up come. 12 lose. come. 12 lose. decide not to play come bet. out 7 and thank you for your money.
Tell me that the $25,000 chips didn’t contain RFID tags with individual serial numbers, and that the casino doesn’t already know which ones were at that table and were stolen.
Someone the Bellagio 'knows' would turn the thief in and get comped for life.
There are a lot of collectors of casino chips, especially old ones from defunk casinos. Might find some buyers that way and they wouldn’t squeal on the seller...
You're right, they are hoping the crook is dumb enough to try to redeem some of them.
I'll bet too that those chips are much harder to counterfeit than U.S. currency.
anybody that cashes in $25,000 chips will get A REAL close looking over!
Casinos would have a good bit of informastion on anybody playing with that kind of sugar!!!
In a few years, you might see someone on Pawn Stars trying to pawn one of the famous stolen $25K chips. Big Hoss or Chumlee might give him $50 for it. The Old Man will probably shoot him.
Leave them singly in a surreptitious fashion in public places all over Vegas - as random people find them and try to redeem them, see if any actually get redeemed.
If so, show up with one and try to cash it - that would get him $25,000, not $1,500,000 - but hey, that’s $25,000 he wouldn’t have had otherwise.
(not condoning theft, but since casinos are legalized theft, I have less than zero sympathy for them).
How does someone pull this off? Do they not have armed security guards at casinos?
I'm wondering how someone walks up to a craps table, with more than a million dollars lying on it, wearing a motorcycle helmet. Then pulls a gun. Then collects all those chips. Then gets out. Then gets away. This doesn't sound reasonable.
I've spent a little time in Vegas casinos. I don't see how this happens.
Now that I think about it I am wondering if it was probably an inside job.
More like a publicity gimmick
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