Today we’re talking about casino heists, robberies cheats, and scams. We do not condone any of the below practices and want to make our readers aware that sometimes casinos are a target of major heists. In fact, it’s just as likely you’ll be at a casino when it’s robbed as you would if you were visiting a bank. It’s still unlikely that you’ll see a robbery go down, but it’s taken place more times than you might think.

1. Casino Heist Diamond And Gold Setup
2. Gta Casino Heist Diamanten Bekommen
3. Casino Heist Diamond Target
4. Casino Heist Diamond
5. Casino Heist Diamonds In The Vault
6. Casino Heist Diamanten Stehlen

If you think about it, it makes sense that a casino would be a primary target for a robbery. When there are massive amounts of money located in a single place (like a bank), it’s only a matter of time before a greedy criminal takes a stab at it. It’s a terrible idea, of course, and it ends badly for practically anyone who tries it.

Robbing a casino in real life is never as it’s portrayed in Hollywood. There are rarely elaborate plans, the villains are evil people, and the criminals rarely get away with the money. Instead of getting together after the heist to talk about how they’ll spend the money, the heist is stopped in its tracks before you even get remotely close to the door. There are a few stories, however, where people hit casinos for big cash scores, the stuff that ultimately turns into a Hollywood hit film.

In 2007, using his knowledge and understanding of the layout of the casino, he decided that the quickest way to get what he needed was to stage a proper casino heist. Holding around 10 people at gun point, even though the gun was a fake one, Ramos managed to bag $1.5 million (Yes, baby!) and ran back for the exit where his partner, Eric. Attempting a heist is one way to try and beat the casino, although not something we'd recommend. Here at 21.co.uk, everything is above board and we offer hundreds of online slots, table and live casino games on desktop, mobile and tablet, so there's something to suit the online gambling preferences of all of our players.

Bill’s Stardust Robbery In-House Job $500K

In 1992, William Brennan, a cashier who worked for the Vegas casino Stardust (no longer open), filled a trash bag full of cash and chips, threw it over his shoulder, and walked right out of the casino. The bag contained over $500,000 worth of money and chips. Word on the streets is that Mr. Brennan had an accomplice who likely killed him for his trash bag full of cash.

To this day, William Brennan is still on the FBI’s most wanted list but has never been seen or heard from since the robbery. Bill’s heist is one of the most famous Las Vegas casino rip-off stories of all time. It has resulted in many casino security standards still active today. It’s highly unlikely that an employee could pull off something like this in modern casinos, especially since employees are monitored even closer than the players.

Stealing the Crown In-House Job $32M

The Crown Casino in Perth, Australia suffered a $32-million-dollar robbery attempt by one of their staff members in 2013. The story involves two men; one of them a card dealer who’s sick of their job, the other a high roller visiting from a foreign country. The duo planned to take the wins and move the money as if it had been lost in regular play, hoping the casino wouldn’t catch the hit in time. Their greed caused the floor staff to investigate the foreign player’s chance. After reviewing a few of the high-paying hands, the floor staff discovered the robbery in process.

The game was ceased, the player was escorted from the casino. The employee was then immediately fired. The penalties for these two were less than a slap on the wrist with all things considered. This type of theft has been a security issue for casinos all over the world. It’s led to tighter policies related to hand play, cameras, and approval for larger bets. Any time money changes hands; it’s always a potential security issue. It’s likely that the Crown has put in place operating producers to prevent future robberies.

Bellagio’s Biker Bandit Armed Robbery $1.5M

Tony Carleo rode his motorcycle up to the steps of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino and headed straight to the craps tables. Wearing a bike helmet, with a gun in hand, he cleared the tables of chips. He then jumped on his motorcycle and took off before casino security could respond or the authorities were alerted.

Carleo’s biggest mistake was when he went to sell the chips he stole. He unknowingly attempted to sell them to an undercover police detective. When you take chips from a craps table, you don’t have time to sort them out. The trouble was that the highest valued chips were nearly impossible for Carleo to convert to cash, likely because some of the denominations were up to $25K for a single chip. It’s hard to move around any amounts larger than $10,00 at a time in most states, as banks need to report those more significant transactions for tax accounting.

As with most armed robberies, it didn’t work out. This crime was obviously an emotionally based decision, and various errors were made in its execution. When you rob places, and you do it more than once, you must expect you’re going to get jailed. Anthony Carleo (aka “The Biker Bandit”) is currently serving a 9 to 27-year prison sentence for this and other casino robberies.

Robbery at the Circus Circus Stolen Armored Truck $2.95M

Heather Tallchief had a job driving armored vehicles. In the autumn of 1993, Instead of bringing her truck full of cash to the bank, Heather drove away from the Circus Circus casino with nearly $ 3 million in stolen cash. She left the country with her boyfriend, Roberto Solis to hide in the Netherlands.

In 2005, she turned herself. That’s right; she came back. She went to the police with her wrist out and said, “Arrest me.” The guilt of her crime was a burden she just couldn’t stand to bear any longer.

She was sentenced to 5 years and three months in prison, but her boyfriend Roberto remains at large. For an inside job, this would have been a textbook win for the crook, at least until the guilt was too much to bear.

Pirating Treasure Island Armed Robbery $30K

Reginald Johnson is known for his attempted heists at Treasure Island Casino and Hotel, but he certainly isn’t the only person to try, as the casino has had many robbery attempts in the past. What makes Mr. Johnson unique, however, is that he had attempted robbing Treasure Island twice before his third ‘successful’ robbery. There’s not much glamor here as Reginald is considered a bit of career criminal.

I hate to judge, but Reginald’s robbery wasn’t that lucky, as it was only $30K; a smaller score than comparable casino robberies. This guy is a bit of a monster; robbing various other establishments aside from Treasure Island. In some of his other crimes, he hurt people. Despite having a smaller theft total, Reginald is currently serving a 130-year sentence for the Treasure Island robbery and other offenses.

Putting on the Ritz Cheating the Game £1.3M

In 2004 three men set out to rob some casinos in London, England, and chose London’s Ritz Casino as their target. They set up casino games in a private area and devised hacks to cheat them. The most successful plan was to cheat the roulette wheel. They used their cellphone camera to measure the speed of the wheel and predict the outcome of the spins.

Greed is what tears these sweet gigs up. After winning well over a million pounds, the men were reported to authorities by the casino staff. When the three criminals were brought before the local courts, they were found innocent of committing any known crime. The only penalty they received was a lifetime ban from London’s casinos. Word of their score traveled the globe, and it’s now standard policy to ban the use of your camera near any table game at the casino.

Casino Heist Diamond And Gold Setup

The Soboba Grab & Dash Armed Robbery $1.5M

Eric A. Aguilera and his accomplish Luda Ramos robbed The Soboba Casino in Las Vegas in 2005. The Soboba Grab and Dash was a casino heist straight out of the Hollywood movies. The two stormed into the casino, held everyone at gunpoint and tied up several of the casino staff.

Eric and Luda’s robbery game plan was the type of theft most banks and casinos train for on a yearly basis. In this instance, the training worked, as none of the staff were injured, and the authorities were notified before Eric and Luda left the casino. This warning from the casino staff gave the police a head start, and they were able to apprehend the criminals after a short high-speed chase into the desert.

The MIT Blackjack Team Cheating the Game $100M+

Gta Casino Heist Diamanten Bekommen

Once upon a time, there was a group of college students in desperate need of money (no news there). This group of broke college students decided they would teach themselves card counting methods to use at the blackjack table. There’s a documentary about this well-planned heist which took place from 1979-1993 where a group of college students practiced card counting vigorously and made systems to make it faster and easier.

They worked as a team to give themselves a distinct advantage over the house. In systematic fashion, they cheated Vegas casinos for untold millions of dollars. They were so fortunate with their success that people who participate in the first group started to form their own teams. Criminals who heard about the book and movie have since begun their very own teams of card counters.

The MIT Blackjack Team did eventually get banned from playing Blackjack at any casino, and their charade ultimately came to an end. They were never labeled as criminals and kept their winnings. So, it’s questionable if this clever group of college students was ever really punished for their crimes.

Getting Taken for a Ride Inside Fraud Job $258M

There are many large casino-resorts who use junket services to bring guests to casinos. One such junket operator, named Dore, is responsible for acting as a middleman for high rollers visiting casinos in Macau, China. Dore had been bringing gamblers to the Wynn Resorts in Macau.

The junket operators are important because they lend the money to the players so they can participate. In Sept. 2015, one of the junkets were frauded out of $258 million. This was a bit of a hit to the cash flow and impacted Wynn Resorts stock only momentarily. The individual(s) responsible for the fraud have not been named, and the case is still under investigation.

Summary

We took you around the world covering about a 30-year history of casino robberies in this article. There’s plenty of attempted casino robberies that never made it to this list, but these are some of the most well-known heists to date. Although security in Casinos is ever increasing, there will always be someone crazy enough to attempt a heist. The likelihood of success, however, continues to diminish. As with most of the examples listed above, it seems the House truly does always win.

With movies like Ocean’s Eleven, Now You See Me, and American Hustle so popular among the general public, it’s no wonder that curiosities about real casino heists are such an interest. Not all of the heists in recent history sound as if they had been pulled straight from a movie, but even those without the Hollywood luster do not lack excitement. In no particular order, here are the 10 of the most incredible casino heists in history.

1. Stardust Casino – 1992

One of the most brazen heists in relatively recent history is the theft from the Stardust casino in 1992. William “Bill” Brennan worked at the now closed Stardust Casino in Las Vegas as a sports book cashier. Brennan was 34 at the time of the theft, which was considered the largest of its time, and a native of Pennsylvania.

He was described as a wholesome guy who kept to himself, and seemed to fly a bit under the radar in social situations. His position as somewhat of a wallflower may have contributed to his thinking when he tried to get away with strolling out the casino doors with over $500,000 worth of chips and cash. And maybe he was right. Brennan, with dozens of charges against him and a warrant out for his arrest, has not been seen or heard from since the night of the heist.

2. Infamous Bellagio Heist of 2000

A few years later, in 2000, a group of men sporting body armor and wielding guns stole somewhere around $160,000 in chips and cash from the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, after they hopped over the cashier counter and made a frenzied grab at whatever they could get their hands on. Unlike Bill Brennan, Jose Miguel Vigoa, Luis Suarez, Oscar Sanchez Cisneros, then 40, 35, and 23 respectively, were arrested in connection to the robbery.

As they rushed to make their getaway, one of the thieves allegedly fired a shot at one of the casino security guards, but thankfully no one was injured. Two of the men were active in the robbery, and one acted as a lookout. Vigoa, the resident senior of the trio, has a long rap sheet of previous robberies, and the killing two armored truck drivers. He pleaded guilty to the charges brought on by the Bellagio heist, but not before staging an escape attempt from the jail he was being held at. Cisneros took his own life in his detention center cell four months after the robbery by hanging himself with one of his bedsheets.

Suarez was forced to pay $150,000 in reparations on top of the 15-year sentence that he was to serve. After this robbery, MGM resort casinos began to install bars on each of its cashier cages in casinos along the Strip.

3. Bellagio Heist Take 2 – Biker Bandit Robbery of 2010

The Bellagio seems to be a hotspot for heist attempts. Most recently, being the site of the “Biker Bandit Robbery” in 2010. Anthony Carleo, age 29, rode up to the doors of the Bellagio, walked up to the craps table, pulled his gun, and demanded that the dealers hand over the chips. Instead of sticking to taking one chip denomination, he took whichever he laid his eyes on. His highest denomination being chips worth $25,000. He made a clean getaway on his motorcycle, but his first mistake came when he fell victim to his own hubris when he tried to sell the high denomination chips on an online poker site. He used the email address [email protected], a tongue in cheek way of bragging about his crime. He signed the emails as the ‘biker bandit’, getting wrapped up in his feeling of invincibility.

He returned to the Bellagio to try to sell the chips to fellow gamblers, but made his second and fatal mistake when he tried to make a transaction with an undercover member of the Metro Police. His arrest came seven weeks after his theatrical heist, and was sentenced to nine to twenty-seven years in prison, for both the Bellagio theft, and a theft he’d made at the Suncoast Casino only a few days before his heist at the Bellagio.

4. Treasure Island Robberies of 2000 – The 3 Stooges Reincarnate

The Treasure Island robberies in 2000 were something of a Three Stooges version of a casino heist. Reginald Johnson is on record in connection with four separate theft attempts made on the Treasure Island resort in Las Vegas. The first two thefts were uneventful and largely unsuccessful. The third started with a shot fired at the security guard on his way to the cashier, which brought some attention to Johnson as you could imagine. Another shot was fired, and he fled from the cashier empty handed. The security guard was left injured, but made a recovery.

Johnson was picked up by police walking down Lake Mead Boulevard mere hours after his botched attempt. Johnson attempted once more to rob Treasure Island, and made out with around $30,000 after firing two shots at the security guards. He was soon arrested, and pled guilty to all of the robberies in January of 2001. Johnson was sentenced that year to 130 years in prison, one of the longest prison sentences ever given for a robbery, after a chaotic sentencing hearing in which Johnson laughed at video evidence of him shooting a security guard, and had several outbursts.

5. James Bond “wannabes” Take to London Casinos

Casino Heist Diamond Target

But casino heists aren’t limited to the borders of the United States. In 2000, a trio of amateur James Bond in Casino Royale Londoners planned and executed one of the most high-tech casino robberies of all time. They outfitted themselves with equipment fit for a spy, including one member of the trio that was strapped with a camera that fed the footage to another member of the group that was waiting in a van nearby. The camera wielder filmed the cards as they were being dealt, which the man in the van slowed down and analyzed, and then transmitted further instructions for the current game into an earpiece of the thief in the casino.

They managed to get away with £200,000, which is roughly $249,840.00, but were eventually caught, and arrested for the robbery of six London casinos.

6. Ritz Casino Heist of 2004 – Technology Used for Evil

Casino Heist Diamond

It seems that casino thieves in London use their technology to their advantage, as can be seen in the Ritz Casino heist in 2004. Three men made a hefty £1.3 million in only two days using lasers installed on their cell phones to covertly measure the speed in which the roulette wheel was spinning. They predicted the outcome of every spin, and made away with a large payout. The three men were initially arrested, but the judge ruled that they hadn’t committed a crime, and they were set free without so much as a fine, and incredibly, were allowed to keep the money.

7. Physics Students Need to Pay Tuition – Casino Heist of 1970’s

A team of physics students in California had a similar idea in the 1970’s. They developed mini computers that could accurately predict the outcome of the roulette wheel through its movements. On the day their plan was to be carried out, they each hid an emitter, computer, and receiver in each of their shoes. They managed to collect thousands of dollars over a handful of months by using their shoe computers to gather information from the wheel. One student was to disrupt and somewhat manipulate the wheel with his computer, and the other received signals from the wheel to help him determine how to bet. The duo had a 144% returns rate, but it came with a sacrifice. The computers were prone to short circuits, and delivered some powerful socks, and have even caused the thieves socks to catch fire on occasion.

8. Gifted MIT Students Cheat the Casino in Blackjack

Between the years of 1979 and 1993, a group of MIT math geniuses were pulling off one of the biggest casino heists in history. For over a decade, this group operated and ran one of the most incredible card counting rings in history, under the wing of a Harvard MBA graduate named Bill Kaplan. The group dissolved in 1993, after raking in over $5 million.

Since then, similar groups and individuals have tried to match this group’s legacy, but none have quite hit the mark. Casinos have since encouraged their blackjack dealers to shuffle the cards more often, to inhibit the efforts of potential card counters by making it less effective. This method is far from perfect, and reportedly bores players who are not attempting to count, therefore lowering the casino’s revenue due to loss of players. The introduction of electronic blackjack has also contributed to the efforts to quell counting, but it isn’t seen as a viable substitution for the physical table game.

The popular movie 21, starring Kevin Spacey, is based on the MIT students’ story, and a few members even have small cameos.

9. Circus Circus Casino Heist of 1993

In 1993, at a Las Vegas casino called Circus Circus, a plan concocted by a group of Loomis armored car drivers was being carried out. While this isn’t a casino heist in the traditional sense, the end of the story is an outlier in the small community of those who say they have gotten away with robbing a casino.

Heather Tallchief was scheduled to refill the ATM’s at several casinos through her job as an armored car driver. By the end of the night, when she should have been filling one of the ATM’s at Circus Circus, she decided to skip over it and keep the money for herself. She managed to take somewhere around $2.5 million, and stayed under the radar of the law for twelve years, using fake identities and moving all over Europe to avoid capture.

Casino Heist Diamonds In The Vault

She turned herself into a Las Vegas court in 2005, tired of running away from the law, and hoping to set an example for her ten-year-old son. Roberto Solis, her partner in crime and the father of her child, is still at large.

10. $32 Million Dollar Heist – The Greatest Inside Job Ever?

Although most of the thieves on this list made away with more money than I would ever know what to do with, the biggest heist payout of those listed goes to a duo in Perth, Australia, which managed to acquire $32 million before being caught. This was an inside job, where an employee of the casino closely watched the security cameras pointed at the card game tables, and relayed information to a high-roller on the floor.

After a few hands, casino security caught on, and the duo was busted. The casino employee was fired, but they both managed to get away scot-free because the casino was able to keep most of the money, because the team had not thought to transfer their winnings before moving to the next game.

Summary

Casino Heist Diamanten Stehlen

You laughed, you cried, you learned not to put computers in your shoes. Casino heists will be around for as long as we as a culture remain interested in how some of them are carried out. Some, like the MIT card counting ring, make us want to get better at math. And some remind us not to sign our emails with ‘Biker Bandit’ if we’re trying to sell poker chips that we stole in one of the most well-known casinos in the world. We hope you enjoyed reading our top 10 list, and we hope we’ll never have to write about YOUR failed casino heist in the future.