Most players go to the casino to play cards and try their luck. The anticipation, the potential rewards, and the thrill of making a big splash and getting rich draw hundreds of thousands of people to Las Vegas casinos every year. Most come to enjoy the atmosphere and ‘switch off’ with the dollar sign stamped in their eyes. Some players opt for a much faster path to riches, but the more gambling the more risky it is.
The house always maintains a certain edge or degree where the odds are in their favor, but there are those who win and win big. Casino players orchestrating hits and plotting to walk away with astronomical winnings – whatever gives new meaning to the cliché ‘by any means necessary’. The following folks took the fast way to ‘easy money’ in Las Vegas and got out of it alive! Live, sure, but get caught and stopped – some before others. These five memorable hits made the headlines in Las Vegas for sure staying alive as Vegas folklore.
Shot # 1
The memorable hit number one happened at the prestigious Bellagio in Las Vegas. A daredevil on a motorcycle darted to the Bellagio on his motorcycle, strolled to a dice-throwing table and took $ 1.5 million in chips at gunpoint before hopping back on that bike and hurtling to freedom. He flew momentarily to freedom, but it all ended for Anthony Carleo after 29 when he attempted to sell the chips on an internet poker site. He could have qualified himself as the ‘silliest criminal’ in Las Vegas when he listed the chips for sale using the email address ‘cranberry ****** @ yahoo (for the color of the chips)’ and when he got the audacity to return to the Bellagio with some of the chips and try to sell them to an undercover police officer. Carleo pleaded guilty in August 2011 and was sentenced to prison from 9 to 27 years. His father, the former Municipal Court judge must have been relieved that it was not his job to pass the sentence.
Shot # 2
There are so many casinos in Las Vegas, it’s no surprise that there have been a significant number of hits – some botched and some not. The organizers are almost always arrested in the end, such as Heather Tallchief who was discovered later. Heather was fine for a while, but her involvement in the scheme to attack the Circus Circus Casino ultimately cost her some time in jail.
Tallchief, with then-boyfriend Roberto Solis, agreed to take $ 2.5 million away, to be exact, from the armored truck that Loomis had just loaded with Circus Circus cash. It was a brilliant idea for the young Tallchief until the couple reached the escape spot by traveling through the Cayman Islands and St. Martin.
Upon arriving at their final destination, Solis, a killer, decided to get away from Tallchief, and take the money with him! Tallchief turned himself in for the robbery, but spent 12 on the run – what a circus it must have been!
Shot # 3
Miss Ida Summers, an extraordinary ‘magician’ granted the pleasure of her company in Las Vegas in the early 1970s. It was probably due to the distraction caused by her elegant and magnetic beauty that her prestige tricks were not discovered for years. It was simply a walk in the park for her to slip the ‘Coola’ cards into the game, but her bold cheek grew with each successful trick. Legend has it that Summers was able to slip an entire deck of ‘cooler’ cards into a game without getting noticed. She was eventually discovered and punished for her casino cunning, but not without some notoriety as one of the few women cheating at the casino in those days.
Shot # 4
The idea was to spray the dealer and anyone else who needed to distract long enough to hit the jackpot and run out the door. The problem was that the duo weren’t expecting the pepper spray to malfunction, giving casino officials enough time to confront one of them before making it to the door. Michael Belton claims he was recruited by a man on Craigslist to carry out this heist that went wrong, but he couldn’t identify the man, the sources say.
Shot # 5
At Stardust, in 1992 ‘one of his guys’ slipped away with $ 500,000 in chips and cash. Bill Brennan, a sports betting cashier decided to run away with the loot on his lunch break and nothing more was heard of him. Rumors around Las Vegas say that an eventual ‘partner’ in the crime, or possibly the mastermind behind the daring ploy, then killed Brennan and went to an island somewhere to enjoy the profit.
The Stardust no longer exists as newer and more luxurious casinos have made way for a whole new brand of criminals on the casino floors.