There was that heist on the Strip a couple of weeks back, of course, when online casino Sportsbet.com was relieved of $30K or so of the cash it was flaunting on a Strip billboard as a publicity stunt. But we get the feeling you have something rather more grandiose in mind.
The great casino robbery has provided the plotline for more than one interesting heist movie, including not only both incarnations of Ocean's Eleven, but also films like Seven Thieves, a 1960s' caper starring Edward G. Robinson, Rod Steiger, Joan Collins, and Eli Wallach, who rob the Grand Casino of Monte Carlo, and 2003's The Good Thief, in which a dissolute heroin addict played by Nick Nolte is presented with an opportunity to salvage what's left of his life by pulling off a casino heist, also set against the backdrop of the French Riviera. But in this instance, fiction seems to be a lot more romantic than fact and there are few real examples we've heard of (who knows what we don't ever get to hear about) that come close.
If you count cheating scams, then there's richer real-life material. But if you're talking about actual robberies, it all tends to be somewhat less slick and sophisticated than the likes of Daniel Ocean or The Ladykillers: We've actually seen surveillance tape of a failed casino armed robbery that went wrong principally because the perp's pants fell down while he was attempting to make his getaway. The fact is, bearing in mind their ubiquitous surveillance cameras and multiple levels of security, casinos of the size worth robbing are tougher nuts to crack than equivalent banks, particularly Las Vegas casinos, where, unless you have a helicopter handy, your getaway would likely involve negotiating the gridlocked traffic on the Strip.
On average, Metro deals with some 15–20 casino robberies a year in Las Vegas, mainly on the scale of the one that took place at Bourbon Street in March 2005, when an armed robber with a handgun made off with a modest haul after demanding money from the cashier at 2 am, or the one that occurred a week or so later at Mandalay Bay, when two armed thieves struck on the crowded casino floor at 4 pm, relieving a cashier of an undisclosed amount of money before making their escape via a conveniently parked vehicle. Claims by witnesses that shots had been fired could not be substantiated by any physical evidence, leading police to conclude that the weapons had either been harmless starting pistols or else entirely imagined.
There have been some more ambitious efforts, however. Three armed robbers were sentenced to between 15 years and life in 2003 for a series of armed robberies that left two security guards dead. The robberies, which took place between 1998 and 2000, included armored-truck holdups at the MGM Grand, Desert Inn, and Mandalay Bay and a cash-grab at Bellagio, where the thieves got away with some $175,000 in cash and casino chips from the main cashier's cage and a change booth. Surveillance footage led police to the suspects, two of whom were finally arrested after a 14-mile high-speed police chase that ended with a crash.
The nearest we know of to anything approaching an Ocean's Eleven-type heist occurred in 1993 at Circus Circus and resulted in a 12-year international manhunt for the perpetrators, not to mention the $3 million (more than $4.3 million today) or so in cash that they got away with. It's quite a story.
On the morning of Oct. 1, 1993, an armored truck pulled into the parking lot of Circus Circus, the first stop on a mission to stock up various Strip casinos' ATM machines with cash for the busy weekend. Two of the security guards went into the casino, while the driver, Heather Tallchief, stayed with the van and its $3 million cash cargo. When Scott Stewart and his fellow security officer emerged from the casino, having finished their task at Circus Circus, there was no sign of the truck, Tallchief, or the cash. That's when the FBI
