The great casino robbery has provided the plotline for more than one interesting heist movie, including not only the Ocean's movies, 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, set against the backdrop of the French Riviera. And not forgetting one of Anthony Curtis' personal favorites, 3,000 Miles to Graceland, in which a gang of ex-cons robs the Riviera casino during Elvis week, and stars Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, Christian Slater, Courteney Cox, and Ice-T, among others. But in this instance, fiction seems to be a lot more romantic than fact and there are few real examples we've heard of 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 round his ankles while he was attempting to make his getaway.
In terms of what have been the biggest real-life heists, it's a tricky question to answer definitively, since casinos are pretty secretive when it comes to disclosing information about robberies and how much was stolen. Here are the biggest casino robberies that we're aware of, however, both in Las Vegas and in other U.S. gambling jurisdictions.
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. Hence, rather than the elaborate sting operations portrayed in the movies, real-life casino robberies tend to be more opportunistic snatch-and-grab affairs.
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 a.m., 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 p.m., 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 robbers were sentenced to between 15 years and life in 2003 for a series of armed robberies in Las Vegas 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.
In September, 2008, the Race and Sports book at the Las Vegas Hilton was the scene of the crime as two robbers took bags of money from the sportsbook and fled, presumably with a third person as a getaway driver. According to reports, two men wearing motorcycle helmets and covered from head to toe walked into the sportsbook at 6 a.m. holding handguns. They ordered the employees at the betting window to fill bags of money, and then they were gone. Several gamblers witnessed the robbery and confirmed that as quickly as the perpetrators came in through a back door, they vanished. The whole incident took less than a minute, according to Metro. A $25,000 reward was offered by the property for information helping to catch those responsible for the theft, but so far the perpetrators remain at large, as far as we know.
The most notorious Las Vegas casino robbery, and what we believe is the largest ever, took place at Circus Circus in 1993, when a couple successfully got away with almost $3 million dollars. In the run-up to the heist, Heather Tallchief had gained a job as a driver with Loomis Armored, Inc. At 8:15 on the morning of October 1, she dropped off two other security guards in the valet parking area of the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino so they could stock currency in ATM machines. Tallchief was supposed to drive to the front of the casino and pick up her co-workers in order to continue their deliveries, but instead, she drove the vehicle, containing nearly $2.95 million in U.S. currency, to a garage where she met her partner, Roberto Ignacio Solis, and concealed the vehicle. The pair then apparently packed the money into containers for transportation, donned the disguise of an old couple, with Solis pushing his girlfriend in a wheelchair, and fled first the state and then the country, armed with false passports. The stolen armored van was found two weeks after the theft in a garage at 708 S. First St. It was abandoned with a .357 Magnum revolver, a notebook, and about $3,100 in small bills.
For twelve years Tallchief -- who maintains that Solis manipulated her with "sex magic and hypnosis" and became pregnant with his son -- remained on the run, winding up in Amsterdam. She was still on the FBI's Most Wanted list when she returned to the United States and surrendered to the United States Marshals Service in Las Vegas on Sept. 15, 2005. Tired of living life on the run, she explained that she wanted a better future for her son and claims she never had her hands on a penny of the money, which remains missing, as does Solis. At the time of her surrender, Los Angeles-based film producer Robert Aaronson optioned the life rights to Heather Tallchief's story for the purpose of making a film, but we've heard nothing about it since.
In 2004, three gamblers robbed the Ritz casino in London of approximately $1.9 million using a sophisticated system of computers, lasers, and cell phones to track the speed of a roulette wheel and where the ball would fall. Three Eastern Europeans were eventually after surveillance staff noticed unusual patterns of betting and winning.
At around 5:20 a.m. on the morning of August 2, 2007, police received a 911 call from California's Soboba Casino, reporting a robbery. At 5 a.m. that morning, Rolando Luda Ramos, a casino-surveillance technician, disabled several cameras before having an unarmed security guard and a security-guard trainee escort him into a surveillance room, where he tied up and gagged three workers, one of whom he pepper-sprayed. From there, he proceeded into the vault, where loaded a duffel bag with some $1.58 million before fleeing the scene with a getaway driver.
Within 72 hours, all the suspects in the case were under arrest. Ramos was picked up at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport wearing a wig, carrying a passport, and high on cocaine, which he later blamed for his actions: "I was so fried up. I acted on adrenaline. Now that I'm completely sober, I'm like, "I can’t believe I did that." For his role in masterminding the biggest-to-date attempted robbery of an Indian casino, Ramos received a 16-year sentence.
In 1994, police arrested five people and charged them with planning an audacious robbery at Merv Griffin's Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. Initially, state and local police called the crime, during which a casino employee was shot in the face, "daring and callous." But the first armed robbery and shooting on a casino floor in the New Jersey gaming jurisdiction was subsequently described as "more dumb" than ingenious, with slip-ups that included one of the perpetrators dumping his jacket, containing his New Jersey Casino Commission photo I.D. card, in a trash can outside the casino. One money bag containing $687,000 was dropped at the robbery scene and quickly recovered. A second bag, with $423,000 in cash, was found at the home of one of the suspects. All but $6,000 of the money from the robbery was recovered.
One of the more intriguing significant casino robberies took place at the Stardust in Las Vegas, where in 1992 a sportsbook cashier named Bill Brennan left around lunchtime when his shift was over, carrying approximately $500,000 in cash and chips in a bag. Nearly two decades later, and despite being featured on the FBI's Most Wanted list and "America's Most Wanted," Brennan's never been seen nor heard of since. Perhaps he's hanging out somewhere with Roberto Solis.
