Question of the Day - 25 June 2025

This question has been submitted several times over the past few months. We've shied away from it, given the distinct possibility of triggering a political "storm" of its own. We're answering it, essentially, to dispense with it, but any attempts to broaden this subject to immigration in general will be deleted on contact.

The movie was to be based on a book called Storming Las Vegas -- How a Cuban-Born, Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down the Strip to the Tune of Five World-Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and Millions of Dollars. Published in 2009, it's a real-life heist thriller about a mercenary-turned-casino robber, Jose Vigoa, who masterminded a 16-month crime spree in Las Vegas during the 1990s and is currently serving a 500+-year sentence, without the possibility of parole.

Described by then-Chief Deputy District Attorney David Roger as "one of the most dangerous criminals in the history of Clark County," Vigoa was a Cuban-born Soviet-trained commando (hence that subtitle), who fought in Angola and Afghanistan and was responsible, among many other crimes, for the robbery of armored cars at MGM Grand, Desert Inn, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, and New York-New York, plus the murder of two security guards in a Henderson shopping mall during a robbery gone wrong.

Vigoa couldn't pull off his heists alone, but was evidently unable to recruit any "quality" members for his crew. His team consisted instead of a band of bumblers whose errors included once leaving the getaway vehicle in drive (Vigoa saw the car rolling away and had to abort a robbery in progress); on another occasion, they accidentally left $2 million of the booty behind during the robbery. Although Vigoa himself is credited with being intelligent and generally planned his crimes meticulously, even his own eventual undoing was due to a poor disguise that enabled Bellagio surveillance to capture some distinct images, facilitating his identification and subsequent arrest, following a 100-mph chase through the city.

The book, by a former Miami Herald columnist, John Huddy, was well-received. Huddy apparently garnered the cooperation not only of the prosecuting attorneys, but also of the incarcerated Jose Vigoa himself. With 23-year police veteran Lt. John Alamshaw as the counterpoint to the villain, the story certainly had all the necessary ingredients -- stakeouts, shootouts, car chases, and a charismatic villain -- and in the summer of 2011, news broke that Summit Entertainment, a subsidiary of Lionsgate, had picked up the movie rights.

Initially, Storming Las Vegas was reported to be "in production," with a 2014 release date. Some big names were involved in overseeing it for Summit, so it sounded like the studio was taking the project seriously. 

Then, nothing. 

Storming Las Vegas, the movie, was never produced. We looked it up on IMDb, which lists it as, "Because this project is categorized as in development, the data is available only on IMDb Pro." Meaning: When you buy a subscription, you can see the nothing that's there about this movie nearly 15 years after it was announced.