A gutsy criminal pulled off an audacious robbery on the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas – escaping with $1.5 million in chips.
The gunman parked his motorcycle outside the world famous casino yesterday morning and calmly walked up to a crabs table where he pulled a handgun on the croupier and demanded the chips.
He then fled the casino, which is one of the most monitored buildings in the world thanks to its incredible number of cameras, on his black motorbike with the illegitimate takings.
The whole episode took less than four minutes with authorities suspecting the lone gunman was behind another casino robbery earlier this month.
But while the heist on the Suncoast Casino on December 9 yielded $20,000, the Bellagio robber is believed to have got away with $1.5 million in chips.
The chips, which range in value from $100 to $25,000, are unique to the Bellagio so the gunman or his assailants will have to return to the casino at some stage to cash in. staff are on high alert for anyone looking to cash in a significant about of chips.
In a news conference yesterday, Lieutenant Clint Nichols said: “The suspect entered the casino and went directly to a craps table and confronted several patrons with a firearm – telling everyone not to move.
“The robber ran back out of his casino following his original route and jumped on his motorcycle and exited westbound at a high rate of speed.”
The Bellagio is one of Las Vegas’ most famous casinos costing $1.6 billion when it was opened in 1998.
It has nearly 4,000 rooms, 2,400 slot machines, eight nightclubs and five outdoor swimming pools.
The Bellagio became known to a wider audience when Steven Soderbergh used it as one of the three casinos robbed by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in the slick 2001 blockbuster Ocean’s Eleven.
Bellagio Picture Credit: Shobe834 on Flickr
