
What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio? - stretchwithme
http://www.slate.com/id/2278380/
======
btilly
I know for a fact that professional poker players are willing to play
privately with chips from well-known casinos, including the Bellagio. And the
Bellagio doesn't discourage them by being too particular about which poker
player returns which chips. I'm sure other kinds of gamblers do the same. This
gives them real street value.

And if a random professional poker player shows up with a random stolen chip
that was won in a private poker game, the Bellagio has a choice. They can
refuse to accept the chip back, knowing full well that word will get around
and poker players won't want to trust Bellagio chips, or they can stand by the
official rules and not accept the chip.

~~~
kiiski
Maybe I misunderstood your point, but the second paragraph doesn't seem quite
right:

> They can refuse to accept the chip back, ..., or they can ... not accept the
> chip.

So do they accept those chips or not?

~~~
hugh3
They may or may not. The point is that they have an incentive to accept them
back under some circumstances.

If they _do_ get one of these back in, perhaps the best thing for them to do
is to interview the holder heavily about where he got it and then decide
whether to honour it or not.

------
MichaelApproved
I've seen this story get covered by every major news source but they all have
the same take on it "he'll never be able to cash the big chips". Big fucking
deal. He probably never even planned on taking those. No one has actually
broken down the denominations of chips he took.

How much of what he stole is in $1,000 chips or less? That's the real story to
what was stolen. Lazy reporters don't bother asking. No, they just defecate
what the AP feeding tube shoved up their nose.

~~~
hugh3
_I've seen this story get covered by every major news source but they all have
the same take on it "he'll never be able to cash the big chips". Big fucking
deal._

Well, this is probably the only part of the story that's actually actionable
(gawd, did I just use that word?) from the viewer's point of view.

If somebody tries to sell you a $25,000 Bellagio chip for $20,000 then it's
worthless and likely to get you into trouble.

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toolate
Couldn't he gamble with them? Put one or two chips down at a time, keep the
winnings as "clean" chips and gamble with the dirty ones until they're all
gone?

~~~
bryanh
Sure, I'd imagine so. However, just waltzing in and not visiting the counter
for exchanging cash for chips might seem odd. Easily taken care of by bank
rolling your trips with some real money and "peppering" in your stolen chips.

~~~
hugh3
Except that this plan involves having hundreds of thousands of dollars in
"real money", and this dude probably isn't that rich (because if he were, he
probably wouldn't be risking the whole armed robbery thing).

Also, I'm just guessing what he looks like under that helmet, but I'm guessing
your typical armed-robber type wouldn't fit in well at the high roller table.

------
gexla
I would think it would be easy to figure out if a chip has RFID embedded, just
run a scan. And why all the noise about a thief being stupid for stealing $1.5
million in chips with many of them unlikely to be cashable? This is Vegas
where thieves will take the chance at robbing people / stores where they may
get away with less than $100. I'm sure the guy would be happy to get away with
even a few hundred. With that many chips he could probably make a few hundred
by selling the 25K chips as souvenirs. ;)

~~~
gamble
I think they're overstating how many casinos use RFID. The last time I looked
into it, only the Wynn did - and then only to track denomination, not as a
unique identifier. (Perhaps someone can correct me if things have changed) The
goal is to help security detect cheating by tracking bets at the table games
electronically, not prevent counterfeiting or theft.

~~~
X-Istence
Most RFID tags have a unique identifier in them. You can duplicate said
identifiers, but if they are indeed globally unique and can not be
reprogrammed then the thief is still out all that money and the chips are
worthless.

~~~
iuygtrftghyujik
I doubt they use global unique identifiers. RFID takes longer to read longer
numbers, especially if there are many targets in the same field.

So 32bit global ID for all chips would take a long time to read, possibly
minutes if it's a table with 1000 chips on it. A 4bit code that just ID'ed
value and allowed you to spot if somebody had 'mistakenly' mixed up some low
value chips in a stack would be much quicker.

------
waterlesscloud
Techno-thriller paranoid take on it- $25k chips can only plausibly be used in
high stakes room , which is probably considerably less anonymous than the
general floor. Assume everyone playing with high stakes chips are photographed
and kept in a database, probably a relatively small db at that. Facial
recognition software would be a given in such a case, and even if identities
are not kept with faces, the face of someone using 25k chips could easily be
checked against everyone who has ever bought or won 25k chips. Might not even
need software for that, just manually check if the list is short enough.

Now you don't need rfid at all, just good records.

There's only one place to get 25k Bellagio chips, and only one place to cash
them in. Those chips have to be considered worthless in all practical ways.

~~~
acgourley
While we're being paranoid - why not use them to frame someone.

~~~
jrockway
That sounds like it will work:

    
    
       Person A: Great work.  This week, you're being paid in casino chips.
       Person B: What the fuck?  OK, fine, $25,000 is $25,000, I guess.
       Person A: <pets kitten while laughing maniacally>
    

Later that day:

    
    
       Casino Employee:  OH HAI.  What can I do you for?
       Person B: I won this $25,000 chip and would like to cash it in.
       Employee: OK, no problem.  Let me just scan it with my scanomonizer over here.
       <Extremely loud alarm activates, police in cool sunglasses jump out from various hidden crevices.>
       B: Curses, Person A!
    

Later that day in the police interrogation room:

    
    
       Detective: Where'd you get that casino chip, B-boy?
       Person B: From Person A.
    

Even later that day:

    
    
       <At Person A's stolen casino chip storage room.>
       Person A: I love looking at my stolen casino chips.  Good thing there is nobody around to see me!
       Detective: SURPRISE!  You're under arrest!
       Person A: Curses, Person B!
    

In conclusion, this is a bad idea.

~~~
hugh3
This one-act play is significantly more entertaining than either of the
Ocean's Eleven sequels.

------
modeless
The guy didn't plan to steal $25000 chips, he just walked away with what was
there. I'll bet there are ways to fence the lower-denomination chips for
somewhat less than face value. You could probably sell the $100 chips for $50
each to random suckers on the strip with a good story.

~~~
MichaelApproved
How does buying a $100 chip for $50 make you a sucker?

~~~
jonhendry
Well, if it turned out that you couldn't cash it in, you'd have spent $50 for
a piece of plastic and the opportunity to tell a story for the rest of your
life about how you got suckered.

~~~
MichaelApproved
$100 chips aren't a problem to cash in. It's the larger chips that are
tracked.

------
vegasbrianc
As engineer for the Casino Industry 99% of the casino RFID solutions on the
market track all chips all denominations. The Casino RFID system is used in
multiple ways

\- Tracking players bets \- Ensure the dealer is paying out or taking in the
correct chips \- Accurate accounting \- Fraud Prevention

So next time you go to the casino remember they are tracking you even when you
cannot see it.

------
roadnottaken
The article doesn't answer the question posed in the title. What _is_ the
point?

~~~
biot
As the article concludes that such an exercise is mostly pointless, the
question serves as a rhetorical device and does not need a direct answer.

~~~
catshirt
The question is rhetorical thusl the _article_ doesn't need to answer it
directly. I'm still curious of the answer. I think we can assume someone
capable of robbing a casino like this would have considered all this ahead of
time.

------
ghshephard
I've always been impressed that Circus-Circus in Reno would cash $25 chips six
years after I had originally won them. I wonder if the US Govt Tracks the
money supply that is tied up in Poker Chips from casinos...

~~~
mey
Imagine how much money is made by a Casino in interest on money that they are
retaining for more then a few days at a time.

~~~
hugh3
If I learned only one possibly-inaccurate thing from Ocean's Eleven it's that
the casino is required to keep an amount of cash on hand equivalent to all
their chips in circulation.

~~~
sgrossman
Definitely inaccurate, but how inaccurate is a bit cloudy. The NV gaming
control board/gaming commission isn't exactly transparent when it comes to
what the cash requirements are (on-site or in the bank) for non-restricted
casinos.

[http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/06feb23_bankroll_instr.pd...](http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/06feb23_bankroll_instr.pdf)

------
bdr
Maybe to reverse-engineer the RFID system for some future purpose?

~~~
stretchwithme
you don't need to commit a crime to get one chip to experiment with

~~~
billswift
You would probably need a lot more than one to figure out their coding system
though. Not that I think this is what he did, he probably just grabbed
whatever was handy and left.

~~~
hugh3
You'd only need one at a time (maybe a few), and you'd get your starting
capital back in the end.

Also, an armed grab-and-run at a casino has an incredibly high chance of
failure; it's a dumb first step to a supervillainous plan.

------
powera
I seem to recall reading that at least in Atlantic City, casinos are required
to have an entirely separate set (or maybe even 2 other sets) of high-value
checks, that can be swapped in case of suspected counterfeiting. I would
assume that the Bellagio has something similar in place, and that the casino
is quietly getting all the high rollers to replace any checks that they had
stored.

~~~
hugh3
Is it really worth their while for a relatively small amount of money? A known
quantity of missing chips is very different to a counterfeiting operation, and
I assume if they switch to the new set then they have to go to the trouble of
printing up a _new_ new set.

------
henry81
I remember hearing a story about something like this and they were able to
launder the chips through strippers, who cashed in the chips they received "as
tips"..

~~~
spahl
Thats in the movie "21" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_(2008_film)>)

------
ZitchDog
Shouldn't be that hard to find a cashier at the Bellagio willing to turn a
blind eye for 10 grand.

------
dtby
Too bad Bob Stupak died last year.

