The man who walked away with $1.5 million after an armed robbery of the Bellagio in Las Vegas was arrested on Wednesday night in Sin City, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. The mystery man is Anthony Michael Carleo, the 29 year old son of Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge George Assad.
According to the Journal, police picked up Carleo “after he met undercover officers to sell high-value chips taken in the heist, law enforcement sources said.” He was staying at the Bellagio at the time and now makes his home in the Clark County jail awaiting a court date tomorrow. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Carleo faces charges of robbery with the use of a deadly weapon, burglary with use of a deadly weapon, and trafficking a controlled substance.
The robbery took place back in the early morning hours of December 14th when a man brandishing a gun and donning a motorcycle helmet walked up to a craps table. Rather than rolling a point and putting $10 on a hard six, Carleo allegedly demanded money and walked away with $1.5 million in chips, which included ones up to $25,000 in value.
According to the Journal, casino security did not make an effort to stop the robber in the process: “Security officers did not try to stop the man out of concern that a shootout might injure casino patrons.” At the beginning of 2011, Bellagio officials announced that it would be discontinuing its $25,000 chips on April 22nd and encouraged any players who had them to cash them in prior to that deadline. Presumably, while trying to cash them, the robber would reveal his identity.
An MGM Resorts spokesperson told the Associated Press earlier this year, “Obviously, anyone walking with one of the old series [chips] is going to be subject to a certain amount of questioning as to how they obtained them – assuming it isn’t someone we know. It’s pretty unusual for someone we don’t know to come strolling up with a handful of $25,000 chips.”
Carleo may be the same man who robbed the Suncoast Casino in Las Vegas one week prior to the brazen heist at the Bellagio. The Journal explained the similarities between the two crimes: “In that robbery, a man wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet held up a poker room cashier cage, taking $20,000, police said.” Carleo lives in Colorado, works as a real estate broker, “and owned two businesses, one a mobile disk jockey service, the other a limousine service co-owned with his stepfather, Gino Carleo.”
According to the Sun, there were 10 casino robberies in Las Vegas last year, up one from 2009.
On TwoPlusTwo, one poster seem surprised that Carleo would allegedly make the grave mistake of trying to sell the $25,000 chips knowing that the Bellagio was cracking down in the wake of the robbery: “I’m genuinely surprised he was dumb enough to try and sell those 25k chips. Should’ve thrown them in the garbage and started selling the 5k chips maybe two years from now.”
Another TwoPlusTwo poster summed up today’s news by saying, “He pulls off the sickest robbery of all time… Not even the Ocean’s crew could pull something off this quick and smooth… And then he blows it by selling it to ‘random’ people he doesn’t know… What a goofball.”
Check out the Las Vegas Review Journal article for more details.
