Casinos Always Win, Even When Robbed

Jan. 4, 2011— -- The house always wins, even if it is robbed at gunpoint.

A brazen thief who stole $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas in December and then sped off on a motorcycle is unlikely ever to be able to cash in the chips.

Many of the chips taken from the casino craps table at gunpoint were of a $25,000 denomination. Minutes later, the Bellagio discontinued those types of chips, replacing them throughout the casino with a differently-designed $25,000 chip.

"The new set was put out probably a half an hour after the robbery took place," said Alan Feldman, spokesman for MGM Resorts International, the Bellagio's parent company.

Anybody who tries to redeem the old chips is going to undergo very close scrutiny.

"This was a fairly brazen robbery and I don't think it was pretty fruitful," Jerry Markling, chief of the Nevada Gaming Control Board's enforcement division, told ABC News. "To take denominations above $100 is fairly stupid."

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Any member of the public who might have a $25,000 chip lying around (lucky them) has until April 22 to redeem them. But that isn't too many chips. Besides the ones that were stolen, the Bellagio has, "at the absolutely most, probably a single-digit handful" of the legitimate chips circulating," Feldman said. "If that."

The unidentified thief, wearing a jumpsuit and a motorcycle, helmet took off on Dec. 14 with $1.5 million in chips, ranging from $100 to $25,000. While most of them were of the higher denomination, Feldman would not provide a specific breakdown of the chips. Whatever the number, fewer than 60 of them were of the top denomination.

A casino typically knows who has any of its high-value chips at any given moment. Usually, it is a group of high-rolling gamblers who are treated like royalty by the casino. Anybody who isn't a high roller who tries to cash in such a chip, Feldman said, would "raise every red flag we've got."