Casino cage scams have been surprisingly easy to pull off with staff members fooled by bad actors over the phone and handing over large amounts of cash in person
One such incident took place on June 8, 2023, when an employee at the Sam’s Town cashier cage handed over $750,000 to an unknown party. A suspect may have finally been arrested, however, with one R.B., 36, remanded in custody over the weekend by the Las Vegas Metro police. A bail of $30,000 has been set for their release.
Fool Me Once, or How Cash Cages Fall Victims to Swindlers
At least one other person is expected to have participated in the scam. According to reports at the time, the employee had been called by a person who claimed to be a lawyer for the casino, asking the employee to collect $750,000 from the cage and drive to a location eight miles away.
The employee was taken in quickly, as messages were sent to her phone about an upcoming UPS delivery that needed to be paid for, as maintained by the fraudulent party. However, upon returning to Sam’s Town casino she went straight to a supervisor and said that she might have been scammed.
The modus operandi will become a signature for the two-person crew that pulled a similar racket against another casino employee, combining a mix of social engineering, brashness, and impersonating figures of authorities that regular staff are reluctant to confront directly, hence why the employee from Sam’s Town casino only thought about being scammed after having turned the money in.
Police now suspect that B. was involved in that other scam, acting in the same manner with a yet-to-be-identified partner. According to police documents seen by 8newsnow, a local media outfit, B.’s exact role was never specified.
Cash Cage Scams Are Trending with Audacious Would-be Criminals
Cash cage scams have been proliferating at a threatening clip, and have surprisingly been successfully pulled off across state borders and despite casinos’ heightened security measures.
Key has been a vulnerability in targeting actual casino staff who may not be aware of such bad actors in the first place, not least because the perpetrators usually use advanced technology such as fake texting systems and seldom let an employee have enough time to think things over.
There is always a sense of urgency and an impatient figure of authority pushing for a snappy resolution. For example, a judge in Las Vegas sentenced one E. G. M., 25, to one year in prison after tricking an employee into handing him over more than $1 million. M. also received a suspended sentence of up to 96 months. The culprit was sentenced over multiple daring scams, including fooling a Circa Hotel & Casino employee into withdrawing $1,170,000 in four instalments and handing them over at a parking lot.
The employee had received a call from a person who purported to be the hotel owner, who needed to make emergency payments to the fire department. The four instalments were handed over at different off-site locations.
M. is also suspected to have hit another property, Eureka Casino Resort, tricking an employee into handing over $250,000. He might have also been involved with a similar scam in Golden Nugget in Laughlin, although investigators were not able to tie him to the case in particular.
Yet, M.’s story is not the only one. Similar heists have occurred in both Michigan and Colorado with casinos taken in by similar scams without realizing they had been tricked until after handing over the money under suspicious circumstances.
