LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A scheme to dupe casino employees into thinking they were transferring money from cages to a legitimate business involves at least three casinos and Mexican phone numbers, the 8 News Now Investigators have learned.
Documents the 8 News Now Investigators obtained Friday reveal the allegations involve thefts at Circa Hotel & Casino, Eureka Casino Resort in Mesquite and the Golden Nugget in Laughlin — as well as federal investigators, including the U.S. Secret Service.
Erik Gutierrez, 23, faces two charges of theft of more than $100,000 for the Circa and Eureka incidents, records showed.
As the 8 News Now Investigators first reported Monday, Las Vegas Metro police searched Gutierrez’s home on June 21, finding bundles of money from Circa, which they believe were part of a scam to defraud the business of more than $1 million, documents said.
In March, a casino cage supervisor at the Eureka Casino Resort removed $250,000 from the property and drove to Las Vegas to deliver the money to a person who she believed was owed money for hand sanitizer. The person investigators believe the employee met with at a gas station parking lot was Gutierrez, documents said.
On March 2 around 1:30 a.m., a person called the Eureka casino cage from a Mexican phone number about a missing check to a business, documents said. The person then called the employee’s personal cell phone, telling her to search for a check that was made out to a business, which she would find in the cage, documents said.
The employee told the person on the phone she could not find the check. The person on the phone then instructed the employee to remove $250,000 in cash from the casino cage and deliver to it to another person in Las Vegas, documents said.
It was unclear Friday how the person on the phone attained the employee’s personal cell phone number or why the employee went forward with the person’s demands. Mesquite is more than 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Arizona border.
The employee took $250,000 from the cage, put it in a cardboard box and left, documents said, reportedly saying to another employee, “We don’t want anyone to know about this, it’s embarrassing to [another employee].”
During the drive to a northwest Las Vegas valley gas station, the employee reportedly stayed on the phone with the individual and also text messaged with a person, who investigators believe was actually Gutierrez, documents said.
Once the employee arrived at the gas station, the person on the phone instructed her to deposit $15,000 into a Bitcoin machine, documents said. The person on the phone then told her to go to a second location, but the Bitcoin machine was out of order.
The person on the phone then told the employee to go to a third gas station to meet a person, later identified as Gutierrez, to deliver the remaining $235,000, documents said. The employee met Gutierrez in the gas station parking lot, but before she left, she received a phone call from someone at the casino who ordered her to return with the money, documents said.
While speaking with investigators, the employee said, “she received a call from a ‘frantic’ individual” who said “there was an issue regarding a contract and payment of $250,000 and the payment needed to be delivered immediately.” The employee said her job did not involve “handling payments from vendors or suppliers.”
Gaming Control Board investigators said a similar scheme also happened at the Golden Nugget in Laughlin. Details about that alleged incident were unavailable Friday and Gutierrez did not face any charges in connection with that report, documents said. Both cases involved a Mexican phone number, investigators said.
Investigators determined the money transferred to Bitcoin was sent to 17 different accounts, they said. The money involved also was sent to Gibraltar, the British territory at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
On June 17, police responded to the Circa Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas for a report of a possible scam, the 8 News Now Investigators first reported Monday. A person from the hotel’s security office told detectives “an unknown person” had contacted the casino cage “claiming to be the owner of the hotel” and asking for $320,000 for an emergency payment to the fire department, police wrote in court documents.
Police interviewed the cage supervisor, who said they received a phone call from a person who claimed they were the hotel’s owner. The person, who was not the hotel’s owner, said “the fire department needed to do a check on the fire extinguishers” and “they would need a payment for further safety devices,” documents said.
The cage supervisor brought the money in four installments to the unknown person at different off-site locations, documents said. The payments totaled $314,000, $350,000, and $500,000, plus three smaller deposits, resulting in a loss of $1,170,000 to the hotel, documents said. The employee believed she was on the phone with the hotel’s owner and texting with her manager, police said.
Detectives tracked the vehicle involved in the suspected theft, finding its registered owner. Police suspect the car belonged to Gutierrez’s aunt with whom he lives.
Police arrested Gutierrez at a gym on Sunday, June 18, they said. They later recovered nearly $850,000. Police did not know as of the writing of his arrest report last week who was given the outstanding $314,000, they said. Another man in the car with Gutierrez before his arrest was not detained.
“Although I love a good PR story, this isn’t one of them,” Derek Stevens, CEO of Circa, said in a statement Monday. “Circa Resort & Casino is cooperating with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in this investigation. We greatly appreciate their efforts to date and cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation.”
Gutierrez was being held Friday on $45,000 bail at the Clark County Detention Center, records showed. An attorney listed for him in court documents did not return a request for comment.
Eureka Mesquite and Golden Nugget Laughlin casinos did not immediately return requests for comment.
In addition to the control board and Metro police, U.S. Secret Service was part of the investigation.
