Las Vegas Police think they’ve finally identified the man who walked out of the Venetian with $1.6 million worth of chips. His name is Akingide Cole, and he lives in Southern California. If police are to be believed, he was in Sin City early on the morning of October 10 when he calmly walked into a restricted area, pocketed some high currency chips and left without causing a scene. You can take a look at a picture of the suspect below…
Some people seem to think stealing a few chips from a casino is easy, but in many ways, trying to make a big illegal score in Vegas is more difficult than robbing a bank. Not only is every inch of property being videotaped from multiple angles, there’s also only a tiny fraction of players who use high denomination chips. These high rollers tend to be meticulously tracked. Thus, randomly showing up with a $25,000 chip is going to arouse immediate suspicion whether there was a recent robbery or not.
According to MSNBC, most casinos also have a set of back-up high denomination chips they can immediately change to after a robbery. This makes anyone who comes back with the old chips immediately standout and gives security time to figure out whether whoever possesses them obtained them legally.
Cole hasn’t yet been apprehended by authorities, and, of course, he should be presumed innocent unless convicted by a court of law.
