Circa Casino ‘Imposter Scammer’ Pleads Guilty in $1.1M Heist
A man accused of stealing more than $1 meg from Circa Hotel & Casino inward downtown Las Vegas past pretending to live 1 of its owners pleaded guilty Monday to i tally of theft of more than $100K.
Erik Gutierrez Martinez, 24, was arrested on June 18, a mean solar day after the robbery. When investigators searched his home, they found bundles of hard currency from the Circa heist.
He was also charged with a similar robbery at the Eureka Casino Resort inwards Mesquite, Nev., and is a suspect in a third at the Golden Nugget inward Laughlin, Nev.
As parting of his plea deal, Gutierrez Martinez accepts guilt trip only when in the Circa case. He also accepts he will take in a prison doom of 'tween unity and 10 years.
An Imposter Calls
On June 17, a cage in supervisor received a telephone telephone call from an single claiming to live I of the casino’s owners. Circa is owned by the brothers Derek and Greg Stevens.
The imposter claimed emergency payments requisite to live made as presently as possible to the Fire Department so they could perform tests on the flame extinguishers. Further payments would then follow needed to purchase additional firing refuge devices, the caller said.
Failure to pitch the money could cause metropolis officials to enjoin a temporary shutdown of operations, potentially costing the manipulator millions of dollars, claimed the impostor.
The grammatical case supervisor delivered the money inward Little Joe installments totaling $1.17 million to deuce men at quaternion different locations. All the clip she believed she was on the sound to the proprietor and texting with her manager, police force said.
Investigators traced a elevator car used inward the rip-off to Gutierrez Martinez’s aunt’s house, leading to his arrest.
No I else has been arrested inwards connecter with the scheme, which appeared to make several participants, and $314K from the Circa cart remains unrecovered.
Eureka Moment
On Mar 2 at around 1:30 a.m., an individual calling himself “Michael Gunther” telephoned the Eureka gambling casino coop from a Mexican phone number well-nigh a missing check. “Gunther” explained he was a representative of the troupe that supplied the casino’s deal sanitizer. He claimed the cage in supervisor would happen the stop payable to his companionship inward the safe.
When no such bank check was found, the phoner told the supervisor that $250K requisite to be delivered straight off to an reference in Las Vegas. When the supervisor arrived at the location, she was surprised to find it was a Circle super C convenience store.
“Gunther” told her to sedimentation $15K into a Bitcoin Depot kiosk. He then directed her to a 7-Eleven to fit somebody called “Anthony,” who would receive the remaining $235K. Soon after handing over the cash, the supervisor received a call up from the casino that something was damage and she was capable to grab the money back.
Investigators at present believe that “Anthony” was Gutierrez Martinez.
The $15K transferred into Bitcoin was sent to 17 different accounts, including to some based inwards Gibraltar, an seaward tax oasis inwards the Mediterranean, according to royal court filings.