Las Vegas authorities confirmed the arrest of 31-year-old Akingide Cole for his involvement in the million-dollar heist incident heist that recently occurred at the Venetian resort and Casino in Nevada.
The suspect, Akingide Cole allegedly stole $1.6 million in chips from the casino. The case received widespread media attention that led to an anonymous tip. That and solid coordinated efforts from the authorities in San Bernardino and Los Angeles police finally led to Cole’s arrest, Oct. 24 2012. Cole was arrested near to his mother’s home. Which leads authorities, press, and well everyone to believe the thief was hiding out at his mother’s house in the Palmdale area.
According to reports, Cole’s case is still in the early developmental stages. He is being investigated for grand larceny and other burglary-related offenses. So far, the authorities have recovered nearly $400,000 in missing casino chips. Authorities are still at work trying to locate and recover the missing $1.2 million in missing chips. The truth of the matter however is that those chips could be returning to the casino in small increments as you’re reading this article.
Cole is currently being held in custody in Los Angeles and will be extradited to Nevada in the coming weeks to face charges.
We covered the heist when it happened, and still limited details are being released. This is likely so that they can unravel as the case unfolds as well as assuring that there aren’t copycat burglars ready to commit the same robbery with information released.
Limited details about the Las Vegas heist are available at the time. Authorities did confirm that there were no weapons involved in the robbery and that no people were harmed in the process.
The suspect, who police now believe to be Akingide Cole entered the casino at 5:30 a.m. The actual robbery happened at about 6 a.m. on the 10th of October.
Within 30 minuntes, Akingide Cole allegedly entered a hallway leading to the room where the chips were stored through another hallway that was reserved exclusively for employees.
Akingide Cole was making his way to the Salon, a private gaming room reserved for an elite group of gamblers. This was where casino heist took place. After playing several games, apparently waiting until the tray was filled, he then moved to grab a claw hammer, which was used as a tool to open the tray, not as a weapon. Akingide Cole allegedly used that hammer to pry the tray of a blackjack table open.
It took casino staff an amazing 22 hours to realize that the casino had been robbed.
The tray contained $1,600,627.50 in chips. There was some change in the tray as well, however, having brought a hammer with him, it’s no secret that this was a planned heist, and the change was not taken.
The perfect crime it would seem, except that Akingide Cole according to reports made no effort to hide his face or conceal his identity this made him easy to spot in footage produced by surveillance cameras.
The resort has assigned a value of $10,000 for the missing chips in accordance with internal protocol. The chips are considered to be high in value and they stand little chance of being redeemed because they are circulated among an elite, close knit group of high rollers. Shortly after the incident occurred, an alternate set of chips were placed into circulation to make it possible to quickly identify a person playing with the set of stolen chips.
The following websites were used in the research of this article.
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/10/akingide_cole_venetian_casino_16_million_chips_theft_arrested_moms_house.php
http://www.lvrj.com/news/man-arrested-in-1-6-million-venetian-chip-heist-176472221.html
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