It was a cold night on Dec. 14th, 2010 when an ex-real estate agent, angry because of his unproductive year in the real estate business, decided to go to his favorite hotel in Las Vegas, the Bellagio, to blow off some steam.
The real estate agent, Anthony Carleo, lived in Pueblo, Colorado and had been known to frequent the Bellagio to do some gambling. Carleo rode his motorcycle to the North valet of the Bellagio and with his helmet still on, walked in to the hotel. He stepped into the casino with all two years worth of real estate earnings in his pockets, a whopping $552. The money was there but the only thing that came out of Carleo’s pocket in the Bellagio was a hand gun. He held up a craps table and stole $1.5 million worth of poker chips, an amount of money that would have taken him a series of lifetimes to earn as a real estate agent.
Amazingly, Anthony Carleo succeeded on the first day of his new job as a casino robber. He didn’t use the same tactics as his ‘Oceans 11’ heroes George Clooney and Brad Pitt but he did get away with it and didn’t have to split the money with accomplices. It’s almost scary to believe someone could get away with such a crime this day and age with all the cameras and security that protect the Las Vegas strip.
Bellagio security managed to capture the robber on video as he left the hotel but it wasn’t very helpful as the man had already fled the scene.
It wasn’t until late January that authorities were given clues as to Carleo’s whereabouts from an internet poker player that led to his recent arrest. “An internet poker player knew where Carleo was?”, you ask. “How is that possible?”. Well as bad as Carleo was at real estate he’s even worse at keeping his mouth shut about committing a crime. Carleo tried selling his stolen Bellagio poker chips to a man (known as Provotrout on the internet) who was discussing the stolen material on an internet poker forum. ‘Provotrout’ grew suspicious and possibly because of a $55,000 reward looked to investigate further by talking to Carleo on the phone. When Carleo sent Provotrout pictures with the chips and signed a message with the name ‘Biker Bandit’, Provotrout felt he had to come forward and just ask the question ‘Are you the real Biker Bandit?’. Carleo didn’t have any hesitation in telling the man that he was indeed the Biker Bandit that had been talked about in the news. Provotrout was able to determine Carleo’s location by tracking his IP through the internet and immediatedly contacted authorities.
Shortly after Provotrout contacted authorities with the information, Carleo was found and arrested. A funny thing about the arrest is that the criminal was actually handcuffed back at the place of the crime, at the Bellagio. This is not going to be a very good ending for a ‘fellow realtor’ that thought he could gain money the easy way in a bad economy. There are a lot of other jobs or ‘legal options’ for failing realtors, don’t go rob a Las Vegas casino!
Here’s a funny video discussing whether Anthony Carleo is stupid or a genius done by David Spates.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrHVXpaFwyA&w=560&h=349]
Source: Active Rain
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