- Omaha men sentenced after bold $350,000 Grand River Casino heist
- Caller impersonated official, duping staff into surrendering cash
- Mastermind possibly behind multi-casino scams still remains at large
Two Omaha, Neb. men involved the audacious heist of over $350,000 from the Grand River Casino last year were handed prison sentences last week, but the mastermind remains unknown.
At around 6 a.m. on February 25, 2024, staff at the casino in Mobridge, S.D. received a call from someone impersonating a federal official. The caller claimed the casino owed over $700,00 in fees and would incur expensive fines if a downpayment was not made immediately.
As instructed by the caller, an employee collected the cash from the casino cage and turned it over to two men at a gas station in Mitchell, S.D., more than three hours’ drive away.
Money Mules
Those men were Roberto Carlos Gonzalez Miranda, 24, and Roberto Orellana, 46. On September 15, Gonzalez was sentenced to five years and ten months in federal prison, and Orellana was sentenced to four years and two months, after both pleaded guilty to transporting stolen money across state lines.
They were also ordered to make financial restitution to the casino’s owner, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
According to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of South Dakota, Miranda and Orellana were not behind the call. They did occasional work as money mules for a “transnational criminal organization,” which had sent them to pick up the cash. The caller remains unknown and the money has not been recovered.
The case was one of several similar incidents around the time that involved casino workers being tricked into handing over money.
One Mastermind?
In July 2023, someone called a cash cage supervisor at the Four Winds Hartford Casino in Michigan pretending to be the chairperson of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, which owns the property.
The employee was instructed to take $700,000 in cash to a gas station in Gary, Ind. An illegal immigrant, Jesus Gaytan-Garcia, 43, was later charged with receiving the cash.
On June 17 2023, another cage supervisor, this time at Circa in downtown Las Vegas, received a telephone call from an individual claiming to be one of the casino’s owners – either Derek or Greg Stevens.
The imposter claimed emergency payments needed to be made to the Fire Department so they could perform tests on the fire extinguishers. Further payments would then be needed to purchase additional fire safety devices, the caller said. Failure to do so could result in city officials ordering a temporary shutdown of operations, potentially costing Circa millions of dollars.
Erik Gutierrez Martinez, 24, was arrested a day later and sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty in theft charges. Prosecutors said he was part of a wider criminal organization that was also suspected of orchestrating similar heists at Eureka Casino Resort in Mesquite, Nev. and the Golden Nugget in Laughlin, Nev. No one else has been charged for those crimes.
The post $350K Grand River Casino ‘Imposter Fraud’ Heist Sees two Sentenced appeared first on Casino.org.
