Las Vegas casino thief pleads guilty to posing as hotel owner, stealing more than $1M
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LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A man who convinced a Las Vegas casino cage worker that he was a hotel co-owner and that she needed to give him more than $1 million in bogus payments could spend several years in prison.
Erik Gutierrez Martinez, 24, pleaded guilty Monday to one charge of theft of more than $100,000. Gutierrez Martinez initially faced two felony counts. As part of a plea deal, Clark County District Court Judge Jasmin Lilly-Spells could sentence Gutierrez Martinez to anywhere from one to 10 years in prison.
As the 8 News Now Investigators first reported in June, Las Vegas Metro police searched Gutierrez Martinez’s home on June 21, finding bundles of money from Circa Hotel & Casino, which they believe were part of a scam to defraud the business of more than $1 million, documents said.
Documents the 8 News Now Investigators later obtained in the case revealed the allegations involved thefts at Circa, Eureka Casino Resort in Mesquite and the Golden Nugget in Laughlin — as well as federal investigators, including the U.S. Secret Service. As part of the plea deal, Gutierrez Martinez accepts guilt only in the Circa case.
In March, a casino cage supervisor at the Eureka casino removed $250,000 from the property and drove to Las Vegas to deliver the money to a person who she believed was owed money for hand sanitizer. The person investigators believe the employee met with at a gas station parking lot was Gutierrez Martinez, documents said.
On March 2 around 1:30 a.m., a person called the Eureka casino cage from a Mexican phone number about a missing check to a business, documents said. The person then called the employee’s personal cell phone, telling her to search for a check that was made out to a business, which she would find in the cage, documents said. Mesquite is more than 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Arizona border.
The employee told the person on the phone she could not find the check. The person on the phone then instructed the employee to remove $250,000 in cash from the casino cage and deliver to it to another person in Las Vegas, documents said.
The employee took $250,000 from the cage, put it in a cardboard box and left, documents said, reportedly saying to another employee, “We don’t want anyone to know about this, it’s embarrassing to [another employee].”
Once the employee arrived at the gas station, the person on the phone instructed her to deposit $15,000 into a Bitcoin machine, documents said. The person on the phone then told her to go to a second location, but the Bitcoin machine was out of order.
The person on the phone then told the employee to go to a third gas station to meet a person, later identified as Gutierrez Martinez, to deliver the remaining $235,000, documents said. The employee met Gutierrez Martinez in the gas station parking lot, but before she left, she received a phone call from someone at the casino who ordered her to return with the money, documents said.
While speaking with investigators, the employee said, “she received a call from a ‘frantic’ individual” who said, “there was an issue regarding a contract and payment of $250,000 and the payment needed to be delivered immediately.” The employee said her job did not involve “handling payments from vendors or suppliers.”
Investigators determined the money transferred to Bitcoin was sent to 17 different accounts, they said. The money involved also was sent to Gibraltar, the British territory at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
On June 17, police responded to the Circa Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas for a report of a similar scam, the 8 News Now Investigators first reported in June. A person from the hotel’s security office told detectives “an unknown person” had contacted the casino cage “claiming to be the owner of the hotel” and asking for $320,000 for an emergency payment to the fire department, police wrote in court documents.
Police interviewed the cage supervisor, who said she received a phone call from a person who claimed they were the hotel’s owner. The person, who was not the hotel’s owner, said “the fire department needed to do a check on the fire extinguishers” and “they would need a payment for further safety devices,” documents said.
The cage supervisor brought the money in four installments to the unknown person at different off-site locations, documents said. The payments totaled $314,000, $350,000, and $500,000, plus three smaller deposits, resulting in a loss of $1,170,000 to the hotel, documents said. The employee believed she was on the phone with the hotel’s owner and texting with her manager, police said.
Detectives tracked the vehicle involved in the suspected theft, finding its registered owner. Police suspect the car belonged to Gutierrez Martinez’s aunt with whom he lives.
Police arrested Gutierrez Martinez at a gym on Sunday, June 18, they said. They later recovered nearly $850,000. Police did not know at the time of writing his arrest report last week who was given the outstanding $314,000, they said. Another man in the car with Gutierrez Martinez before his arrest was not detained.
Gutierrez Martinez has remained in custody at the Clark County Detention Center since his June arrest.
Gaming Control Board investigators said a similar scheme also happened at the Golden Nugget in Laughlin, though Gutierrez Martinez was never charged on a third theft charge.
Representatives from Eureka Mesquite and Golden Nugget Laughlin casinos did not return requests for comment.
Derek Stevens, CEO of Circa, said in June that Circa was cooperating with the investigation and that he appreciated Metro’s efforts.
Lilly-Spells will sentence Gutierrez Martinez on Oct. 30.
