A man suspected of having robbed the Bellagio on Friday night managed to spend $10,000 on shopping, accommodation at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, and four prostitutes, who he allegedly hired for ’socializing,’ as written in his arrest report.
When the unindentified man was asked if he had robbed the Bellagio at gunpoint for a payday of $43,500, he simply replied to the detectives: ’I was smoking too much, I guess’. He did not specify what he had been smoking.
The robber did not have any official identification on him, so it’s no surprise that the police chose not believe him when he claimed that his name was Scott Rice and that he was a resident of Kansas. He was arrested by the police after a manhunt on Saturday and is now being held at the Clark County Detention Center with no option of bail.
The incident took place at about 8:30 p.m. on Friday when a man with a backpack approached a Bellagio cashier’s cage and demanded that the clerk give him money. The clerk complained about chest pains later, but it was nothing too serious.
According to his arrest report, the man the police now call John Doe paid a random tourist $300 to get him a $400 room - seemingly the only smart thing Mr. Doe did during his rather turbulent weekend.
The tourist notified the police shortly after, and as a result law enforcement went to the resort about two miles from the Bellagio. They monitored the room via security surveillance and realized that they were looking at four prostitutes. When they left the room, the police detained them for questioning. Two of them were carrying large amounts of cash with ’Bellagio Count Team’ labels.
The investigators learned that Doe had left an unpredictable, paranoid and delusional impression. ’One minute he was laughing hysterically and the next he was acting as if he felt claustrophobic in the room,’ as said by one woman. She also said that when Doe gave her the money, it was apparently for her to ’socialize’ with him.
When the police finally got a search warrant for the room, they found the BB gun that was used in the Bellagio robbery and $10,000 cash. They also found the clothes that the robber had worn, along with his black backpack and recently purchased high-end clothes, including flashy black Louis Vuitton shoes with the shopping receipts still in the bag.
When asked who the women were, Doe told the investigators that they were work-out buddies, whom he had also later taken shopping. He claimed that he was at the Bellagio Casino’s car park when he found the bag of money. When shown the surveillance footage at the cashier’s cage, he said ’That’s me’, but pleaded not guilty in any involvement in the robbery.
While $20,000 of the $43,500 taken were found, it still remains unclear where the bigger part of the cash has vanished to.
Detectives have reason to believe that Doe has a recent criminal history, including a robbery of the South Valley City National Bank just over a week ago. The same BB gun was used in both robberies, police said.