Las Vegas couple arrested in $652,000 robbery of casino cage

According to an arrest report, Las Vegas residents John Salmen, age 63, and Lydia Salmen, age 70, have been taken into custody on suspicion of robbery in the heist of more than $652,000 in cash, chips, and coins from a casino located south of Las Vegas.

The arrest report states that during a search of their residence, items seized included a duffel bag full of cash, two money bags, a bag of Primm Valley Casino chips, and a sweater that matched the woman's outfit from surveillance footage.

Within the Salmens’ home in the upscale northwest Las Vegas Desert Shores master-planned community, police discovered "a possible motive" for the crime on a notepad, which included a $12,039.41 medical bill and a note indicating that the couple’s insurance would not cover it, and some prescriptions.

On Thursday, July 18, a theft was reported in Primm, near the state line between Nevada and California. According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police's arrest report, when the casino cage at Primm Valley Resort & Casino was left unattended, a woman leaped over the counter. After stealing the money and leaving the casino, she was last observed on camera making her way toward the nearby outlet mall.

Detectives discovered during their investigation that another female had earlier contacted a Las Vegas police officer after she and a male had been involved in an altercation at the resort.

According to the report, they looked over the officer's body-worn camera video and obtained a potential license plate number from the suspect’s car. According to the report, the vehicle belonged to the Salmens and was registered to their Las Vegas residence.

After comparing their driver's license images, police noted that they matched stills from the suspects' surveillance footage. The suspects were both booked into jail by officers on Friday.

When the money was counted, the police found that the chips and coins added up to $27,000, while the cash exceeded $625,000.

“We thank the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) for swiftly recovering all but $300 and arresting several people for the theft that occurred at the Primm Valley Casino Resort on July 18,” the parent company’s Chief Marketing Officer Brad Egnor wrote in a prepared statement issued to the media.

The statement went on to say, “Due to the resort’s robust security protocols and collaboration with the LVMPD, the incident did not impact any guests or team members.” Several local observers commented on the irony of “robust security protocols” allowing the robbers to gain access to the cage and money at all, rather than being able to repel them before they were able to steal the funds.

Though not all of the large-scale thefts at United States casinos in the past year have been as simple as the Primm Valley heist, this instance is merely the most recent example.

A man allegedly conned a worker at Four Winds Casino in Michigan into handing over $700,000 of the establishment's funds to him in July of last year. A similar crime occurred in June 2023 when a man allegedly pretended to be one of the owners of the Circa Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas when he spoke with a cage supervisor. He was able to obtain cash totaling $1.17 million.

Source:

“Casino heist couple nabbed with $652K in cash and chips from Primm Valley Resort” , Matthew Seeman, news3lv.com, July 24, 2024.