$1.5M Robbery of Bellagio Casino Foiled Thanks to RFID Chips

From the comments over there:<p>"This is nonsense, they didn't catch him by using RFID chips, they caught him with police work. He was an idiot, and told anyone that would listen that he had the chips. People came forward, a sting buy was set up, he was arrested after selling them to undercover LEOs. Read the police report, there is no mention of RFID chips.<p>Police Report: <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/pdfs/blogs/documents/2011/02/03/carleo0203.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://media.lasvegassun....</a><p>This is just marketing by a company that is trying to sell the technology to other casinos."

He was caught because he did stuff like sending photos like the following to members of the poker forum he frequented:<p><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DaIlH1TvGHA/TUsgWhzTV0I/AAAAAAAAAGY/Xz4jZw2iDuM/s320/DSC03741.JPG" rel="nofollow">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DaIlH1TvGHA/TUsgWhzTV0I/AAAAAAAAAG...</a>

I believe the writer has his information mixed up. Bellagio doesn't have RFIDs in the lower denominational chips. It's rumored to be in the $5,000 chips and above. Newer properties like the Wynn hotel put RFIDs in all their chips because they're the ones who have the play tracking tables he wrote about.<p>He wasn't caught because of the RFIDs in the chips, he was caught because he was trying to sell the $25,000 chips. In fact, he was gambling with the smaller chips and lost over $100,000. If those had the RFIDs in them, they would have caught him sooner. Instead he should have kept all the smaller chips and thrown the larger ones into a river and forgotten about them. It would have still been a nice haul.

I'm having trouble understanding the technical possibility of chips being deactivated in this scenario. I see from the police report it wasn't, but just wondered anyway.<p>If someone grabs X chips, where X is quite a high number, and walks out the door - are the numbers registered as they go, and can be deactivated thereafter?<p>Can a high value of X be scanned and stored by RFID technology? How are legit walk-outs and stolen separated?<p>Also, I see mention of the technology "Spotting a dealer accidentally shorting a player" - is this technology that granular that a transaction like that can be logged accurately?<p>Just curious if anyone can indulge me.

I'm more amazed at currency being accepted at all, the North Korean "Super $100" I hear is nearly perfect but slot machine bill validators still rejected it.<p>It's one thing to have custom made chips with RFID, notches, decals and who knows what else but to accept paper as a valuable item seems to risky yet most counterfeit bills are rejected all the time.

I think it's more accurate to say that it was foiled because of good old police work. An undercover investigation and a sting (plus a large amount of his own stupidity) is what brought the guy in. The embedded RFID stopped the high value chips ($25,000) from being cashed in, but there were still plenty of lower denominations that could have been used.<p>Interestingly enough, after the heist the Bellagio replaced ALL the chips on the floor with a complete new set. It would have been pretty suspicious when somebody strolled in with $25,000 chips...even without the RFID at that point.

I guess we won't be seeing Ocean's Fourteen

there was previously some discussion and speculation about these chips on hn, when the story was originally reported<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023413" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2023413</a>

Why was he not caught when himself or one of his associates attempted to pass off the chips at the casino, he obviously found out some way they were worthless. I am really surprised the Bellagio cage allowed someone with a chip that couldn't be cashed to walk away AFTER a robbery had recently taken place... The whole chain of events is suspect.

In other hand, I would like to have a close look at the high value chips using RFID technology especially that the cashier has usually more confident in those ones. But that's another side of the story...