LAS VEGAS — A helmeted bandit who escaped the Bellagio with $1.5 million in chips during a daring gunpoint heist returned to the scene of the crime several times before his luck finally ran out, police said yesterday.
“He likes to gamble,’’ Las Vegas police Lieutenant Ray Steiber said as he described for reporters how Anthony M. Carleo, 29, the son of a Las Vegas judge, was arrested late Wednesday on the same casino floor at the Bellagio resort.
The arrest was part of an undercover police investigation, a person familiar with the investigation said. The person declined to be named because he was not authorized to publicly provide details about the case.
Police recovered $900,000 in chips, and can account for $1.2 million, Steiber said. He said police were still looking for the black
Carleo’s father, Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge George Assad, issued a statement through a publicist saying he and his family were “devastated and heartbroken to see my son arrested under these circumstances.’’
Assad said that as a working judge, he couldn’t comment about “any pending legal matter as it relates to anyone, including my son.’’
Carleo is a former real estate broker and student who declared bankruptcy in Colorado in May 2009.
His bankruptcy filing said Carleo received at least $19,000 from his father over a three-year period, but owed nearly $188,000 in various debts. The case was closed seven months later, and a lawyer from the firm that represented him then said yesterday that they are not representing him now.
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