Man convicted in scheme to steal $700,000 from Michigan casino

DETROIT (AP) — A Chicago man has been convicted in the theft of $700,000 from a Michigan casino, a brazen scheme in which an employee was tricked over the phone into stuffing the cash in a designer bag and driving 85 miles (137 kilometers) to deliver it.

“This case underscores the need for businesses, organizations and citizens to be diligent and cautious about phone and internet scams,” U.S. Attorney Mark Totten said.

The crime occurred in 2023 at the Four Winds Casino in Hartford in southwestern Michigan, which is operated by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. The FBI said a key employee who handles cash received a phone call and text messages directing her to immediately gather $700,000 for a tribal official.

No one stopped the employee as she filled a Michael Kors bag with bundles of cash, walked out of the casino and drove away.

She stayed on the phone with the caller who eventually told her to go to a gas station in Gary, Indiana. That’s when she passed the cash to Jesus Gaytan-Garcia, one of two men in a minivan who met her, investigators said.

“She was cooperative with investigators and told them about the call, the text messages and the money transfer at the gas station,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Lane said in a court filing.

Gaytan-Garcia wasn’t arrested until March 2024, seven months later, after investigators were able to link him to the vehicle used to pick up the cash.

He was convicted of two charges Thursday in federal court in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Other people connected to the theft remain under investigation, said Tiffany Brown of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Investigators said they recovered $18,000 from a safe in Gaytan-Garcia’s Chicago home. The money was wrapped and marked with the date of the casino theft.

“He lived in that house with his family and other families, and there’s movement between the floors,” defense attorney Parker Douglas said Friday. “The money was accessible to other people there. My argument was there just wasn’t any hard evidence that said this man did this at this time. The jury disagreed.”

Searches at Gaytan-Garcia’s trailers in Indiana revealed evidence of money transfers, antique coins, Civil War currency and foreign currency, Lane said.