A man who police believe is responsible for a Las Vegas casino robbery spree has finally been caught after several months of evading the authorities. Las Vegas police finally arrested 33-year-old Dshante Styles on Thursday; he is accused of six casino robberies and two carjackings.
Police have not made public the names of the casinos Styles allegedly robbed, but there were four known robberies last year. The assumption is that Style was the culprit, but again, police have not confirmed this. The casinos hit were Gold Coast on November 16, Green Valley Ranch on December 12, Silverton on December 20, and Rampart on December 24.
Dollar amounts were also not made public.
Styles was finally nabbed when a Las Vegas Metro police officer spotted a stolen vehicle on Monday which had been used during a casino robbery that same day. Styles escaped at the time, but officers IDed him and arrested him a few days later.
“We quickly realized that the suspect was brazen and a threat to our community,” Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Nicholas Farese said, stating the obvious. “At the direction of Sheriff Kevin McMahill, we devoted the weight of our organization to apprehend this dangerous individual.”
Styles has been charged with six counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, two counts of attempted robbery with a deadly weapon, 11 counts of burglary with a deadly weapon, and five counts of grand larceny auto.
It might sound weird that somebody could rob several casinos in a short time frame, but the way Las Vegas casinos work, it is entirely possible even if robberies are still pretty rare, provided someone is brazen enough to do it and quick enough to not get caught (at least for a few months).
Casino employees are taught to just comply with the robber’s demands and hand over the money. Limiting the confrontation reduces the chances of someone getting hurt. Casinos have enough security technology (cameras, mainly) that police feel confident that the suspect will be identified and caught. Granted, it took some time to get Styles and it was fairly unusual that he was able to rob a half dozen casinos, but it sounds like in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t much money.
Alan Feldman, a distinguished fellow at UNLV’s International Gaming Institute says that while the cashier’s cage is the obvious target for a robber, it’s not likely to be very lucrative.
“Casinos are pretty lousy targets for something like this,” Feldman told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And this impression that they just keep millions and millions of dollars sitting around isn’t true.”
He added that cyber crime is a much bigger concern for casinos nowadays.
