Gene, an add-on to your explanation is "what was the actual value of the item/s 'stolen'?" I have been out of the casino business for 2 years but I remember the production/delivery cost of a roulette chip was around 30 to 40 cents. Now, a person takes a stack of roulettes and gets caught and the casino wants to prosecute. If we take the median cost of 35 cents the theft amounts to $7.00. I bring this up because in my 12 years working in A.C. casinos inevitably every rail/float theft that I was aware of was never prosecuted as a felony because when the courts ask the prosecutors to give the value of items stolen they could not list the value of the chip (times the numbers of chips stolen). The court always made an observation that those little green or black or purple discs are not money. The production/delivery cost to the casino was the only value the court would accept.
I'm sure that a casino executive will NEVER agree with what I just stated--and for obvious reasons. I will say that I was never called to trial in the only float theft that I was involved in as an eyewitness supervising the game that was hit.
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