Embezzler Racked up $400K Tab Playing Blackjack in Bellagio Hotel Room
Embezzler Blackjack

One of the remaining mysteries in the case of two women embezzling approximately $6 million from Aviva USA is whether she gained her $400,000 room-service bill at the Bellagio Hotel by wagering with a private blackjack dealer in her hotel room.

It isn’t very easy for most people to imagine possessing $400K, never mind blowing it all on room service, but one of the facts that came to light in the case against Marla Stevens and her husband Phyllis Stevens is that Marla somehow used tips and tricks to do exactly that, possibly while playing blackjack.

By way of understanding, it helps to know she was staying in the Bellagio, which is one of the most outrageously exorbitant, but Marla’s stay in a $600-per-day room only lasted for a year. The Bellagio won’t permit guests to charge acquisitions from hotel galleries, shops, entertainment venues, nor the blackjack casinos to the room they are staying in. Guests are only permitted to charge meals from over a dozen restaurants, but to spend $400,000 on food; she would need to spend about $365 for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner throughout the entire year.

However, Robert Conley, a veteran of the Des Moines, Iowa hotel-motel business, is skeptical that such a policy would exist in a Vegas casino hotel. Conley firmly believes that a luxurious, sycophantic Vegas resort would heave or shepherd most anything a high-rolling patron may wish for, including sports point spreads, cosmeticians, prostitutes, or even a roulette table. “If you’re a big enough roller in Las Vegas,” he says, “you can probably get a baccarat or blackjack [card game] dealer and have private table games in your room.” Moreover, such a sumptuous resort would not hesitate to accept room charges for such extravagances.