Las Vegas couple arrested after $652K stolen from casino

A married couple was arrested Friday, a day after the wife allegedly “jumped over the counter of the casino cage” at the Primm Valley hotel-casino in Primm and made off with more than $652,000, police say.

Lydia Salmen, 70, and John Salmen, 63, are facing charges of theft of more than $100,000 and attempted burglary of a business based on the $625,000 in cash and $27,000 in casino chips found at their residence, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

Police noted in an arrest report that “a possible motive” for the crime was found on a notepad inside their home in the Desert Shores neighborhood in northwest Las Vegas, “stating that insurance would not pay for certain medications, as well as a bill for $12,039.41.”

It was a little after 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Primm Valley casino, about 44 miles southwest of Las Vegas, when a woman was seen on video “jumping over the counter of the casino cage,” an employee-only restricted area that was not supervised at the time, police said.

Fled with husband

The woman walked to and from a 2011 Nissan hatchback outside “multiple times” prior to absconding with the $652,000 in cash and chips and fleeing in the vehicle with her husband, according to police.

Police detectives sent to the casino examined video surveillance footage from security guards showing two separate incidents, one on June 25 showing a woman and a man appearing to be in their 60s ambling down a casino hallway, and a second from July 18.

Further details about the June 25 video were redacted from the police report, but it stated that the July 18 one showed the same woman and a gray or silver hatchback driving to the casino property at about 3:52 p.m. and the woman then climbing over the casino cage counter, police said.

The woman was wearing a yellow sweatshirt with an orange and green picture on the front while scaling the counter, police reported.

On July 19, two detectives learned from a casino employee that on June 25, the female suspect had caused “a disturbance” at the casino and told the employee she was waiting for her husband, whose name she said was John, police said.

The male suspect then arrived and left the property with the woman, police said.

Body camera footage

As it happened that day, another Las Vegas police officer at the Primm casino on an unrelated matter was next to the Nissan, saw the female suspect approach him and was able later to review footage from his body camera of the vehicle and its Nevada license plate number.

Detectives used the body camera video to take down the plate number, run it through various databases, trace the registration to John and Lydia Salmen and use the casino video to produce stills that matched the photos on their driver’s licenses, police said.

Later that day, when detectives knocked on the door of the two-story house on Sugar Bowl Court owned by John Salmen, Lydia Salmen answered and was arrested as was John Salmen soon after when he exited the house.

After obtaining a telephonic search warrant for the residence, and DNA samples from the couple, police took into evidence a bag of Primm Valley casino chips, multiple bags of coins, a pair of money bags, a brown duffle bag full of U.S. currency and a yellow sweatshirt with a green and orange picture on the front, based on the police report.

A detective oversaw the large cache being transferred from the house and then counted at the Silver Sevens casino, at 4100 Paradise Road, which shares ownership with the Primm casino.

The final count was $625,569.47 in currency, $27,000 in chips and an undisclosed amount of coins, police reported.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.