Poker pro Eric "Willing2Die" Sonstegard claims Rio employees stole $3k & an iPad from his room

[Dan Druff]

While I don't know the guy, I pretty much believe him.

Here's what he tweeted:

Damn...just rolled back to my room at the @RioLasVegas & my iPad & $3K in cash are gone. Rough start to the trip.

The @RioLasVegas security folks were nice but this completely sucks. Had to be an employee.

Don't be an idiot like me. Lock your shit up in the safe. Please RT

http://twitter.com/Willing2Die

So this could be one of three things:

1) He's telling the truth, and Rio employees stole from him.
-or-
2) This was his backers' money, and he lost it in the pits or in some other degen fashion. He invented this story in order to blame the Rio.
-or-
3) He's telling the truth, but one of his scumbag friends stole from him, rather than the Rio.

I don't think he's lying, though. I think it's either #1 or #3. Probably #1 if no friends had access to his room.

Jennicide told a similar story a few years ago, except hers involved money stolen from her safe. It turned out that she learned much later that the Rio wasn't at fault. It was one of her scumbag friends stealing from her. (No, it wasn't anyone in poker, btw.)

I tweeted to him that he should have security check who entered his room. He said that "risk management" is currently looking into that for him.

Those electronic key systems keep track of room entries. They often use this for evidence in murder trials or other major criminal cases.

Of course, the maid could have entered, cleaned his room, and then stolen these things, and can simply deny having done anything but clean the room when questioned. It would be hard to prove otherwise.

The Rio does have an obnoxious policy that the maid can ignore the Do Not Disturb sign after a few days, and will enter to both "check if everything is okay" and also clean the room. You do get a notification that states they will do this, but it's still bullshit. Do Not Disturb should mean Do Not Disturb.

It is not clear if he had a Do Not Disturb sign up when this happened.

I recently had the following irritating conversation with the Rio front desk, over the phone:

Me: "Hi, I got the notification that the maid might enter my room despite my Do Not Disturb sign. I don't want them coming in. Can you make sure that doesn't happen?"

Employee: "We can make a note, but they might still enter your room. They need to check everything is okay, but I can put in that request."

Me: "That's unacceptable. I do not want anyone coming in, period. Certainly there is a way to stop that."

Employee: "As I said, I can leave them a message, but sometimes they decide on their own that they still wish to enter."



Me: "Again, not acceptable. You're telling me there is no way to keep the maid out of this room if I don't want it?"

Employee: "Well, they are supposed to check if everything is okay, after a few days."

Me: "Okay, then send security up here right now, and they can check the entire room. Otherwise, I don't want people entering."

Employee: "I'll look into this and call you back after 15 minutes."

(15 minutes pass)

Employee: "Hi, I got a hold of the housekeeping manager, and they agreed not to enter your room."


Talk about a lot of effort for something simple that shouldn't be occurring in the first place.

[snake_in_the_ass]

I have been to Vegas about 40 times and I have never let a maid in my room. I don't want them cleaning my room while some scammer hustles the maid into allowing them entry to the room.

[Hockey Guy]

4). He left his room & didn't check to make sure that the door actually closed & auto-locked behind him. Some random guy checking doorknobs walked by & saw the room was open went in & took the money & ipad. Happens all the time & these guys don't seem to care about "Do Not Disturb" signs.

[Crowe Diddly]

I have been to Vegas about 40 times and I have never let a maid in my room. I don't want them cleaning my room while some scammer hustles the maid into allowing them entry to the room.

If you aren't there, they'll oftentimes go in anyway. The Do Not Disturb signs means Feel Free to Change The Towels to a lot of maids, unfortunately.

[Dan Druff]

He posted an update to 2+2. Crazy!

On Friday, I got a call from CCSMI, the RIO's insurance adjustor, who told me they were prepared to offer a settlement of $750 because that "is the limit on their policy." She also told me “I'm reading here that it appears a former guest gained access to your room” which was news to me because no one at any point had offered up to me what had actually occurred. I told her NO to the $750 offer and said I'd be dealing with the RIO directly.

Today, I sent the following reply to RIO President Gary Selesner's e-mail from last week:

"Mr. Selesner:

I wanted to give you a brief update on my situation. I was contacted by CCSMI, which I believe is the RIO’s claims adjustor, on Friday who offered me a $750 settlement as they said that is the “limit on the policy.” She also told me “I'm reading here that it appears a former guest gained access to your room” which was news to me because no one at any point had offered up to me what had actually occurred.

I am requesting that you forward me to someone in your management team that can try and assist. I’m still flabbergasted that, almost two weeks later, no one from the RIO has a) told me what actually occurred, and b) offered any semblance of reparation. Every single person that has heard this story has told me they cannot believe the RIO hasn’t offered to reimburse me in some fashion for my property loss, inconvenience, and overall disastrous experience at the RIO/WSOP."

Approx. 30 minutes later, I got a phone call from Patrice in Risk Management who I've been dealing with since the incident and clearly has no clout or overall decision making ability. She said "the property is prepared to offer you $1,000 in addition to the $750 from CCSMI." I didn't accept the offer and told her I'd re-contact her. Like I said in the above e-mail, I still can't believe how the RIO hasn't taken this opportunity to step up and take care of a customer. (As you guys know -wink-), I'm pretty easy going. If they at anytime had said, "We'll reimburse you the $2K and how about a couple of nights free at any of our properties" I would have just taken it and moved on. One more thing....no one from the RIO has shown the decency to explain, in detail and plain language, what the hell actually happened that night.

I'm continuing to work with LV Metro Tourism Crimes Division and am going to wait and see how that turns out before getting back to Patrice.

After everything that's happened, I doubt many new lessons have been learned.
-Don't leave valuables in your hotel room.
-Big corporations don't particularly care about small customers.

Nothing new there

This really looks to me like the Rio fucked up and a former guest's key still was able to access the room.

My guess is that the dude staying there before him wanted to go back to the room and check on something, tried his key on a whim, and it surprisingly worked. Then he saw all of Eric's stuff sitting there, rifled through his suitcase, stole the $ inside, grabbed the iPad, and ran.

Unfortunately this "former guest" might be in another state now, so it might be hard to prosecute/arrest him.

However, the Rio should cover this, given that it was their fault, and clearly Eric isn't making this up, as he had no idea about a former guest accessing his room when his stuff disappeared. (This is different than a guest saying "My stuff is gone" after the maid cleaned his room -- which can be extremely dubious.)

LOL @ the insurance company saying that their "limit" is $750.

Pretty sure that's bullshit. I bet the Rio has a higher policy than that per incident, but even if they don't, that leaves the remaining burden on the Rio.

If Eric were claiming a loss of $50,000, I could see the Rio balking and refusing here. However, since the figures of what Eric wants and what the Rio is willing to give are so close, they should just pay him what he originally claimed to have lost and be done with it. Any intelligent person here would realize that the chances of him being a liar at this point is about zero.

[Dan Druff]

Update from 2+2:

Sorry for the delay...I'm hoping this is the last update:

On July 10th, I was contacted by the LV Metro Tourist Crimes Detective that I had spoken to during the first week. He was able to share with me what had happened. I still think this story has a lot of holes in it but this is the official story from the RIO and Metro P.D.:

When I originally walked up to my room after I had checked in and found the odd housekeeping dude spraying my room, the door to my room was open so I obviously didn't use my key card. When you check-in and initially use your key card (at least at the RIO apparently), this process invalidates all past key cards from the guests that just checked out. By not using my key card, the person that had just checked out could, in theory, still get back into my room.

"Three guys" had been staying in my room (#821) and requested a room change due to the nasty smell. They had been switched to another tower right before I got there (nice of the RIO to just drop me in there after a guest complained about the smell). Sometime around 10:00 p.m. that first night, one of the guys tells his friends he's going back to the room to take a nap and comes back to my room apparently either not knowing or forgetting that they've switched rooms. (I'm okay with this part because who would ever go back to their old room on purpose and think they could just get in). According to his interview, he takes a nap and wakes up a little after midnight.

This part is real sketchy...he tells investigators that he takes some cash to gamble with thinking it's his friend's suitcase. He also takes the Ipad because he thinks it's his friends who also has one and doesn't want to leave it in the room (Makes little to no sense to me). He goes down, spends some time with his buddies, and then they eventually make their way to their new room.

Obviously, the RIO security's key card analysis of my door leads them to their new room at some point the next day. They contact the guy who tells them the above story and has my ipad and $1,000 which is what he tells them is all there was. He says he was holding onto it and was going to contact security once he discovered it wasn't his friends' stuff. They recover the ipad and the cash and that's the end of that.

How did he not know he was digging into someone's suitcase that wasn't his or his friends (It was purple and had my college logo on it)? Why was my ipad turned off immediately after it was taken? Why would you not notify security as soon as you discovered that you had just taken property out of someone else's room? Why wouldn't RIO just tell me this as soon as they discovered it?

Clearly, he had no intention of returning any of my stuff but he did as soon as they contacted him and LV Metro felt they didn't have enough to pursue a criminal complaint.

After my conversation with LV Metro, I sent the following e-mail to several RIO brass:

One of the most frustrating parts of this entire ordeal has been the refusal of anyone from the RIO to tell me what actually happened with the theft from my room and how they recovered some of my property. In speaking with an L.V. Metro Detective earlier today, I was finally able to hear exactly what is alleged to have occurred. It is a strange set of circumstances yet I am still out $2,000 and the person who “returned” my property was obviously not completely forthright about his actions.

I had planned on asking for $2,000 from the RIO/CCSMI and an explanation of exactly what occurred but I got that explanation, disappointingly, from a non-RIO entity. If the RIO is willing to reimburse me the $2,000, I am willing for this ordeal to finally be over. It still remains that:

• My annual WSOP trip to the RIO was completely ruined,
• I had to switch rooms due to a sewage odor,
• I’ve had to deal with this on an ongoing basis for the last 10 days,
• And only because I’m a police officer was I able to get the real story from the LV Metro Detective

The fact that all of that will apparently go completely unaddressed by the RIO and Caesar’s Entertainment is baffling to me. Please don’t think if you give me MY $2,000 back that I somehow feel whole. I’ve been a loyal CET customer for many years and am amazed at how I’ve been treated throughout this entire process.

I will wait to hear back from you.

Approximately one hour later, someone from RIO risk management contacted me and said they'd reimburse me the $2,000. They mailed me a waiver form, I signed it, and a $2,000 check is enroute certified e-mail.

Fucking crazy 2 1/2 week adventure. Lots of lessons to be learned by me. I thought it was funny that I included the facts about the guy spraying in my room and the rancid sewage odor in my room as kind of an afterthought and they ended up being pertinent details.

I can't wait to stay at the Gold Coast next year. Ping Pang Pong anyone?

[Dan Druff]

My take:

First off, I'm thrilled that Eric got his money (and iPad) back, though this ordeal had to be highly stressful, and I really feel bad for him!

The Rio bungled this one big time. It amazes me how they were trying to cheap out on that final $2000 until he pressed harder. It is unbelievable that the idiot head of security thought that he would be satisfied with just 1/3 of the money stolen because the thief denied taking more. Even if they suspected Eric was inflating the value of the money stolen, they should have just shut their mouths and paid the difference, provided it sounded reasonable.

Obviously they were aware that money (and an iPad) were stolen, so the question only remained how much. Rather than trying to get out of paying any settlement to Eric, they should have given him the extra $2k right off the bat and ended it right there. $2000 is nothing for the Rio, let alone the parent company Caesar's. It's not like Eric claimed to have had $100,000 stolen and the thief only took credit for $1,000 of it.

The Rio fucked up big time, and getting out of this mess for $2,000 is rather cheap for them. The potential bad publicity here is worth many, many times that.

I do understand why the thief was not prosecuted or arrested.

Now don't get me wrong -- I 100% believe this guy knew exactly what he was doing, and intentionally stole Eric's property.

However, he probably prepared himself with a BS story in cae he was contacted, and felt this was a freeroll. If nobody says anything, he gets a free iPad and $3000. If someone does say something, return the iPad and money, and claim it was a misunderstanding.

Why did he only give back $1000? I'm guessing this moron probably blew 2/3 of it in the pits, or whatever. Or maybe he was dumb enough to think he could get away with just giving back $1000, and claiming that's all that was there.

Anyway, it's not like he was caught with an heirloom from Eric's grandmother. An iPad is a very common device, and cash is cash. Theoretically, both could be accidentally grabbed and you could make a reasonable claim in court that you thought they were yours or your friend's. I don't believe the story for a second, but this would be a hard conviction to secure, especially because the individual accessed a room that he was authorized by Rio to access. It's not like he committed fraud or forced entry to get in.

I imagine that Rio was protecting this douche's identity to further protect themselves from lawsuits. For example, if Eric were to then find him and beat him up because the Rio revealed his name, they could be liable.