Months after an employee of Four Winds Casino in Hartford, Michigan, was mistakenly fingered for being involved in a $700,000 heist from the property, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan has charged another individual, Jesus Gaytan-Garcia, with embezzlement and theft from a tribal organization, a crime which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.

According to a Department of Justice press release, on July 30, 2023, a call came into the Hartford Four Winds Casino. The caller claimed that he was the chair of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, which owns and operates the casino, and needed funds to make an urgent payment. 

A casino cage supervisor, Danika Nicole Young, was apparently duped by the caller’s false claims and gathered $700,000 in cash before walking out of the casino. At the direction of the caller, she brought the cash to a gas station in Gary, Indiana, where she then handed it over to two individuals.

Young was initially arrested and charged with embezzlement, but her mother didn’t buy it for a second, telling a local TV station, “She’s a straight-laced girl. She would not leave her son. She would not throw away 16 years [working at the casino]. Something happened. Something is not right.”

Mom was right

It turns out, mom was right. After a months-long investigation, the charges against Young were dropped, with the feds instead zeroing in on Gaytan-Garcia, who was one of the men Young met at the gas station in Gary. In a search of Gaytan-Garcia’s home, investigators located a bundle of cash wrapped in a paper band that was stamped with the word “Hartford,” an act of boneheadedness which makes him an early favorite for a Darwin Award.

“The amount of money involved in this theft is extraordinary,” U.S. Attorney Mark Totten said in the DOJ press release. “Unfortunately, instances of telephone scams at casinos are on the rise across the country, impacting both tribal and commercial gaming operations. Thanks to the dedicated, joint investigation of Pokagon Tribal Police and the FBI, we were able to identify and arrest one of the perpetrators of this scheme that targeted the Hartford Four Winds Casino.”

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