A man who was paid to receive boxes of stolen cash in a $500,000 theft from Monarch Casino Resort and Spa in Black Hawk pleaded guilty Friday to his role in the largest Colorado casino theft in at least three decades.
Juan Ivan Gutierrez Zambrano, 32, pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal mischief — one count a low-level felony and the other a misdemeanor charge — in Gilpin County District Court. Prosecutors allege he was paid to receive boxes of stolen cash from then-casino employee Sabrina Eddy, 45, who is scheduled for a jury trial in August over the March 12, 2023, heist.
Zambrano, a citizen of Mexico, originally was charged with two counts of felony theft of between $100,000 and $1 million. Both theft charges were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
Prosecutors offered to let him plead guilty to criminal mischief “for the purpose of equity from an immigration standpoint,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Brenna Zortman said in court Friday. Zambrano could be deported because of the convictions, but might not be, his attorney, Damon Brune, said during the hearing.
Neither attorney detailed Zambrano’s role in the theft during Friday’s court hearing, instead waiting to make a factual record about the crime until Zambrano’s April sentencing. But Zortman said he received “compensation” for his role in the heist.
She said Zambrano accepted the stolen cash from Eddy after Eddy loaded bricks of $50,000 in cash into boxes in the middle of the night while working as a cage cashier at the casino. Eddy then drove the money to an exchange with Zambrano in a hospital parking lot, prosecutors say.
Eddy at first claimed she had been scammed and said she thought was following her bosses’ directions when she took the money.
She initially said she received a call from a man who claimed to be the casino’s head of operations and texts from a man she believed to be the cage supervisor instructing her to bring $300,000 in cash to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood. She took the cash, drove to the hospital’s emergency room and handed the cash to a man in the parking lot. As she returned, she claimed she received another text that instructed her to bring an additional $200,000, so she repeated the process.
Her story changed within days, however, when she agreed to take a polygraph test on March 16, court records show. After the machine indicated she was lying, she “finally broke down and began crying and provided an entirely different account of what occurred,” investigators wrote in an affidavit. She then claimed that associates of her dead ex-husband “forced her to engage in the theft after levying threats against her family members,” the affidavit reads.
Eddy offered the new account as Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents worked to identify the other people involved in the theft. On April 25, they charged Zambrano with felony theft. Investigators connected Zambrano to the vehicles that were used when the money was exchanged at the hospital through license plate readers, surveillance and maintenance records, according to an affidavit filed against him.
Zambrano lived in a mobile home park on Colfax Avenue in Aurora, according to the affidavit. When authorities searched his home, they discovered photos on his phone of a box that matched one of the boxes Eddy loaded with money and a screenshot of the hospital’s parking lot with the particular meeting spot marked.
Zambrano claimed he loaned his vehicles to two men who were visiting from Mexico during the time of the heist, but investigators believe he is the man who received the cash from Eddy, according to the affidavit.
An arrest warrant for a third suspect has been issued but is sealed, said Brionna Boatright, a spokeswoman for the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
She and other officials declined to say whether any of the stolen money has been recovered.
Eddy is charged with two felony counts of theft. Her jury trial is expected to last five days.
Monarch Casino Resort and Spa operates in Black Hawk, a mountain town about 40 miles west of Denver. The casino is owned by Reno, Nevada-based Monarch Casino and Resort Inc., which in February reported 2022 fourth quarter revenues of $120.5 million.
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