Card Players Robbed at Gunpoint : Crime: Newport Beach couple accosted after winning at Bell Gardens casino. They wind up losing cash, jewels and car.

A Newport Beach couple returning home with $4,000 in cash from a Bell Gardens card club were robbed at gunpoint early Wednesday, apparently the latest victims of robbers who follow winners from clubs, police said.

The masked gunman, driving a Jeep, blocked the couple’s car at Marine and Park avenues on Balboa Island as they were driving home from the Bicycle Club Casino at 12:45 a.m.

After ordering them out of the car, he demanded the man’s wallet and the woman’s ring and Rolex watch, said Newport Beach Police Sgt. Andy Gonis.

The robber fled in the couple’s Mercedes-Benz, which was found later, leading police to think another person drove the gunman’s Jeep, Gonis said.

On Feb. 6, two gunmen reportedly followed another Newport Beach man to his home from the Bicycle Club Casino. While he slept, the men entered his home in the 100 block of Promontory Drive West, robbing him of $14,000 in winnings, police said.

Gonis said Newport Beach investigators are discussing the two cases with the card club’s management and security staff to develop leads.

But the Bicycle Club’s general manager, George Hardie, said he did not know anything about the two cases.

“I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, but we don’t know about it,” Hardie said. Hardie said he has several uniformed security guards at the Eastern Avenue card club to protect customers, and, “if there were a problem we would help (police) 500%.”

He said the club warns gamblers to be alert when leaving with cash winnings.

In a similar case, a San Juan Capistrano man driving from the Normandie Casino in Gardena on Feb. 10 with more than $3,500 was shot and killed in his car in Torrance, moments after he called police on his cellular phone saying he feared he was being followed.

In late December, Garden Grove police said, four armed men robbed a woman in front of her garage after she drove home in the early morning from the Bicycle Club. She was not injured, said Garden Grove Detective Dale Walker.

“Unfortunately that’s not uncommon,” said Walker of reports of people being followed from card clubs and robbed.

“It’s not a rare deal. They find someone inside (the card club) who’s winning a lot of money and they follow them home.”