Raid on Gang Finds Casino Heist Evidence : Crime: Money wrappers from Tuesday’s $47,000 Las Vegas robbery are found in South-Central sweep. Four suspects are in custody.

An anti-gang raid in South-Central Los Angeles on Thursday may have inadvertently netted the culprits in a brazen $47,000 casino robbery that this week sent crowds of high rollers diving for cover in Las Vegas, authorities said.

Los Angeles police said they were serving routine search warrants in a neighborhood controlled by a notorious gang when a suspect inside a targeted home panicked and tossed startling--and unexpected--evidence out the window: a plastic bag full of money wrappers from the Aladdin Hotel.

The wrappers--typically used by casinos to hold bundles of bills--were marked $100 and $500 and stamped with the name of the Aladdin, where five bandits in gloves and ski masks on Tuesday night staged a takeover-style robbery before hundreds of gamblers and casino employees.

It was the third casino robbery in the past year that Las Vegas authorities now believe may have been committed by Los Angeles gangs.

“It was just a fortuitous thing,” Los Angeles Police Detective Richard Marks said of Thursday’s early-morning arrests of three men and a 17-year-old boy at the home where the money wrappers were found.

Inside the house, according to Deputy Chief Mark A. Kroeker, police found $600 and a receipt for hamburgers and fries from a Las Vegas Burger King dated Feb. 21, the day before the heist at the Aladdin casino.

Although Kroeker said the evidence provides a strong link between the four suspects and the casino robbery, one resident of the home said the four have an alibi.

“It’s ridiculous,” declared Leola Diaz, who said her brother and two sons were among the four suspects taken away by the swarm of officers who showed up at her home at about 6 a.m.

“How could they be in Vegas and be here at the same time?”

Los Angeles police identified the four arrested as Henry Diaz, 33, Bryon Diaz, 21, Charles Logan, 20, and a 17-year-old juvenile, and said they were booked on fugitive robbery charges stemming from the casino incident.

Las Vegas police said the massive Aladdin gambling hall was packed at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday when the robbers burst through its northwest doors. The room was so jammed, in fact, that scores of people failed at first even to hear the shouted commands to hit the floor over the din from the slot machines and the lounge orchestra, Lt. Mike Hawkins said.

While three of the bandits stood guard, waving pistols and a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, Hawkins said, the other two slipped under the bars of the cashier’s cage. Shoving a cage worker to the ground, they then began stuffing stacks of money into pillowcases they had brought along.

As they fled, their guns trained on the crowd, they tried briefly to abduct a woman who was standing outside the hotel--located on the famed Vegas Strip--passing out Aladdin promotional leaflets.

But when two security guards began to converge on them, Hawkins said, they released the woman and roared away in a Chevrolet van. The van, which turned out to have been stolen on Monday from a Los Angeles motorist, was found abandoned in the parking lot of an apartment complex about a half-mile from the hotel, he said.

No shots were fired, and the entire incident was over within two minutes, the Las Vegas police official said.

Hawkins said the robbery--captured on hotel surveillance videotape--was Las Vegas’ third casino heist in a year. In recent months, bandits have twice robbed the casino cage at the San Remo Hotel casino, which is about a half-block off the Strip.

All three robberies, he said, are believed to have been committed by Southern California street gangs.

LAPD’s Kroeker agreed that the Las Vegas robbery appears to be the latest criminal activity committed outside the state by Los Angeles gangs, which for years have been linked to robberies and narcotics trafficking nationwide. Usually the gangs set up temporary residence in a city first, Kroeker said.

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Thursday’s raid, however, was aimed at curtailing operations of a local Los Angeles gang, police said.

The operation--carried out by the LAPD, the state Department of Corrections and federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents--was the culmination of a four-month homicide and narcotics investigation, Kroeker said.

The deputy chief would not identify the targeted gang, but residents of the Dalton Street neighborhood where Diaz lives said the 2600 block is controlled by the Rollin’ 20s, a faction of the Bloods.

Although the block is lined with neatly-kept one- and two-story homes, the walls are scrawled with the gang’s logo and Diaz’s neighbors say it is common to hear gunfire at night.

The Dalton Street home was one of 23 locations that were raided at dawn on Thursday in South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles, Kroeker said. A total of 12 alleged gang members were arrested on various charges.

Displayed at the police news conference, along with the evidence from the Dalton Street home, were shotguns, semiautomatic assault weapons, several bags of marijuana and an additional $2,600 in cash, all confiscated during the raid.

With most of the casino cash haul still unaccounted for, Los Angeles police said the investigation is continuing and more arrests are expected. Las Vegas police were flying into town to assist.