VEGAS MYTHS RE-BUSTED: Crooks Robbed a Potato Chip Truck Thinking it Had Casino Chips
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” Mark Twain once said.
A long-standing Vegas myth suggests that foolish robbers once held up a Vegas Chips truck, believing it was filled with casino chips. Wielding knives, they climbed into the truck with driver Rodney Dwayne Bont, 30, and compelled him to take them to an isolated location. They had Bont open the truck's rear, exposing multiple sealed cardboard boxes.
“Open ’em up!” one of the bandits commanded.
However, upon discovering the cargo consisted of potato-style Vegas chips, the bandits became furious. They subsequently assaulted Bont and took all the cash he carried: $680.
The offense garnered national attention in September 1992. The police were equally convinced as the media, seeking the public's assistance in locating the attackers. Vegas Chips paid $10K for a TV ad campaign capitalizing on the crime.
“Commandeering our trucks will only delay service to stores,” said an actor holding a newspaper in one hand and a bag of Vegas Chips in the other. “And that’s not fair to others. Oh, and by the way, our new slogan is ‘You gotta hold ’em, not hold ’em up.'”
The Tale Falls Apart
Just a week later, though, officials solved the case. They concluded that Bont, with three prior felony convictions for theft, fabricated the robbery to settle his gambling debts.
Bont was confronted with a potential five-year prison sentence but negotiated it down to two years for a lesser charge of attempted embezzlement. The public defender informed the judge that Bont was struggling with a gambling issue and was undergoing therapy for it. Bont was incarcerated for just one year, as per records from Nevada State Prison.
"We’re just glad that it was not true, that we didn’t have people out there this stupid,” Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department lieutenant Carl Fruge told the Los Angeles Times in a story that ran Sept. 19, 1992.
However, the real story garnered only a small portion of the attention that the fabricated one received, which is why you can still find it scattered throughout the internet. And Vegas Chips continued airing its advertisement even after the hoax was exposed.
"We still ran with the campaign,” former Vegas Chips president Kevin Holden told KSNV-TV last year. “Actually, when it became a hoax, the story got even bigger. Because then it had a neat little twist in it … And because of that, we got into all the Smith grocery stores in Nevada and all the way up to Utah, and we actually got into all the Vons supermarkets in California.”
The original Vegas Chips closed down in the 1990s. A different company revived the name ten years later but has also since gone out of business.
Just the Facts
Incidentally, Mark Twain never said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” That’s another myth.
What he did say, as quoted by Rudyard Kipling in his 1899 collection of notes, letters, and essays called “From Sea to Sea,” was: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
