State wants answers in case of Binion chips

State gaming agents plan to question Horseshoe Club officials about the circumstances that led Ted Binion to take more than $3 million in chips from the hotel-casino two months before his murder.

"I'm going to have agents contact the Horseshoe to try to determine how those chips were removed," Gaming Control Board Chairman Steve DuCharme said Thursday. "Under normal circumstances, the disappearance of over $3 million in chips should alert someone in the internal accounting system."

DuCharme said Horseshoe records should show the $3 million discrepancy.

"Normally, casinos have pretty tight controls over chips and tokens because they're treated like cash," he said.

But Horseshoe Club President Becky Behnen told the Sun Wednesday that the chips don't show up on the Horseshoe's books.

Behnen said her brother removed the chips, along with as much as $4 million in silver he was storing at the Horseshoe, in July just before she took the reins of the downtown hotel-casino from her other brother, Jack Binion.

Regulators forced Ted Binion to give up his 20 percent interest in the Horseshoe because of his ties to slain mob figure Herbie Blitzstein. Binion was murdered Sept. 17.

Behnen said her brother's estate returned the chips last week at her request.

Attorneys Richard Wright and Harry Claiborne, who represent the $30 million estate, said they had been under the impression the chips were old and out of circulation.

But Behnen said the chips she received from the estate look the same as those in circulation at the Horseshoe.

"These are live chips," she said. "You could walk up to any table and play them."

Behnen said today that not all of the chips her brother took from the Horseshoe were returned.

"We know that some of the chips are missing," she said. "Some people have been spotted trying to cash them."

Binion kept the chips at his 60-acre ranch in the two months before his murder. But after his death, the estate moved them back to Las Vegas for safe-keeping.

There was speculation that some of the chips could have been stolen while they were at the ranch.

James J. Brown, another lawyer for the estate, acknowledged Thursday that he believed some of the chips were indeed live.

But he said it appeared to him that Binion didn't believe they had any value because the former casino executive had been keeping them in the open in an old tool room at his Pahrump house.

Brown said he returned the chips because Behnen told him they were Horseshoe property.

"We had no reason to keep them as long as they said we didn't own them," Brown said.

Brown added that Jack Binion didn't recall seeing the chips in the Horseshoe's inventory when he sold his interests to Behnen.

Ted Binion had removed the chips and the silver from the Horseshoe with the help of Montana contractor Rick Tabish, who now is reported to be a suspect in his murder.

The silver was buried in an underground vault built by Tabish outside the ranch on property Binion owned in the heart of downtown Pahrump.

Tabish and two other men were arrested less than 36 hours after Binion's death after they allegedly had dug up the silver and were preparing to haul it away on a large truck in the middle of the night. They are facing attempted theft charges in Pahrump.

The coroner has ruled Binion's death a homicide. Drug tests found lethal levels of heroin and the prescription sedative Xanax in his body.

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