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Woman who left MGM casino with someone else’s $15,000 fur coat pleads guilty

June 1, 2017 at 6:30 a.m. EDT
MGM National Harbor Casino (Bill O'Leary/Washington Post)

A woman who walked out with someone else’s $15,000 fur from the coat room at the MGM National Harbor has pleaded guilty to theft.

Rosa Aviles, 46, was sentenced to a day in jail, 31 hours of community service and a year of unsupervised probation after entering her guilty plea in Prince George’s County Circuit Court last week.

Aviles, of Southwest Washington, was at the MGM casino in January and checked in a black-and-white checkered jacket into a coat room, according to court documents.

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Hours later, Aviles returned to collect her coat, but the attendant could not find it, court records state. The clerk then allowed Aviles to enter the coat room to find her jacket, after which Aviles selected a full-length gray mink coat and claimed it was hers, police said.

Surveillance footage from the casino showed Aviles walking out of the MGM wearing the coat. The fur coat was reported missing by a diner at Fish, the José Andrés seafood restaurant inside the MGM, according to a search warrant issued for Aviles’s address.

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Months later, a Prince George’s County police officer who worked in the same government building as Aviles recognized her from surveillance photos detectives distributed as part of their investigation.

Police searched Aviles’s home in March and found the missing coat in her room, court documents state.

When reached by phone on Wednesday, Aviles said she wasn’t sure what to say and said she would need to speak to her attorney.

Her attorney did not respond to an email and phone call requesting comment.