Casino profile details luxurious lifestyle of former Fry's executive
By Lisa Fernandez / SJ Mercury News 01/13/2009
When "Mr. S" showed up in Las Vegas, bellboys, butlers and blackjack dealers made sure they were prepared for the high-rolling Fry's Electronics executive flying in from San Jose with his long list of demands.
Fiji water, grouped in bottles of three. Golden raisins and warmed mixed nuts. Aramis cologne and badger hair shaving brush. Lint-free towels. Dom Perignon Rose champagne and Kurosawa Sake in the fridge. And never, under any circumstances, approach him from behind.
If they didn't want to face Mr. S's wrath, maids knew to arrange bowls of Glitterati Mentissimo peppermints adorned with a single rose throughout his suite, and to stock his shower with Nioxin shampoo for "fine and thinning hair." White vases were a no-no — he considered them bad luck.
None of those rules will apply when Mr. S — aka Ausaf "Omar" Umar Siddiqui — is arraigned Thursday in federal court in San Jose on charges that the former Fry's executive laundered about $6 million in kickbacks from vendors to pay off his enormous gambling debts in Las Vegas.
Mr. S's guest profile, obtained by the Mercury News, is outlined in seven pages of do's, don'ts and "not under any circumstances" culled by hotel and casino employees, offering a rare glimpse into the glitzy world of big-time gamblers. The profile, which never mentions Siddiqui by name, was provided by a casino employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job. Siddiqui, a
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42-year-old Palo Alto bachelor, was among a select group of high-rollers whose whims are catered to.
One lawsuit from Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino says Siddiqui lost nearly $9 million in just one sitting of baccarat. Another suit claims he lost $2 million in one day at the Palms Casino in Vegas. Court records show the IRS tracked about $120 million Siddiqui spent in three years at just two casinos, the Venetian and MGM.
"Casinos give you free hotel rooms, free food, free drinks, all that stuff," said David Schwartz, director of the Gaming Studies Research Center at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. "It's pretty much what the players expect. If they don't get the mints they want, the players will just go somewhere else."
Siddiqui has declined several requests for interviews, by phone, in person and through his civil attorney, Eric Sidebotham.
Fry's vendors and employees have told the Mercury News Siddiqui was not a manager to be crossed. And the hotel guest profile describes Siddiqui as a gambler who insisted on getting his way.
Once, two years ago, according to an internal e-mail at one Vegas hotel, Siddiqui demonstrated dramatically to hotel personnel just how flimsy he thought their clothes hangers were, shaking his closet hangers so hard that his pants flung off and demanding the hotel buy better brands. The same e-mail recounts how Siddiqui fumed after it took 40 minutes to deliver a room service order for egg rolls and pot stickers.
Hotel butlers shared notes, reminding each other that when Mr. S visited, "no one is to enter the suite unescorted or unannounced except the butler assigned." And when Siddiqui was entertaining, the notes remind staff that the "butler will need to maintain a presence, if not in the room, then in the pantry with the door open so requests can be heard." The staff knew when to leave, too. Siddiqui will "dismiss you by requesting privacy. He will be very direct with this request. Leave until he contacts you."
Siddiqui never drank when he was gambling, one casino employee said. However, his guest profile shows, he liked his room stocked with Grey Goose vodka, Crown Royal, Johnnie Walker Black, Jack Daniels, Grand Marnier, Kahlua, Bailey's Irish Cream liqueur, Dom Perignon, Kurosawa Sake and expensive cognac bottles of Hardy Perfection and Remy Martin Louis XIII.
Siddiqui also was quite particular about his body. Hotel employees had a long shopping list at Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Macy's, and, yes, Target and Wal-Mart, if need be, to purchase a Philips Norelco Bodygroom shaver with a fog-free shaving mirror, a Sonicare Elite 7500 Series toothbrush, Clinique facial scrub for men, knuckle Band-Aids, original ChapStick, Crest mint gel toothpaste with tartar protection and Trojan Magnum condoms.
He was just as fastidious about his clothing. He ordered hotel employees to buy him socks made of 70 percent silk and 30 percent cotton. Housecleaning was to inspect his meticulously organized closet for dirty clothing and send it for dry-cleaning, including his jeans. Starch and creasing were forbidden. His shoes were to be polished and returned to the closet, laces tied, wooden inserts replaced.
Siddiqui also expected his luxury suite to look a certain way. Roses in vases of any color other than white, and scented candles were scattered artfully throughout the room. The TVs should be set to ESPN; he especially liked Ultimate Fighting Championship matches. "Porn" had to be available in the bedroom, and the rotating bed was to be turned down constantly, with a light blanket, and a comforter placed nearby.
For breakfast, Siddiqui liked Earl Grey tea with four packets of sugar and 3/4 teaspoon cream, three eggs over easy, hash browns, sourdough toast, orange juice and a plate of papaya, mango and pineapple.
And while casino employees were sent scrambling to fill Mr. S's shopping list, there was one request he required from the electronics giant he helped build over the past two decades: The V3 cell phone batteries and BR50 desktop charger had to be purchased at Fry's.
>> Fired Fry's VP enjoyed high life in Vegas, but couldn't beat the odds
By Patrick May / SJ Mercury News 12/27/2008
LAS VEGAS — How did he do it?
How in the world did Omar Siddiqui manage to win — and lose — millions and millions of dollars here at blackjack tables and baccarat salons, sometimes within a few hours?
Bravado, say the bartenders at the Palms Casino Resort who see guys like Siddiqui every night. A mathematical mind, say fellow gamblers clustered around a main-floor baccarat table Friday at 1:30 a.m.
And a huge and — until recently — bottomless bankroll, spending in a matter of three years more than $120 million at two Vegas casinos, according to federal investigators who last week alleged the fired Fry's Electronics vice president defrauded the San Jose retailer out of $65 million through an elaborate kickback scam.
Ausaf Umar Siddiqui, who most know as Omar, has declined requests through his attorney for interviews, and representatives of the casinos wouldn't comment directly about his case. But his world of extravagance and extraordinary risks is far from unique to the Vegas regulars who see people like Omar Siddiqui here every hour of every day.
At the Palms casino — as well as the Venetian, the Las Vegas Sands and the MGM Grand over on The Strip — the 42-year-old Palo Alto resident cut a wide swath through the glitz and glitter, according to news reports and civil and criminal complaints. As a so-called "whale,'' cash-flush and floating through casinos more than willing to help
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separate him from his money, Siddiqui was a swaggering high roller, though by no means the highest.
"People can lose hundreds of thousands in an hour; I've seen it happen,'' said Fabian Perez, shaking a dirty martini early Friday morning at the Island Bar, a cocktail oasis in the middle of blackjack hoopla and clanging slot machines. Perez said he recently saw a player lose $350,000 on a "marker," or casino credit line. "He went over to the cashier, came back carrying a bundle of cash and just threw it all at the baccarat table, then walked away."
Dealers and pit bosses at the Palms have read about the whale from Fry's, which has a Las Vegas store on The Strip. They say if Siddiqui were playing for high stakes, he would have been ensconced in The Mint, a plush and semiprivate chamber where the baccarat bets go up to $10,000.
"He'd probably have his own table," said Howard Stutz, who covers gambling for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "maybe a private baccarat salon, with free dinners and shows and a host taking care of his every need. And while by no means was he the biggest high roller, with the kind of money he was betting they were paying attention to him.''
At the Venetian, one floor supervisor at the entrance to the high-rollers' salon said Siddiqui would show up regularly.
There, removed from the bustle of the main gaming areas, a warren of small well-appointed rooms awaited the baccarat bunch. The chairs are plush, the carpet thick, the murals a kitschy travelogue through a romanticized Renaissance, heavy on the Grand Canal of Venice. Embroidered gold-and-green curtains are slung over make-believe windows. Down the hall, an elaborate men's room contains a small anteroom with a massage table at the ready. A private lounge features a warm buffet, flat-panel television sets and a handsome back-bar shimmering with bottles of 30-year-old single-malt Scotch.
At the Palms, the high-stakes blackjack players ride the high-speed elevator to the plush Playboy Club on the 52nd floor. There, in the company of gold-plated members like Matt Damon and Snoop Dogg, taking breaks in a men's room with gold-plated urinal fixtures, they play blackjack with cotton-tailed bunnies, kick it in the strobe-lit sofa pits, and gaze out over the Vegas constellation splayed below.
But bet heavily as he might, Siddiqui still probably dwelled a ways off the top of the gaming food chain, says Chetan Toraskar, a sales associate at a high-end jewelry shop off the Playboy elevator. Toraskar has seen it all in his store: "Guys selling jewelry to pay off gambling debts; guys buying $6,000 watches for girls they don't even know." He says his wife works at the Venetian, where "she sees people losing 2 and 3 million in a day, then just walking away from it. She has hosts call her all the time saying, 'Comp this guy this or that.' ''
But he sees a darker side to the flow of high-rolling humanity outside his store. "People think they can do whatever they want when they're in Vegas. Their language and behavior changes.''
And, a fellow clerk chimes in, "They can lose their morals and values.''
Simon Vo, longtime baccarat player from Houston, watched the main-floor table early Friday morning, thinking about the big spender from Fry's who reportedly loved this game, a favorite of European and Asian gamblers, the game of James Bond.
"As a number-crunching financial guy, maybe like Siddiqui, this game is very attractive to me,'' says Vo, who never met the valley executive but has followed his story. "It takes three things to be good at it — discipline, a nice bankroll and patience, and most people don't have all three.''
The problem, says Vo, is Siddiqui apparently "had the bankroll, but not the discipline.''
And in a game where each hand averages three seconds, that can be a deadly deficit.
"Baccarat is one of the fastest games,'' says Vo. "But if you know your math, you can make a killing here. You just have to know when to stop.'' Vo has a theory. Instead of quitting when he was up 50 percent, Siddiqui failed to take his "get up and go'' money and shove off from the table. Why?
"He didn't start off as a vice president at Fry's,'' says Vo. "He worked his way up. Here, too, it seems he was trying to master something in Vegas and beat another system. He'd already beaten one in San Jose; he knew it would catch up with him, so he kept on digging deeper here in Vegas.
"He was chasing a lifestyle, and he got caught up in the game.'' |
