I just read this book and loved it. Hollywood will certainly make a film about Cuban born criminal named Jose Vigoa, that literally robbed Las Vegas. The best part of the book, is that you still couldn’t figure out if he was an agent of Cuba, or just a Cuban gone bad. Robert Baer(former CIA employee) was interviewed about this guy, and he thought that Vigoa was an agent that slipped in during the eighties Cuban boat crisis. A sleeper agent that went off the deep end, so to speak. Or maybe he had orders to cause havoc in Vegas?
Either way, Vigoa makes Tony Montana from “Scar Face” look like a child. True crime, to me, is always more fascinating than the fictional stuff, and this guy was larger than life. Not only was he a highly trained and experienced warrior from the cold war era, but he also was an effective drug dealer and violent robber that took down the ‘strip’.
From a tactical thought process point of view, Vigoa was a fascinating study. Mentally, this guy operated like a soldier behind enemy lines, rather than a criminal. And the various stories about his time in Angola and Afghanistan were really interesting windows, upon the mentality of Vigoa. From his use of top Private Investigators to collect information on enemies and associates, to controlling the meeting places (controlling your battle space) where very telling, as to Vigoa’s background and capability. What was really frightening about the guy, was his mental kill-switch. He was not hesitant in this regard, and that is also what made him such a vicious criminal.
This book also talked about the bravery of the guards that defended their Armored cars to the death, against Vigoa’s crew and their vicious take downs. It is a stark reminder, of how dangerous transporting money can be and what the worse case scenario for an armored transport professional could be. I highly recommend this book. –Head Jundi
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Network producer and onetime Miami Herald columnist Huddy tells a gripping story of greed, violence, theft and public relations. Las Vegas had just launched its new blitz of advertising—advancing itself not as Sin City but as a family-friendly vacation destination—when Jose Vigoa (a Cuban-born commando veteran of the Soviet Army) hit town in the late 1990s. Vigoa and a small crew embarked on a violent 16-month crime wave, targeting some of the Strip’s most prominent (and, as Vigoa showed, vulnerable) institutions. A 23-year veteran of the Las Vegas Police Force, Lt. John Alamshaw was charged with finding and capturing the men behind the crime spree—without allowing the robberies to become national news and spoil Vegas’s new image. Huddy traces Vigoa’s personal history from his childhood in Castro’s Cuba to fighting for the Red Army in Afghanistan, his return to Cuba and eventual resettlement in the United States. Then he chronicles the Cuban’s increasingly audacious grabs for Vegas riches and his ultimate sentencing to more than 500 years in prison with no possibility of parole. This debut is a must for true-crime enthusiasts. B&w photos.
