Woman charged in $100K watch theft now accused of drugging man, stealing $12K Rolex

A woman arrested Sunday on suspicion of an attempted theft of an expensive watch from a Strip hotel room was due in court the next day for a similar case in which she was accused of stealing a $100,000 timepiece.

Sarah Richards, 32, of Baltimore, was taken into custody at 9 a.m. Sunday at the Aria hotel, 3730 Las Vegas Blvd. South, where Las Vegas police accused her of stealing a $12,000 Rolex luxury watch from a man after drugging his wine in his hotel room.

Richards had been expected to appear in court on Monday for a preliminary hearing on a grand larceny charge. She was accused of stealing a Patek Philippe wristwatch, valued at $100,000, in June after drugging the owner in his Encore hotel room on the Strip. Las Vegas police said.

In the latest case, Richards, who has multiple past arrests related to prostitution, is suspected of grand larceny and administrating a drug to aid the commission of a felony.

About 8 a.m. Sunday, an unidentified man called 911 to report a woman had taken his watch and other items from his room, according to a Metropolitan Police Department arrest report. After hotel security could not locate the watch in his room, they took Richards into custody.

The man described for police how he met Richards downstairs at the Aria, and when she suggested they go up to his room to “hang out,” he agreed, according to the arrest report. They drank some wine and “started cuddling” when the man said Richards told him the Rolex watch would cut her if he left it on.

The man said he removed the watch and placed it under his pillow. Then Richards kept insisting that he drink more wine, after which the man felt tired and “may have dozed off a little on the bed,” police said in the report.

Richards told him she wanted to to take a shower and went into the bathroom. When she returned, the man noticed that his watch was gone from under the pillow, and when he confronted her about it, Richards “suddenly went into a panic and wanted to leave,” the arrest report said.

As Richards left the room and proceeded down the hallway, the man pursued her to the elevators and went down to get security’s attention. He said he noticed she was walking differently, taking shorter steps than before.

While speaking to security guards, the man permitted them to search his room for the Rolex, but they did not find it.

He showed security the remains of the wine he drank and mentioned it was odd that Richards kept urging him to drink more. Officers noticed a “white powdery substance” starting to form in the bottom of the glass, not consistent with wine from a bottle, police reported.

Richards repeatedly denied having the watch. But after officers waved a metal detector toward her genital area, it kept making an alarm sound. Finally, Richards agreed to take the watch out of her genital area, stating that “we were going to find it anyways at jail and she did not want to go through the hassle,” police said in the arrest report.

A female security officer accompanied Richards to a restroom where the suspect pulled the watch out. It was placed into a biohazard bag and later impounded by police.

Police officers also retrieved from the hotel room an opened purple-colored pill capsule with very little white powder left in it, the report said.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.