2 men sentenced in $280,000 Aqueduct Racetrack heist

Two men were sentenced for an armed robbery of more than a quarter-million dollars from New York’s famed Aqueduct Racetrack, in a heist that echoed a fictional crime from an Stanley Kubrick film.

Lafayette Morrison and Lamel Miller, both of Queens, were sentenced Thursday to 90 and 108 months in prison, respectively. In Oct. 2022, Morrison was convicted on robbery and conspiracy counts and both were convicted on a weapons count. Miller had previously pleaded guilty to the robbery.

Both men had faced seven years to life in prison.

Morrison was a security guard at the track and served as an "inside man," tipping off his confederates about when cash was being transported to the track’s vault after the Gotham Stakes race in March 2020, according to prosecutors.

Miller and a third person emerged from a stairwell and held employees transporting the money at gunpoint, according to prosecutors. They made off with $284,000 and went to a hotel to divide up the cash.

The heist brought to mind Kubrick’s 1956 film “The Killing,” in which a group of criminals, including a racetrack betting window teller, successfully steal $2 million. The plan eventually falls apart.

“These sentences are the finale to the armed robbery that played out like a Hollywood movie heist,” Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. "Miller and Morrison made the wrong bet in robbing the Aqueduct Racetrack and have been justly punished for their violent crimes."

Originally built in the late 19th century, Aqueduct hosted the Belmont Stakes, part of horse racing’s Triple Crown, in the 1960s when Belmont Park was being renovated, and was the site of Secretariat’s last public appearance in 1973. It annually hosts the Wood Memorial, a key tune-up race for the Kentucky Derby.