Stone of Blarney, meet head of Lenin

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People pilfer anything in Las Vegas, especially when they’re a little besotted.

There has been a recurring problem with visitors making off with the tip cup at Fuel coffee bar near the Paradise entrance of the Hard Rock Hotel.

Five years ago at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo after-party at the Mirage, guests ambled off with life-size cutouts of rodeo stars that lined the hallway leading into the event. In May, a flatbed truck loaded with costumes and stage props from “Crazy Girls” at the Riviera was taken from the hotel’s parking garage (the truck, absent costumes and props, was soon recovered).

This week, a man made off with the Blarney Stone on display at The D Las Vegas.

He was spotted by security cameras at 2:31 a.m. Wednesday carrying the big rock out of the hotel “like he was walking out with a pizza,” as hotel owner Derek Stevens described the scene.

The still-unidentified casino customer Thursday afternoon returned the artifact, which was originally retrieved from the wall of Blarney’s Castle in County Cork, Ireland.

The man had been gambling and tossing back tequila shots before making off with the stone, located on an open platform at the top of the escalators leading to Andiamo Italian Steakhouse.

The stone famously brings good luck for seven days for those who kiss or touch it and is the last remnant from the casino’s days as the Irish-themed Fitzgeralds.

Stevens, who took over as owner in 2011, reported the stone’s theft during a Periscope post Wednesday afternoon.

“We thought, ‘Let’s get people involved and have some fun with this,’” Stevens said during a phone conversation Wednesday night. “But we did want it returned. It was our last connection to the past.”

Stevens is adept at tapping into uncommon events to generate attention; he made a bet at Golden Nugget on Michigan State to win the NCAA men’s basketball championship last fall, and, if the Spartans had won the title, he would have collected $1 million.

As a result, the Michigan State-Duke semifinal game drew a huge party — with Stevens as the ringleader — at Long Bar in The D.

The Blarney Stone episode was hardly the first such event to spark widespread coverage and conversation. The incident evoked memories of a theft of the statue head of Vladimir Lenin 16 years ago from Red Square at Mandalay Bay.

The history: A 14-foot-tall statue of Lenin was placed at the entrance of the club when it opened in 1999. But after a few weeks, patrons complained that the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, the man who helped form the Soviet Union and launched the Communist era in Russia, was being celebrated in such a way.

Thus, the then-owners of Mandalay Bay, Circus Circus Enterprises, decided to behead Lenin in March 1999 (heads of many Lenin statues were lopped after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989). The statue was further “updated” with white stains to represent pigeon droppings. The head, meanwhile, was hung from the ceiling above the statue.

Shortly thereafter, the head went missing and was not recovered until it was returned anonymously 10 weeks later. It was then encased in ice and stored in the club’s vodka bar, an apt tribute to the strict adherent to the Marxist dogma.

In both of these instances, the crimes were essentially victimless. If nothing else, we have learned that these odd thefts spark limitless free media coverage.

They also serve as a reminder that if you want to keep your stones safe, lock ’em up.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.