Has Las Vegas become the fraud capital of America?

Posted on by March 4, 2024
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Las Vegas fraud capitalThere was the lawyer who collected a whopping $500 million after promising hundreds of investors around the world a 50% annual return in what prosecutors call a classic Ponzi fraud scheme. The telemarketer who raised huge amounts of money nationwide for faux charities. The promoter who swindled small business owners everywhere out of nearly $12 million by collecting fees for promising grants that never materialized. The seven-person ring that collected $10 million million in fees after sending out thousands of phony prize notifications redeemable upon payment of small fees that can add up. The man who swindled more than $3 million in security deposits across the country. The tax preparer caught collecting nearly $10 million in phony refunds. A plethora of other cases too numerous to mention, especially COVID-19 loan refund fraud and identity theft cases.

Besides their fraudulent audacity, these perps had two other big things in common. They all lived and/or worked in the Las Vegas area. And criminal litigation involving their alleged deeds transpired within the past year.

Now, as epidemiologists might say, that’s quite a cluster of societal illness cases in a single geographic region. It’s more than enough to ask this basic question: Has Vegas become the fraud capital of America? Continue reading →

Smaller Reno area matches Las Vegas in Forbes 400 members

Posted on by October 5, 2023
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Forbes 400The 42nd edition of the annual Forbes 400 list was published yesterday, and there was some shuffling in the Las Vegas area ranks. Two heavies climbed on, and one fell off. Net result: The number of local swells rose from three to four. But that simply matches the count in much-smaller cross-state rival Reno, which saw an even bigger increase.

The largest local loser, if that’s the correct categorization for someone still worth $2.7 billion, is Phil Ruffin, the 90-year-old owner of Circus Circus, Treasure Island and 50% of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, shared with Donald J. Trump. According to Forbes, Ruffin’s net worth fell $300 million from $3 billion last year. As it turns out, $2.9 billion is this year’s cut-off.

Returning to the venerable list of the richest Americans are Andrew Cherng, 76, and Peggy Cherng, 75, founder, owners and co-CEOs of the Panda Express restaurant chain. Each ranked No. 366 with net worths of $3.1 billion, or $6.2 billion for the household. Both had been on previous Forbes 400 lists, but not last year’s.

Miriam Adelson, 77, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, remains the richest woman in all of Las Vegas and all of Nevada. With her family she’s ranked No. 24, worth $32.8 billion, up a nifty $4.9 billion from 2022 when she was No. 26.

Rounding out the Las Vegas area contingent, Nancy Walton Laurie, 72, of the Walmart Waltons, ranked No. 88 with a stash of $9.3 billion. That’s five clicks and $1.6 billion better than last year. Continue reading →

Las Vegas Review-Journal paid print circulation drops another 12% in year

Posted on by September 25, 2023
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Las Vegas Review-JournalIn December 2022, I posted here my “Las Vegas predictions for 2023.” Many of them were satirical tongue-in-cheek, like “Elon Musk bans references on Twitter to Las Vegas, but doesn’t give a reason.” But here’s one prediction that was dead serious: “The average paid print circulation of the Las Vegas Review-Journal falls below 40,000, down from 232,000 in 2015 despite a sharp increase in local population.”

In yesterday’s Sunday paper, the RJ published its yearly legally-required-under-oath circulation statement for a period ending in August. The average paid print circulation for the preceding 12 months fell from 45,383 to 39,833.

Whatdayaknow? The 5,550-copy drop amounted to a sharp one-year decline of 12%.

Paid digital subscriptions did not take up the slack, rising only 1,740 from 17,517 in the prior period to to 19,257. So the combined paid print and digital subscription fell 6%, from 62,900 to 59,090. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Flooding, casino hacks give Las Vegas a far-flung P.R. bashing

Posted on by September 22, 2023
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Las VegasThat catchy Las Vegas marketing mantra of recent invention, “What happens here, stays here,” was never true, of course. Readers of this blog are well aware of my view from all the examples I have cited since becoming New To Las Vegas of folks in trouble elsewhere for something that happened locally. (My running list, It Didn’t Stay Here, can be found nearby.)

But this applies institutionally as well as individually. Thanks to some recent happenings, Summer 2023, which ends tonight at 11:50 p.m. PT, likely can’t go away fast enough for Vegas image-makers. Their success over time at stirring worldwide interest in this remote desert spot full of scorpions leaves them, tracking Shakespeare’s immortal words from Hamlet referencing the results of incompetent bomb-makers: hoist by their own petards.

I just did some Google searches. The two recent instances of Las Vegas-area flooding–the first in mid-August from Hurricane Hilary and the second over Labor Day weekend from the annual monsoon–generated 5.74 million hits. This is an astounding number given that by major world flood disaster standards, the loss of life and damage here, while real in places, rounded to zero, largely thanks to decades of serious flood-control work. The rains materially damaged maybe 0.04% of the metropolitan area, most notably the tiny town of Mount Charleston, 40 miles west of and 5,000 feet above Las Vegas. The recent flooding in Libya killed thousands and wiped out whole villages–most of them little known outside the country, since they don’t have the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority working for them. A Google search produced 13.5 million hits–barely double the Vegas return despite a level of tragedy maybe a million-fold greater.

The computer hacks that hit the Caesars Entertainment and the MGM Resorts International chains, resulting at the latter in long check-in lines and winnings paid out by hand, returned 6.32 million Google hits. This, too, is an amazing number. It seems all those photos and accounts of frustrated pleasure-seekers unable to quickly gamble, drink or indulge in other vices proved irresistible for the editorial gatekeepers of the Internet determined to prove the continuing relevance of the Ten Commandments. Continue reading →

With ‘Oppenheimer’ and radiation, Las Vegas stakes its claim to nuclear tourism

Posted on by July 2, 2024
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nuclear tourism

Movie poster for ‘Oppenheimer’

See update at end of story

I recently saw the movie “Oppenheimer,” about the rise, fall and rise again of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 to end World War II. Despite its three-hour length (preceded by a half-hour of utterly mindless ads and trailers), it’s a terrific flick. The movie is sure to be up for a bunch of Oscars with a clever screenplay by director Christopher Nolan, and riveting performances by Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer and especially Robert Downey Jr. He steals every single scene he’s in as the villainous arch-nemesis Lewis Strauss.

Much of the action in the movie takes place in the classrooms (and bedrooms) of Berkeley, where Oppenheimer taught; in New Mexico where the bomb was finally developed and test-fired, and in Washington, D.C., where Oppenheimer and Strauss both experienced professional rhapsody and ruin.

Nothing in the film took place in Nevada, where I live. But in many ways, Las Vegas stands to be the biggest beneficiary of what could be called a renewed interest in nuclear tourism. In fact, Sin City has been been feasting on dangerously unleashed atoms in odd and strange ways for more than 70 years, and, unsurprisingly, not always to its advantage. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Prosecutors in New York–not Nevada–indict Las Vegas faux charity fundraiser

Posted on by December 11, 2024
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Richard Zeitlin indictment in New York

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Richard Zeitlin is a Las Vegas resident who for years has been a telemarketing force behind what I call faux charities. These are political action committees soliciting nationally that sound like worthy causes but aren’t and spend almost nothing collected from clueless donors on the stated mission.

Zeitlin, 53, finally has been indicted criminally on fraud charges carrying a maximum 20-year prison sentence. But not by any prosecutor in Nevada, a state where consumer protection long has been an alien concept, regulators don’t enforcement fundraising disclosure laws and Zeitlin has operated questionable cold-call operations for decades.

Instead, Zeitlin was just charged by federal prosecutors in the far-away Southern District of New York, where these things are taken a little more seriously. The four counts include wire fraud and obstruction of justice charges, the latter for allegedly ordering cronies to delete electronic messages on the very day in May that federal authorities issued subpenas for them.

A separate federal indictment also in New York accuses one Richard Piaro, 73, of Fredonia, Wisc., with wire and mail fraud for serving as treasurer to four faux charity PACs that a different pending civil lawsuit suggests used Zeitlin’s operation for fundraising. They bear the names Americans for the Cure of Breast Cancer, Association for Emergency Responders & Firefighters, U.S. Veterans Assistance Foundation and Standing by Veterans. Piaro’s indictment says the four raised $28 million from donors over five years.

Because of his out-of-state legal difficulties, Zeitlin becomes the latest candidate for my long-running list, It Didn’t Stay Here. This is a roster of people who has been in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas. The list is my barbed refutation of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” the famous marketing slogan the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority used for many years to help draw mischief-makers to Sin City. Nearby is the list, which also includes Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr.. Continue reading →