It Didn’t Stay Here: Pa. official hit for okaying trip to Las Vegas Mirage

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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It Didn't Stay Here

Mirage Resort (via MGM Resorts International)

I guess when you live in  hardscrabble northeastern Pennsylvania–especially the area around Easton–any trip to Las Vegas by government workers on the public dime can look suspect. Amy Trapp, the HR director of Northampton County, Pa., of which Easton is the county seat, is on the hot seat for $2,343 spent by two of her workers to fly to Las Vegas, stay at the fancy Mirage Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and attend a training seminar.

Although it doesn’t seem that any rules were broken, the trip has caused a political brouhaha far from Las Vegas. So I’m nominating Trapp for my new list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The list–a play on that great Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here“–consists of folks having problems somewhere else for things that happened in Vegas. Earlier nominations can be found elsewhere on this page. Continue reading →

Shadowy outfit rating medical pros operates in Las Vegas

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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Shadowy outfit raring medical pros

Material from Consumers’ Research Council of America hanging in the waiting room of a Las Vegas dental practice

As someone New To Las Vegas, I’ve had to get a new set of medical professionals to help keep me alive and functioning: doctors, specialists, dentists and the like. So it pains me to report this. On the walls of offices and waiting rooms I keep seeing laudatory plaques and literature issued by a shadowy ratings group with a misleading name and banal standards set up by a California trophy maker for, it seems, the purpose of selling overpriced plaques.

The group calls itself Consumers’ Research Council of America. Now, if you get that confused with Consumers Union, the publisher of the highly respected magazine Consumer Reports, it’s probably no surprise. And if you think the address Consumers’ Research Council of America lists on its website of Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington just four blocks from the White House is a prestige location, think again: It’s simply a mail drop at a UPS store. And don’t bother calling the phone number on the home page either. It is answered by a tape that won’t take a message.

The image elsewhere on this page is that of a hanging on the waiting room wall of a Las Vegas dentist I mercifully will not name. It’s far from the first Consumers’ Research Council of America “endorsement” I have seen around Sin City.

Don’t believe me? Just Google “Las Vegas” and “Consumers’ Research Council of America” (make sure to include the apostrophe), or click on this link. You will get scores of hits of medical and other professionals touting this big honor. Hanging out in the suburbs? Google “Henderson” and “Consumers’ Research Council of America” and you’ll get dozens. Hell, even Googling “Summerlin” (a well-to-do section of the Las Vegas area) and “Consumers’ Research Council of America” pulls up a bunch.

Consumers’ Research Council of America operates nationally. For proof, try my little Google search trick inserting any city in the country you want.

The reason I know something about this is that I wrote up Consumers’ Research Council of America and its m.o. in 2009 for Forbes.com. You can read that story by clicking here. From my further research, it doesn’t seem that things have changed too much.

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It Didn’t Stay Here: Las Vegas meeting leads to New York convictions

Posted on by July 27, 2017
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It Didn't Stay Here

William T. “Billy” Walters (via cardplayer.com)

Even before becoming New To Las Vegas, I had heard of Billy Walters. He was a big-time Vegas-based gambler–profiled in 2011 on 60 Minutes as “the most dangerous sports bettor in Nevada.”

Turns out Walters, whose full name is William T. Walters, also was a big-time stock investor. A little too big time, I might suggest. Last month, he was convicted in federal court in New York City on all 10 criminal counts he faced involving insider trading in publicly traded dairy company Dean Foods.

According to the indictment and rather abundant trial testimony, Walters used confidential information over six years to profit to the tune of $43 million, either by buying shares ahead of the release of good news or selling them just before bad stuff became known publicly. Walters used tips fed him by Thomas C. Davis, Dean Foods board member and sometimes chairman who was heavily indebted to Walters and who went state’s evidence as part of his own guilty plea to a dozen charges.

Walters, 70, who professed innocence, will appeal after he’s sentenced in July. (UPDATE: He was sentenced on July 27 to five years in prison and a $10 million fine.) He also earns a nomination to my new list, It Didn’t Stay Here. This is a roster of people who got into trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas. The still-embryonic list–a riff on the celebrated Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here“–can be found elsewhere on this page.

How much of what Walters was convicted of actually took place in Las Vegas isn’t completely clear to me. I didn’t attend the four-week trial in Manhattan, and daily news accounts of the proceedings were intermittent. But according to the indictment–remember, Walters was convicted on all counts, so the jury found the totality of the charges convincing–Sin City was definitely a venue for some of his purported dirty dealings.

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It Didn’t Stay Here: Illinois politician sentenced to jail for Las Vegas junkets

Posted on by April 17, 2021
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jail for Las Vegas junkets

Oliver Hamilton (courtesy East St. Louis Township, Ill.)

For years, I have been writing up dodgy charities I have encountered, often after getting a telephone cold call asking for money and then doing a little research. Las Vegas and other parts of Nevada are home to paid telemarketers operating nationally who often receive as much as 90% of the money donated in the name of the charity. (This scurrilous fact is rarely volunteered to the person being called.)

This blog and my previous one, NewToSeattle.com, get a fair amount of traffic from other persons solicited who Google the name of the charity and come upon my musings. Believe it or not, some of these charities have kept calling me asking for money even after I have roasted them online. This is why I have nominated them for a list I started called America’s Stupidest Charities. This is only opinion, of course, but what can be dumber than that? You can see the list of nominations elsewhere on this site.

But New To Las Vegas, I see the need for a second list. The title: “It Didn’t Stay Here,” inspired by the famously cheeky marketing slogan of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” This list will consist of folks and firms getting into trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas.

My first nominee: Oliver Hamilton of East St. Louis, Ill.

A now ex-elected township supervisor, Hamilton. 63, was sentenced earlier this month in his local federal court to five years in prison for spending taxpayer money on, among other things, trips to Las Vegas. The guilty plea to federal wire fraud for embezzling public money covered improper spending of at least $40,000. But the Belleville News-Democrat, the Illinois newspaper that uncovered the scandal by diligently making public-record requests, said Hamilton charged at least $230,000 in personal purchases over a four-year period. Continue reading →