I get nervous when
it's so quiet in Vegas
The calm before the storm...
INSIDE VEGAS by Steve Miller
AmericanMafia.com
November 9, 2009
On Monday, November 9, attorneys for convicted
racketeer Rick
Rizzolo and his ex-wife
Lisa will ask U.S. Magistrate Judge George Foley to disqualify the long-time
attorneys representing unpaid
beating victim Kirk Henry. They claim to be doing so for several reasons
including Campbell and Hunterton's alleged leaking of a purportedly sealed
deposition to a secret contact in a local newspaper.
Unfortunately, the Rizzolo's attorneys
have it completely wrong in regard to how the Las Vegas Review-Journal
got hold of the deposition. It wasn't "slipped" to them by some conspiring
attorney, it was always a public document.
I discovered the deposition moments after
it was posted on the federal court's Restricted Web Site on Friday, June
5, 2009, and the next morning I sent it to the local media including the
RJ.
Henry's attorneys were not responsible
for the deposition's publication. It was available to reporters for eight
cents per page on http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov,
just no one else in the local media had taken the time to look for it.
(I check the PACER website three times per day for new court documents
in this and other cases I'm following.)
The Rizzolos contend that former United
States Prosecutors Stan Hunterton and Don Campbell and the RJ are
in cahoots.
The Rizzolos contend that the two
lawyers who are now in private practice have conflicts of interests in
representing Henry because Campbell once represented the Review-Journal,
the state's largest daily newspaper; the same paper that printed Lisa Rizzolo's
"confidential" financial information -- information she provided in her
deposition that was posted on a government website.
Supposedly because Campbell knows reporters
at the RJ (I have no direct contact with Campbell) the Rissole financial
were "leaked" to the paper, specifically to columnist John L. Smith, and
for that the two lawyers must go, and Henry must find another lawyer or
lawyers willing to work their ass off for the promise of a distant pay
day. If Judge Foley agrees with the Rizzolos on Monday, Kirk Henry's case
is all but over.
But only my personal subscribers know that
on Saturday June 6, at 7:33 AM, the following Steve Miller Insider E-Brief
was sent to10,000 recipients including every reporter in the state of Nevada.
Attached to the missive was Lisa Rizzolo's entire deposition wherein she
reveals the location of her and her husband's hidden assets; the Cook Islands,
and the crooked lawyers who put the fortune there so it could not be attached
by the IRS and Mr. Henry.
From: SteveMiller4LV@aol.com
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: Should Lisa Rizzolo be prosecuted for hiding assets?
Date: Jun 6, 2009 7:33 AM
Attachments: LisaRizzoloDeposition1,pdf;
LisaRizzoloDeposition2,pdf, KirkHenrysRenewedMotionToCompel.pdf
Will Rick Rizzolo let his ex- wife take the rap for
hiding his ill-gained fortune from creditors?
On Friday, INSIDE VEGAS obtained a copy of Lisa Rizzolo's May 12, deposition.
Lisa is the ex-wife of convicted racketeer Rick Rizzolo who is attempting
to welch on his agreement to pay a quadriplegic $9 million dollars after
he was severely beaten by a manager in front of the couple's now-defunct
Crazy Horse Too topless bar.
Lisa's deposition is part of the discovery process being conducted
by attorneys for beating victim Kirk Henry who was promised $9 million
by Rick in exchange for a light prison sentence. To date, the Rizzolos
have not paid Henry one cent, so efforts are underway to locate the whereabouts
of the Rizzolo's hidden assets.
Henry's attorneys have been thwarted in their attempts to obtain subpoenaed
financial documents from the Rizzolo's criminal defense and divorce attorneys
Dean Patti and Tony Sgro. Upon receipt of their subpoena, Patti and Sgro
suddenly informed the federal court that the documents were destroyed in
a "flood" at their law office, and can no longer be produced.
Henry's attorneys have also subpoenaed gambling records from the MGM,
Hard Rock, Mirage, and Palms casinos where Rick Rizzolo is known as a "whale,"
ia, someone with a million dollar line of credit.
Lisa's deposition (full document attached to this email) includes information
about secret loans to Rick made from her accounts in the Cook Islands.
It will now be up to U.S. Federal Judge Phillip Pro to decide whether
Lisa is obstructing justice for conspiring to hide her assets, or to sanction
her family's attorneys Patti and Sgro for contempt of court for conjuring
up a phony "flood" to prevent them from complying with a court order..
Nonetheless, it's obvious that Rick Rizzolo is cowardly hiding his
ill-gotten fortune under his ex-wife's skirt tails. - SM |
The following day, this column appeared
in the Review-Journal:
And on Monday, June 8, this INSIDE VEGAS
column appeared on AmericanMafia.com: "Hiding
behind his ex-wife's skirt tails, Rick Rizzolo avoids paying his financial
obligations, but will Lisa Rizzolo get stuck paying for his actions?"
which also included Lisa's supposed "confidential" financial information.
So it amazes me that her attorneys have singled out the RJ when
the information was so readily available to the public without any kind
of help from Henry's legal team.
Furthermore, doesn't the public have the
right to know where the couple hid their assets? It's true that Rick and
Lisa owe the IRS over $7 million in unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest,
and they also owe the City of Las Vegas $2.3 million in fines. That's public
money!
Following my E-Brief, then Smith's column,
Lisa in a supplement to her Motion
to disqualify Campbell and Hunterton, on September 1, 2009, said the disclosure
of her financial information invaded her "right to privacy," caused her
"annoyance," "humiliation," "embarrassment," and "feelings of oppression,"
and the disclosure also exposed her to problems within her family because
her relatives were not supposed to know the information, and that caused
her mental distress. For this, she contends that attorneys who have loyally
worked for Henry on contingency for over eight years should be disqualified
for "leaking" information as to where she hid her ill-gotten assets.
But it wasn't Campbell and Hunterton's
fault the information got out. It was the fault of Lisa's own incompetent
attorneys at Patti
& Sgro who failed to make sure the court agreed to seal their client's
deposition. Had they done their job, I would never have been able to access
the deposition on the Internet.
It's so obvious that this Monday's hearing
and the lengthy court filings leading up to it, are the latest in
a long series of ploys to stall the eventual resolution of this protracted
case. It's also very obvious that today's hearing is a sham, and a waste
of taxpayer's money.
Kirk Henry's neck was broken by one of
the Rizzolo's goons over a disputed $88 bar tab back in 2001, and he has
yet to receive one penny of the Rizzolo's hidden fortune. The Crazy Horse
Too manager who beat him up has since been released from prison, the Crazy
Horse Too was closed
by the city after dozens of other beatings
and robberies, and the property seized by the feds. But miraculously,
the Rizzolos are still in total
control of their money!
The couple also owes the IRS, but the always
aggressive agency seems not to be that interested in collecting the court
ordered $7 million if it involves assets now stashed in the Cook Islands.
(Could you imagine the IRS letting you or me off the hook so easily?)
This could be because the Rizzolos used
the brother of a federal court judge as their asset
protection lawyer, and that lawyer's brother was appointed judge for
life by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who is the business partner
of Rizzolo's former attorney and corporate agent Jay Brown. Reid also has
two sons employed at Lionel Sawyer & Collins, the same law firm where
the asset protection lawyer works and the firm that hid the Rizzolo's assets
off shore.
If the above information became known,
it could expose the Senator to embarrassment the year before his re-election,
hence my theory that the IRS and other federal authorities are handling
this case with kid gloves, and that this case has been purposefully moribund
by the inaction of the federal government.
So with such friends in high places, Rick
and Lisa go
about their business obviously believing they've pulled off the crime
of the century, while their fortune draws interest in off shore banks.
In the meantime, Rick and Lisa's delinquent
26 year old son Dominic, with the help of a juiced local judge (Jackie
Glass), got away with trying to murder a man during a botched 2006 extortion
attempt. His parents even got their judge to cancel
Dominic's community service requirement which was a part of his probation-only
sentence!
The last two weeks have been the quietest
time in the history of the Henry vs. Rizzolo case. But a lot may be happening
behind the scenes that we're not supposed to know about.
There's been no news coverage of the fact
that the Crazy Horse's mortgage was bought last summer at an FDIC auction
by a group controlled by one of Rizzolo's enemies, San Francisco office
building developer Luke Brugnara, and that Brugnara says he plans on foreclosing
before the end of the year.
Even with Brugnara's foreclosure looming,
a suspicious buyer has surfaced who is reportedly offering to pay $9 million
for the shuttered topless bar if he can get a quick liquor license from
Jay Brown's business and law partner LV Mayor Oscar Goodman. (Goodman was
also one of Rizzolo's former lawyers and his coperate agent.) The suspicious
buyer is coincidently from Chicago, a town where Rizzolo
has many ties within organized crime circles, and the feds -- instead
of raising a red flag -- are so anxious to sell the joint and end an embarrassing
episode in the governent's history that they don't seem to care, or be
seriously interested in properly vetting the guy.
Who, other than the mob, would offer to
pay three times what the place is worth according to the real estate company
assigned by the court to market the carcass of the once-popular night club?
The families who controlled the Rizzolos
when they were in the adult business want the Crazy Horse Too back in business
in order to save face, say my sources, and these families would do almost
anything including paying off every local politician, parole officer, lower
court judge, and federal official in sight to succeed.
In the meantime, we wait to find out if
the federal judge will order Rick's parole officer Eric
Christiansen to disclose the financial information he was required
to gather but is refusing to divulge, and whether Rick and Lisa will be
forced by Judge Foley to pay
Kirk Henry's legal bills generated after Rick tried to become his own
lawyer and filed fifteen frivolous documents with the court that all had
to be answered.
While this is happening, one of my best
confidential mob sources just outted himself and voluntarily left Witness
Protection. I may soon be given the go ahead to identify him and write
about the amazingly accurate information he provided INSIDE VEGAS for over
eight years regarding the Crazy Horse, Rizzolo, and his crew.
Hopefully, this is just the calm before
the storm.
