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Inside Vegas - Steve Miller

Steve Miller is a former Las Vegas City Councilman. In 1991, the readers of the Las Vegas Review Journal voted him the "Most Effective Public Official" in Southern Nevada. Visit his website at: http://www.SteveMiller4LasVegas.com


Rizzolo Indicted - Again!

His alleged daughter says he went back into
the strip club business after promising not to


   http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2014/07/10/former-strip-club-owner-indicted/

INSIDE VEGAS by Steve Miller
AmericanMafia.com
July 14, 2014

LAS VEGAS - Just when we thought we'd heard the last of fallen strip club owner Rick Rizzolo, he gets indicted for income tax evasion for the second time in a decade. As indicated in the 2007 INSIDE VEGAS photo by Mike Christ used this week by CBS Las Vegas, INSIDE VEGAS has consistently been reporting the antics of Rizzolo for quite a while.

(The late Buffalo Jim Barrier's untimely death the day following Rizzolo's first release from prison is memorialized in this haunting song.)

The latest indictment stems from a long list of broken conditions Rizzolo agreed to comply with in his 2007 plea agreement, including not being permitted to own or operate or have any involvement with any strip clubs. Rizzolo was the prior owner of the Crazy Horse Too strip clubs in Las Vegas and Philadelphia.

According to the Associated Press, "A former Las Vegas strip club owner who served prison time for a federal tax evasion conviction seven years ago has been indicted again on charges he tried to evade paying more than $2.5 million in taxes from 2006 - 2011.

Federal agents arrested Rick Rizzolo Wednesday after a grand jury indicted him on two counts of attempt to evade and defeat payment of employment and income taxes. He's scheduled to make an initial court appearance before a U.S. magistrate in Las Vegas Thursday. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. The indictment accuses Rizzolo of trying to evade paying taxes he owned for 2000, 2002 and 2006 by lying to the Internal Revenue Service and hiding funds and property in the names of others."

On Thursday, July 10, after he spent the night in the Clark County Detention Center, Rizzolo and his attorney Sigal Chattah appeared in Las Vegas Federal Court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Koppe and pleaded not guilty.  Judge Koppe ordered Rizzolo released on his own recognizance with several conditions including surrendering his passport and not leaving Nevada.

Judge Koppe set his trial for Sept. 15.

Rizzolo's latest attorney, Israeli born Sigal Chattah (left), is expected to argue the same failed argument at trial this time as attorneys for Rick, Lisa, and Kimtran Rizzolo argued in the past;  that Rick has long claimed he had offers for the Las Vegas club of between thirty and forty-five million dollars while it was operating. She is expected to repeat a mantra consistently DENIED by the U.S. Federal Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that had the club been sold (to a Rizzolo associate) prior to being shut down, he would have had ample money to pay his taxes, but the government was somehow responsible for thwarting his efforts, and the property ended up in foreclosure.

Ms. Chattah should be aware that each and every purported "buyer" Rick brought forth was a straw man with no money, and with their help, Rick allegedly planned to resume management of the club upon his release from prison.  None placed a deposit into escrow, and in the end, even Rizzolo's own lawyer wrote that they all "failed to perform."

Another bone of contention is that Rizzolo resumed hidden ownership in one or more Las Vegas strip clubs after his first and second release from prison. If so, he was in violation of his 2007 plea agreement.

In a January 23, 2007 Press Release from the United States Attorney's Office District of Nevada, Rizzolo's former and present Federal Prosecutor Eric Johnson stated: "As part of Rizzolo's conditions of supervised release and pursuant to his plea agreement, Rizzolo is not permitted to own or operate or have any involvement with any strip clubs or similar businesses involved in pornography or erotic entertainment or media in the United States and its territories for the rest of his life."

However, that  condition of his supervised release is totally contradicted by the Nov. 6, 2009 unverified statement on YouTube by Ericka Lockett who purports to be Rizzolo's daughter: "My dad has watched his strip club go down in the dumps. The FBI took it away from him, and he rebuilt a new club and its going good from what I understand and what I hear."


Click on image, then dial in 3:20 seconds for remarks about Rick Rizzolo's new strip club

It's unknown whether Ms. Lockett will be called as a witness on September 15, but few believe that her purported father will fare as well at trial this time as he has in the past.

BACKGROUND on Rick Rizzolo:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/john-l-smith/government-closing-clueless-hoodlum-rizzolo
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/former-topless-club-owner-rick-rizzolo-indicted-tax-evasion-charges
http://lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jul/09/former-crazy-horse-too-owner-rick-rizzolo-indicted/
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=rick+rizzolo+americanmafia.com
http://www.stevemiller4lasvegas.com/RickRizzolo.html
The Canada Free Press

BACKGROUND on Buffalo Jim Barrier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_-nHk7Xr8k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2o97NhtyNQ
http://www.stevemiller4lasvegas.com/BuffaloJimPhotoGallery.html



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