Judge Pro issues ORDER allowing seizure of Rick and Lisa Rizzolo's personal assets

 

Late last Thursday, U.S. Federal Judge Philip Pro GRANTED the Government's motion to authorize the forfeiture, seizure, or sale of Rick and Lisa Rizzolo's hidden cash, annuities, and fraudulently transferred houses in Las Vegas, Newport Beach, and Chicago in the event the sale of the Crazy Horse Too topless bar is not consummated by Sept. 30, 2007, or if it is sold, the sales price does not equal the amount of liabilities the Rizzolos owe.

 

Judge Pro also ORDERED that three named buyers be approved if they can come up with the money, and that the club must be sold to one of them by Sept. 30, or it will be auctioned off by the U.S. Marshal.

The United States Department of Justice, District of Nevada     Tuesday, January 23, 2007 PRESS RELEASE   Additionally, defendants’ plea agreements require The Power Company, Inc. to sell The Crazy Horse Too by June 1, 2007. The Government has the right to disapprove the sale if the buyer is a close relative or ongoing business partner of Rizzolo’s, is a felon, or has business dealings with organized crime members or groups.   FULL PRESS RELEASE: http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/nv/press/January2007/Rizzolo012307.htm

Last Tuesday, prior to Judge Pro's ruling, the U.S. Prosecutor mysteriously filed a motion to keep the names of the three purported buyers sealed. I guess he thought that if their names surfaced, they might get cold feet. Judge Pro DENIED the motion and released the names and amount each supposedly offered.

Here's what the Prosecutor didn't want you to see (PS: I faxed each of the "buyers" a copy of this article):

 

The court also DENIED Rizzolo's motion to appoint "Rick's Cabaret, Inc."  to run the bar until he's released from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center this spring. The reason for denial was more than obvious. The beatings stopped the minute Rizzolo was incarcerated.

 

It will be interesting to see if any of the above named "buyers" know that they are buying a pig in a poke because the topless bar is dark and devoid of a liquor license, and none of the buyers have a current liquor license in the City of Las Vegas. Furthermore, any new operator will be faced with having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per week in bribes to unscrupulous hotel door men, limo, van, and taxi drivers, or face being boycotted.

 

When the City Council ordered the previous straw man to cease bribing drivers, the Crazy Horse was subjected to a boycott, and business dropped to a trickle. In Vegas if a topless bar owner refuses to pay cash bribes -- between $35 and $70 per passenger -- and subsequently suffers a boycott, no official action is ever taken by local authorities. Some swing and graveyard shift limo, van, and taxi drivers brag about making over $100,000 in cash per year extorting topless bars, or delivering tourists to massage parlors, swinger's clubs, or clandestine whore houses located in residential neighborhoods. Few drivers realize that they may be delivering fares to places that beat up people if they refuse to sign inflated credit card tabs, or worse.

Also keep in mind that the unregulated Sin City sex businesses such as Asian massage parlors and escort services are responsible for spreading AIDS to unsuspecting tourists who think prostitution is legal in Clark County. This has been going on for over ten years with scant intervention by local law enforcement. The IRS should step in and stop it immediately since no one will on a local level including the do-nothing Nevada Board of Massage Therapy.

The cash bribes are not being reported to the IRS by the transportation drivers, clubs, and the door men who participate in this form of extortion, and our tourists are asked to pay a price far beyond what they bargained for.

It's not known whether the supposed bidders for Rizzolo's bar are aware that they will be targeted by the disreputable transportation drivers and door men the moment they open for business.

Let's not forget that Rizzolo and his hidden partners have a friend in Mayor Oscar Goodman. It wouldn't surprise anyone around here if a buyer was fast tracked into being granted a new liquor license.

The Crazy Horse has grand fathered zoning, and if closed for more than six months, the zoning reverts to the present zoning which prohibits adult use within 1,000 feet of another adult use, and the Crazy Horse is within 1,000 feet of Cheetahs, another strip club.

It usually takes around six months to get a new liquor license approved in Las Vegas, and the Crazy Horse has been dark for seven weeks -- without reported beatings, robberies, or murders for the first time ever. The place was closed down on June 30, 2007, so it will take a big favor from Mayor Goodman to approve anyone in the few months left before the Dec. 31, 2007 deadline on the zoning.

Goodman was Rizzolo's former criminal defense attorney. He got Rizzolo off with a gross misdemeanor in 1985 after he beat a man almost to death with a baseball bat behind the Crazy Horse. (The victim, Rick Sandlin, died three years later of his injuries). Goodman and Rizzolo have been fast friends ever since and Goodman has never stopped doing Rizzolo et. al. favors from behind the scenes at City Hall.
 

DECLARATION OF FBI AGENT ANTHONY J. MACE

A DECLARATION by an FBI agent contributed to Judge Pro's decision Wednesday to ORDER that the personal assets of Rick and Lisa Rizzolo be seized and liquidated in the event a buyer is not found for the Crazy Horse Too by the deadline of Sep. 30, 2007.

The FBI's continued involvement is greatly appreciated by many in the Las Vegas community.

 

The Rizzolos, according to Agent Mace, have hidden their liquid assets. New CONTEMPT OF COURT charges should be filed for his hiding of assets after he was supposed to begin paying his debts to society.

 

I also suggest the IRS immediately seize the contents of Mr. Rizzolo's safety deposit boxes in the cashier's cages of MGM Resorts, the Palms, and Hard Rock casinos where he is known as a "whale."

And isn't it time Rizzolo be inducted into the Nevada Gaming Control Board's Excluded Person List also known as the "Black Book" of persons prohibited from entering casinos? The millions he's known to gamble were derived from racketeering.