Friday, February 21, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: John L. Smith

Illegal drugs hardly high on list of goals for Crazy Horse raid

For the record, this is not what law enforcement means when it talks about a joint task force.

When approximately 80 federal agents, Metro detectives and two SWAT teams converged on the Crazy Horse Too early Thursday morning to serve a search warrant in a broad-based racketeering investigation, defense attorney Tony Sgro says a single marijuana cigarette from a dancer's locker was all the drugs they found.

Junior highs have more dope.

I always suspected those dancers and their extremely large male co-workers were clean-living kids.

Sgro, who represents club owner Rick Rizzolo, cracked wise about what he called the overwhelming turnout of FBI, DEA, and IRS Criminal Investigation agents as well as Metro Intelligence detectives.

"It was like they found somebody in the al-Qaida network in there," Sgro said. "That's how many agents were in there."

Sgro dresses down the search warrant for what he calls its vague and generic wording.

"There's nothing they arguably couldn't have taken from the club," he says. "It surprised me that they drafted it so broadly when they know going in that one of the challenges to a search warrant is the overbreadth of the warrant."

Surely the attorney also knows that, in a case of this magnitude, a team of federal lawyers must have reviewed the warrant before submitting it to a judge.

The warrant also includes speculation that evidence linking the Crazy Horse to hidden ownership by organized crime figures might exist on the premises.

In the office files under M for Mob, perhaps?

An FBI spokesman had no comment on the raid. The search warrant affidavit remains sealed.

Although the DEA participated in the search, the recovery of a cache of drugs wasn't foremost on the minds of agents, who went to great lengths to collect cash registers, receipts, credit card slips and other records.

Those records, it stands to reason, are an integral part of the government's burgeoning criminal inquiry.

It's not the pot, dudes.

It's the papers.

FUZZY RECEPTION: A terribly timed drive-by by KLAS-TV, Channel 8, threatened to blow the surprise of Thursday's search warrant after one of the station's live trucks rolled through the investigation scene minutes before a platoon of feds and cops descended on the Crazy Horse Too. Add the sudden appearance of a hand-held camera operator within range of the front door, and sources at the scene say the potential for a genuine bust-out was complete.

Word is the FBI was smoking mad.

MILLER'S CROSSING: The raid and growing case against the Crazy Horse continues to make former city councilman-turned-Internet- reporter Steve Miller look good. And that goes double for his pal, "Buffalo Jim" Barrier, whose run-ins with Crazy Horse management are legion.

Ironically, Barrier's Auto and Marine Electric remained open Thursday while the Crazy Horse was taped off and shut down.

POLITICAL ALIBIS: Something tells me a number of local politicians are rehearsing their political alibis after enjoying the contributory largess of Rick Rizzolo for many years. Rizzolo is one of the biggest individual donors to political campaigns in the state.

We'll see how many stay true to their money man, how many cut and run, and how many amnesia cases are reported at local hospitals in the coming weeks.

NICE DEAL: Credit attorney Steven Altig with a sweetheart of a deal for client Richard Pasley, the federal corrections officer whose attempted murder and child endangerment charges were reduced to single counts of simple battery and disorderly conduct this week after he agreed to plead no contest.

Pasley will pay a $2,000 fine but will have the opportunity to see the blemish on his record disappear if he completes domestic violence counseling and stays out of trouble.

The attempted murder charges stemmed from an incident in which Pasley was accused of choking his 14-year-old daughter.

ON THE BOULEVARD: Street guys want to know: Genovese mob soldier "Springfield Sam" Manarite's sentencing on gun charges has been postponed until March 4. ... The Crazy Horse search warrant pursued material linking the club and its officials to criminal activity as far back as 1995.

Have an item for the Bard of the Boulevard? E-mail comments and contributions to Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.