Friday, May 23, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Source: Lap dance for Mack on tape

Michael Mack

During last week's search of Cheetah's strip club, FBI agents seized a videotape that depicts Las Vegas City Councilman Michael Mack receiving a lap dance, a law enforcement source said Thursday.

The source emphasized that Mack engaged in no illegal conduct during the lap dance.

Mack said he has not viewed the tape and was unaware of its existence until Thursday.

But he acknowledged that he has received a lap dance at Cheetah's, for which he paid the going rate of $10 or $20.

Mack said he was embarrassed by news of the tape and regretted the impact it would have on his family.

Mack, who is engaged to be married, said he no longer visits strip clubs.

"I made a commitment to myself, my family and fiancee. I do not need to be involved or go into these establishments at all," he said.

He declined to speculate about why Cheetah's management would store a tape of him receiving a lap dance, in which a stripper typically wears little more than a G-string as she rubs her body against a seated patron.

"It doesn't make sense to me," he said. "Maybe there's a beacon on any public official that walks into a club."

Public records and law enforcement officers have not mentioned Mack as either a target or a witness in the ongoing political corruption investigation that spawned the May 14 raids at Cheetah's, Jaguars and other locations linked to strip club owners Mike and Jack Galardi.

Mack said the FBI has not contacted him in connection with the probe, adding that he has not received a target letter or a letter saying he's a witness.

He said he has met Mike Galardi but never has had a professional or personal relationship with him. "I can't say I socially hang out with him in any way," he said.

Mack is a consultant to Treasures, a future competitor to Cheetah's and Jaguars. Through a consulting agreement with the public relations agency MK Squared, Mack provides advertising and marketing strategy for the $30 million topless club scheduled to open in late September.

He said his ties to Treasures, under construction near Sahara Avenue and Interstate 15, began earlier this year.

He said he did not believe the videotape discovered at Cheetah's had anything to do with his work for a rival club.

Asked whether it might have been an attempt to have something with which to blackmail him, Mack said, "I never think like that. It never crossed my mind."

The councilman said he is not surprised he was captured on video at the business.

"I assume that everyone is videotaped," he said. "These clubs have surveillance for the protection of the entertainers and the patrons."

After his appointment to the City Council in late 1999, the councilman said, he went to adult clubs on fewer than five occasions while he was single and accompanied by male companions who were not elected officials. He said he stopped going to the clubs around October 2002.

Twice divorced, he has two sons, one nearly 4 and the other 6.

He said his decision to avoid strip clubs includes business meetings involving his work at Treasures.

"I can meet with my clients on a professional basis, not inside the club. I've grown past those young-and-single-type-of-values years in my life," Mack said.

According to the search warrant served at Cheetah's, 2112 Western Ave., agents were looking for a variety of records, including records of payments or gifts made to several current and former elected officials.

Mack was not one of those officials, and his name did not appear in the search warrant. But a receipt for property taken from Cheetah's during the search lists a "videotape of Mike Mack," as well as other unidentified videotapes.

That receipt, which has been obtained by the Review-Journal, also lists an empty gun magazine "labeled for law enforcement or government use only." The Mack videotape and gun magazine both were found in a manager's office in which Mike Galardi maintains a desk, according to the document.

Attorney Peter S. Christiansen, who represents Mike Galardi, declined to comment on the discovery of the Mack videotape or explain why it was being kept at the club.

"I'm not inclined to discuss an item I have not personally seen," he said.

The attorney also declined to say whether his client has been identified as a target of the investigation.

"I have not seen a target letter for Mike Galardi," he said. "I've met with the prosecutors more than once, and I haven't been given one."

Las Vegas attorney Charles Kelly, who worked in the U.S. attorney's office from 1991 to 1995 and primarily handled cases involving white-collar crime, said a federal prosecutor could argue that the discovery of the Mack videotape at Cheetah's serves as "circumstantial evidence of an intent to extort a public figure."

"At the very least, its disclosure would be embarrassing for a public person," he said.

On the other hand, Kelly added, a defense attorney could argue that the tape's contents mean nothing. "It's a legal act, in and of itself," he said.

Since his appointment to the City Council, Mack has suffered financial and personal problems and has been involved in a high-profile ethics probe.

Mack, a fourth-generation pawnbroker, went from making $10,000 a month off his pawnshops and jewelry stores in the early 1990s to declaring bankruptcy a decade later while in office, citing some $3.3 million he owed to a dozen creditors.

Among his liabilities was a $60,000 loan from car dealer Joe Scala.

Mack voted in June 2001 to deny a Nissan dealership being sought by John Staluppi Jr., without disclosing the loan from Scala, who owned land nearby that the city wanted to convert into an auto mall.

Staluppi's associates filed ethics complaints later that year alleging Mack had a conflict of interest.

A Las Vegas Municipal Court judge ruled in August 2002 that Mack did not intentionally violate the city's ethics code when he voted on matters affecting Scala.

At the height of the publicity about his ethics troubles, Mack disappeared from Las Vegas in July 2001 and missed council meetings without explanation.

When he surfaced weeks later, he told reporters he had been diagnosed with "acute stress reaction" and had been taking anxiety medication for almost 10 years. He said stress from questions about his ethics caused him to seek medical treatment in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Mack, who switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat shortly before his 1999 appointment, has said he intends to seek re-election in 2005.

Review-Journal writers Glenn Puit, J.M. Kalil and Jane Ann Morrison contributed to this report.