Las Vegas ‘gorilla pimp’ attorney enters plea to felonies in sex trafficking case
A veteran Las Vegas attorney accused of sex trafficking entered a no contest plea Thursday to two lesser felony charges and has agreed to stop practicing law.
Gary Guymon, 62, formerly a prominent prosecutor, was arrested in February and faced allegations he ran a prostitution ring called the “$100 club” and plotted with felons to have a client killed.
Defense attorney Louis Palazzo said Guymon will agree to permanent disbarment and prosecutors will not make a recommendation at his sentencing on counts of coercion and bribing or intimidating a witness to influence testimony.
Assistant District Attorney Pamela Weckerly confirmed the terms.
District Judge Christy Craig accepted the plea, which Guymon said he was making voluntarily.
Both counts are felonies, and Guymon could be sentenced to between one and five years in prison on the charge of bribing or intimidating a witness and one to six years in prison for coercion, but he will be eligible for probation, the judge said.
Craig read the allegations that were the basis for the plea.
She said Guymon was accused of offering to provide a woman with $1,000 a month for rent, and she would stop cooperating with an investigation into him or not appear in court to seek a protective order against him and not report him to the state bar. Guymon was alleged to have threatened that if she went to a protective order hearing, he would have her charged with murder and jailed in a different case.
“Is that what you did?” the judge asked Guymon.
He replied: “Yeah, judge, I’m not contesting those allegations.”
The judge told Guymon he also was accused of using force or the threat of physical force to direct a woman “to perform certain acts, while you watched, threatening that if she did not demonstrate these acts that she would go to jail.”
Guymon is scheduled to learn his sentence on July 31.
He previously faced counts of solicitation to commit murder, conspiracy to commit murder, sex trafficking of an adult, three counts of pandering, perjury, coercion with threat of force, and three counts of bribing or intimidating a witness.
According to police, Guymon described himself in a message as the “gorilla pimp,” meaning a violent pimp, of one of the women they interviewed.
A police report said Guymon added: “Offer any resistance, and I just might smash your (expletive) teeth out of your mouth.”
Guymon, a member of the Nevada bar since 1989, was once a star prosecutor who handled high-profile cases, but he also faced previous allegations of misconduct.
He left the district attorney’s office after his name surfaced in a public corruption case involving county commissioners and Cheetah’s strip club owner Michael Galardi. At the time, Galardi accused Guymon of fixing cases for club employees in exchange for drinks, lap dances and sex with strippers.
Guymon denied Galardi paid for lap dances or that he had sex at the club but conceded that he represented employees in traffic cases while working as a prosecutor.
“For Michael Galardi to say he paid for sexual favors is scoffable,” Guymon said in a 2006 interview. “I went to (Cheetah’s) like any other citizen.”
After leaving his prosecutor job, Guymon worked as a public defender, then entered private practice.
He was caught on video in 2009 stealing a necklace worth less than $300 from a gift shop mannequin at the Sundance Resort in Utah.
The Utah County attorney’s office charged him with one count of misdemeanor theft. He pleaded no contest to trespassing.
When the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Guymon’s plea negotiations last week, former colleagues expressed sadness about his situation.
“He was a good man, but he fell,” said retired prosecutor William Koot. “It’s his problem. He put himself in that position. It’s unfortunate.”
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.