Secret guilty plea in Vegas drug case involving doctors

A government witness cooperating against his former lawyer has secretly pleaded guilty in a high-profile federal drug trafficking investigation.

This comes as the FBI has joined Las Vegas police in investigating related allegations the lawyer, Ben Nadig, devised a scheme to help the witness flee the country.

The guilty plea by Robert Wolfe came to light last week when U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach said in an order that the plea was the reason he canceled a hearing for Wolfe in the drug trafficking case, which targeted local doctors for illegally distributing painkillers.

Wolfe, 69, who is free on his own recognizance, is cooperating with federal drug agents in the painkiller investigation. The hearing to determine whether Wolfe would stand trial on drug charges was put off 14 times in 18 months, as agents enlisted Wolfe’s help against other targets.

The guilty plea was not filed in the drug case, but rather in a new sealed criminal case, according to Ferenbach’s order.

No details were made available, and Wolfe’s new lawyer, Louis Schneider, declined comment. The U.S. attorney’s office would not confirm that Wolfe’s plea took place.

The plea paves the way for a separate investigation of Nadig, a former deputy city attorney who has practiced law in Las Vegas since 2006. The FBI’s political corruption squad in Las Vegas and the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Metropolitan Police Department are jointly investigating.

Nadig and his attorney Michael Sanft, have strongly denied the allegations.

“We have been waiting for a while for some type of closure to the case,” Sanft said. “If the government is moving forward with any type of action, we’ll respond accordingly.”

Police raided Nadig’s downtown law office June 26 to gather evidence in the alleged scheme to help Wolfe leave the country.

At the time, Wolfe was secretly cooperating with police.

A week later allegations surfaced in federal court as prosecutors — in the dark about the investigation — sought to keep him jailed for trying to obtain a passport and flee to Panama.

Before the hearing, Ferenbach allowed Schneider to replace Nadig as Wolfe’s lawyer.

To the surprise of prosecutors, Schneider revealed Wolfe’s cooperation with police, arguing in court that Wolfe had no intention to flee the country. Schneider said his client was helping detectives determine whether Nadig was pushing Wolfe to leave illegally to get at his money.

“My client believes his prior attorney was involved in stealing millions of dollars from him,” Schneider told Ferenbach, adding that Nadig at one point had put Wolfe’s house in the attorney’s name.

Schneider said Wolfe wore a hidden microphone for police in meetings with Nadig and was instructed by detectives not to tell federal authorities about the investigation because detectives feared word would spread like “wildfire” through the legal community and harm the investigation.

Sanft contends Nadig wasn’t part of the scheme and actually informed federal prosecutors that Wolfe was planning to flee.

Wolfe, known by the nickname “old man” on the street, and five others were charged in a criminal complaint in September 2013 in the drug investigation. The complaint was sealed after the Review-Journal reported that at least three local physicians were among the investigation’s targets.

One doctor, Victor Bruce, later pleaded guilty in a separate case and was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison in October for trafficking in oxycodone. Other physicians alleged to have been prescribing large amounts of oxycodone have not been publicly charged in the case.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Find him on Twitter: @JGermanRJ.