It’s gut check time for strip club worker seeking key employee status

Vincent Faraci has hung out with some notorious people, but I don't know whether he's ready for this mob.

If you've followed the odyssey of the Crazy Horse Too cabaret, you've heard Faraci's name. He was a shift manager at the notorious Industrial Road topless club.

Faraci also has been the subject of long-term law enforcement surveillance and intelligence gathering. When I say long term, I mean almost forever. I hear Faraci's investigative file goes so far back it has his baby pictures in it. The first time the cops took his fingerprints, it was in the form of one of those plaster hands kindergartners give their parents.

Why?

Metro detectives and FBI agents believe Faraci is a member of the mob, specifically New York's Bonanno crime family. His father, "Johnny Green" Faraci, was a high-ranking member. These days, the younger Faraci is considered a mob soldier.

What really complicates his resume is his 20-year association with Crazy Horse Too. Faraci came to Las Vegas from New York after a felony conviction and worked at the topless club until this past year, when he agreed to plead guilty to a charge of failing to pay income taxes on the cash he received from the dancers' nightly payments to management.

Although the New York Crime Commission confirmed Faraci's mob status, U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson said the defendant's underworld fraternal order had no bearing on his decision to sentence Faraci to just 10 months in jail with five of that to be served in a halfway house. He received a wrist slap and no mob jacket.

If, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson contended at his January sentencing, Faraci condoned the occasional vicious beating at the club, the judge apparently wasn't much impressed.

Now, Faraci is applying for key employee status at Eden, a topless club at 3750 S. Valley View Blvd. He's scheduled to appear with attorney David Chesnoff this morning in the Clark County Commission chambers.

Which brings me to my dilemma: My concern is that applying for key employee status might sully Faraci's reputation.

Let's be frank. In recent years, the commission has been the most aggressive organized crime family in Southern Nevada since the Chicago Outfit had the run of the streets. Once former Commissioner-turned-federal-informant Erin Kenny takes her medicine and goes behind bars, four former commissioners will be serving prison terms for public corruption involving another topless bar mogul, Michael Galardi. That's one corrupt quorum.

Former commissioner and Galardi bagman Lance Malone caught a six-year sentence. Former Commissioner Dario Herrera received 50 months, and former Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey was sentenced to 30 months.

Add to that the ongoing investigations of former Commissioners Lynette Boggs and Yvonne Atkinson Gates, and you can understand my concern for Faraci's reputation. His attorney, Chesnoff, doesn't share my concern or my appreciation of irony.

"There's never been an allegation he was ever present when any act of violence occurred at the Crazy Horse over a 20-year career," Chesnoff said. "He's well-respected in that industry by club owners and dancers alike. That's what he does."

Not to be a stickler, here, counselor, but there was that one time in the mid-1980s when Faraci's name surfaced on a police report concerning the baseball bat beating of a patron outside the Crazy Horse Too. It's also true the pummeling went nowhere in the courts.

"He paid more taxes than anybody at the place," the attorney continued. "He was looking forward to defending himself, but he did what he needed to do to help other people and eliminate a possible miscarriage of justice. He's ready to pay his penalty and ready to go back to work."

Faraci, Chesnoff added, has no trouble with Metro, and even the cops will have to admit he knows how to run a club professionally.

"The worst thing I've heard about his possibilities (of getting key employee status) is that you're writing a column about him," Chesnoff said.

I'll try to take that as a compliment, counselor.

But, on the contrary, I'm not trying to prevent his licensure. I'm just worried about his reputation.

So please be careful, Mr. Faraci.

Once you get licensed by the Clark County mob, I hear they never let you out.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.