No prison time for Richards in Nye County bribery case

Brothel owner Maynard "Joe" Richards will spend a year in a halfway house but he won't go to prison for his attempt to bribe a Nye County commissioner in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones today accepted a plea agreement that spares the 75-year-old from any jail time. Instead Richards was sentenced to five years probation and was ordered to pay a $250,000 fine for the felony count of wire fraud to which he pleaded guilty in March.

His 12-month term in a Las Vegas halfway house is set to begin Aug. 10.

It's unclear whether Richards will be allowed to stay in the brothel business in Nye County. Commissioners there might use his felony conviction to move against the licenses he holds for three bordellos north of Pahrump and a strip club in the middle of the town 60 miles west of Las Vegas.

The only business restrictions the federal court placed on Richards was a prohibition against expanding his small, sexually oriented empire.

Richards did not speak during the sentence hearing in Las Vegas, but the commissioner he tried to bribe had plenty to say.

Former Nye County Commissioner Candice Trummell worked with the FBI to crack the case by wearing a microphone and hidden camera to face-to-face meetings with Richards during which he paid her $5,000 to change a county ordinance so he could open a brothel at the south end of Pahrump.

A disappointed Trummell urged the judge to give Richards the maximum punishment allowed under the terms of the plea agreement.

Ultimately, though, she said allowing Richards to escape with no jail time and a fine he can easily afford would do little to discourage future corruption or persuade public officials to cooperate with the authorities.

Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.