Wednesday, Dec. 18, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
Frontier hotel-casino executives fabricated a letter and gave it to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission to justify the firing of a veteran employee, court documents allege.
The employee, 68-year-old Virginia Cook, was let go in 1990 for reportedly bad-mouthing Frontier owner Margaret Elardi.
After receiving the phony letter and other evidence submitted by the Frontier, the Equal Rights Commission denied Cook's age discrimination claim.
But the 17-year Frontier veteran, who had never been in trouble before, went to federal court and won her job back along with a $100,000-plus settlement that was finalized this year.
"Her case has been resolved, and she's back working at the Frontier and is content with her situation," said her lawyer, Richard Segerblom.
Cook's suit, however, is attracting new interest because of its impact on other wrongful termination cases against the Frontier and claims by former employees that the resort engaged in spying and dirty tricks on striking Culinary Union workers.
The letter-fabrication allegations are similar to a high-profile New York case in which Texaco officials were indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly doctoring documents in a racial discrimination suit.
In Nevada, it is a felony to offer false evidence in any investigation conducted by a state agency.
State law also gives the Equal Rights Commission the authority to pursue a civil complaint against anyone who willfully "impedes" or "interferes" with the agency's work.
Commission administrator Bill Stewart declined comment on the Cook case because of confidentiality laws.
In a July 11 deposition in his suit against the Frontier, ex-Personnel Director John Patton alleged he fell out of favor with the Elardi family and was forced to leave the hotel in June 1993 because he wouldn't go along with a scheme to legitimize the phony letter.
The three-page letter was written by hand under the fictitious pen name of Peggy Lee Roberts, who was supposed to be a Frontier customer claiming to have overheard Cook criticizing Elardi in the casino.
The criticism was said to be similar to remarks Elardi's manicurist had heard Cook make.
Elardi, Patton said, didn't want to involve the manicurist in Cook's termination proceedings.
Elardi did not return a phone call.
Patton testified the phony letter was written at the request of longtime Frontier attorney Steve Cohen, who is regarded at the Frontier as an Elardi confidant and unofficial general counsel.
Patton alleged Cohen also wanted him to testified falsely in a deposition in Cook's court case that the letter was real.
Cohen, who could not be reached for comment, has denied ordering the writing of the letter. He has obtained a sworn affidavit from Patton before the former personnel director left the resort indicating Cohen and Elardi had no knowledge of the letter until after it surfaced.
But Patton, a former police officer battling cancer, said in his 219-page deposition that he signed the affidavit merely to save his job and get Cohen off his back.
He charged that Cohen was present at a January 1991 meeting in the office of then-Operations Director Mike Klug in which Cohen hatched the letter scheme.
"Steve Cohen told Klug to have a letter of complaint written against Virginia Cook by someone. ..." Patton said.
He added that Klug's right-hand man, ex-security chief Chuck Bukowski, volunteered to have his wife, Barbara Bukowski, do the job.
In an Oct. 24, 1992, sworn deposition, Barbara Bukowski admitted writing the letter. She said she wrote it with her left hand to disguise her handwriting.
But Bukowski testified that she only composed it because Klug had threatened to fire her husband if she didn't cooperate.
She said Klug gave her ideas about what to include in the letter.
Bukowski testified Klug told her: "They had gotten rid of someone and that they needed to cover themselves, and he needed the statement for that."
Patton acknowledged giving the letter to the Equal Rights Commission in January 1991 as part of the Frontier's evidence rebutting Cook's discrimination complaint.
An unsigned memo accompanied the letter indicating it was given to Patton by Klug, who in turn had received it from Cohen.
One of the Frontier's lawyers later listed the fictitious Peggy Lee Roberts as a potential witness in Aug. 21, 1992, court papers responding to Cook's federal lawsuit.
Like Patton, Klug and Bukowski ultimately were forced out of the Frontier. Both refused comment.
The Bukowskis, who no longer are married, now are suing the resort over the loss of his job.
Patton, who recently settled his differences with the Frontier, also discussed the phony letter in an Aug. 22 deposition in the Bukowski case.
He referred to his troubles with Cohen again as recently as Nov. 4 in a deposition in a lawsuit filed by California tourists Sean and Gail White, who were beaten up on the picket line at the Frontier in April 1993.
In one of his depositions, Patton also alleged the Frontier secretly wiretapped its own phone lines during a wave of "paranoia" related to the five-year Culinary Union strike.
Patton has declined an interview because of a just-signed settlement with the Frontier that includes a confidentiality clause.
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