Casino ‘Gray Book’ issued

Wednesday, July 21, 1999 | 11:06 a.m.

Cy Ryan

SUN CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY -- A new publication dubbed the "Gray Book" is being sent by the state to Nevada casinos, listing 131 individuals they should not do business with.

These 119 men and 12 women have either been denied a license by the state Gaming Commission, had their license revoked or were found unsuitable to hold a key position in the industry since 1980.

The list is the result of a 1999 law sought by the Nevada Resort Association to require the state to identify these individuals.

There's a longtime law that casinos are barred from doing business with a denied or revoked licensee.

Jim Mulhall, vice president for governmental relations with the resort association, said Tuesday casinos have thousands of contracts involving everything from cleaning sheets to catering service. "But there's no central repository of who is denied or revoked," Mulhall said.

A casino may have signed a contract with a company where one of these persons worked and suddenly "the Gaming Control Board is swarming over the property. Nobody knew this person was unsuitable," Mulhall said.

Steve DuCharme, chairman of the state Gaming Control Board, said a few clubs were doing business with denied applicants.

The most recent case involved Bernard Gilman, found unsuitable by the Gaming Commission in July 1993. Working through his Las Vegas Holidays Inc. and Convention Connection Inc., Gilman contracted with hotels in Las Vegas to sell rooms as part of his companies' effort to sell travel packages to technology companies for the Comdex trade show.

Some of the resorts said they never knew Gilman was unsuitable to deal with. Gilman subsequently filed four times to be found suitable but each time withdrew his application from the Control Board.

The new law shifts part of the burden away from the casinos. Under the old law, the clubs were prohibited from entering into these business arrangements. The new law says a person found unsuitable or who has been denied or lost his license is prohibited from entering into a contract with a casino unless he or she gets prior approval.

The law says, however, that these people may buy goods or services from casinos for personal use at retail prices available to the general public.

Any contract must contain a clause that allows its cancellation if it is found the individual was determined to be unsuitable by the commission. And the person can't sue for breach of contract, giving protection to the casinos.

The new law says the board must maintain this list and make it available to the casino industry.

DuCharme said it would be periodically updated and distributed to all those with gaming licenses. And each new licensee would receive the list.

This is akin to the so-called "Black Book" in which the state lists unsavory individuals who are barred from going into Nevada casinos. It's an effort to prohibit underworld figures, slot cheats and those with notorious reputations from the clubs. Any casino that caters to a "Black Book" person could lose its license.

Besides Gilman, the new list includes such names as Allan Sachs, former owner of the Stardust hotel-casino, whose license was revoked; Frank Romano, Rudolph LaVecchia and Rudolph LaVecchia Jr., who lost their license at American Coin Machine Co. in a slot machine cheating scheme in Las Vegas; and Ken Mizuno, who was denied by the Gaming Commission to run a spa and restaurant at the Tropicana hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Mizuno was convicted of money laundering.