Former casino hostess claims she was made a scapegoat

Angie Wagner

Thursday, July 29, 1999 | 5:53 a.m.

The list of South Korean gamblers who wager $100,000 a hand at Las Vegas casinos is rumored to read like Heidi Fleiss' little black book. But mum was the word Thursday for a former casino hostess jailed for collecting gambling debts.

Laura Choi knows the names on the list because as a casino hostess for Mirage Resorts Inc., she traveled to South Korea to meet with the gamblers about their debts.

But what happened when she got there is the subject of a lawsuit by the casino company and a countersuit by Ms. Choi.

Mirage Resorts claims that Ms. Choi's job was to meet with the high rollers, or "whales," and talk about plans to pay back gambling debts.

"She was specifically instructed not to be collecting money there," said attorney Jim Pisanelli, a partner of Mirage Resorts' attorney Frank Schreck, who was out of town Thursday.

Ms. Choi was arrested in 1997, sentenced to one year in prison and fined $534,000 for collecting debts from South Korean gamblers who visit Mirage Resorts' high roller salons. The sentence was suspended after Ms. Choi spent 79 days in prison.

South Korean authorities argued that Ms. Choi failed to receive permission to collect the debts and take the money to Las Vegas. She estimated that she collected several million dollars.

In South Korea, it is illegal for an individual to send more than $10,000 abroad without government permission.

In a lawsuit filed in April, Mirage Resorts alleges that Ms. Choi, a Korean-born American, pocketed more than $500,000 during a five-year period. The company also claims she provided Atlantic City casino boss Donald Trump with the names of Mirage Resorts' top South Korean players.

Ms. Choi, 44, countersued the company in May, saying she was wrongfully terminated from her job. Ms. Choi said Mirage Resorts instructed her to collect the money in Korea.

"My client has never taken anything from Mirage," Ms. Choi's Los Angeles attorney, Gregory Smith, said Thursday at a news conference. "She is very upset over what has transpired."

Ms. Choi, who made $100,000 a year as a casino hostess, said Mirage Resorts abandoned her after she was sent to jail and didn't do anything to help her. The company has said it continued to pay her salary and paid for her lawyers.

"I was working very hard and loyal to the company," she said. "I just can't believe what they did to me."

Ms. Choi's attorney provided reporters a copy of a May 1997 memo from a law firm representing Mirage Resorts that warned that government officials in South Korea were cracking down on the flow of money out of the country.

Smith said Ms. Choi was told by Mirage officials to be "very careful."

Mirage Resorts doesn't deny that it warned Ms. Choi before her June 1997 trip, but claims it never told Ms. Choi to collect any money.

Ms. Choi has said she collected debts from an estimated 40 South Korean gamblers who had Mirage Resorts casino credit lines reaching $3 million. A handful of South Korean reporters pressured Ms. Choi to mention the gamblers' names, but her attorneys wouldn't allow it.

"We're not going to answer the rumors in the Korean press," her public relations consultant, Gary Frischer, said.