State AG’s report upsets several people listed in document

Monday, April 10, 2000 | 10:51 a.m.

Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa believes that anger is being unfairly directed toward her.

Prominent among the report's critics is Gerald Cunningham, a former Gaming Control Board member who says he's one of many high-profile Nevadans to be maligned by unsubstantiated allegations.

Del Papa said the account was an internal document and not a final report, one that merely reflected the status of the complex investigation into slot cheat Ron Harris, a former Gaming Control Board lab technician.

"Look at the lengths we went to protect it," she said, referring to two years of fighting to keep the report as well as nearly 1,000 pages of other materials sealed.

"I think his (Cunningham's) criticism is misdirected," Del Papa said. "What he needs to do is put himself in the attorney general's office shoes. The law in the state of Nevada is that if there are allegations of misconduct by a state employee, it is this office's responsibility to investigate it."

Clark County District Court Judge James Mahan ordered the documents and videotapes unsealed as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit against Del Papa, and the allegations were made public last week.

Cunningham, a board member from 1987 to 1990, said the investigator and the deputy in charge of the investigation "should be fired and forced to pay back every penny they received in salary for engaging in this type of action."

The investigator and author of the report, Ron Wheatley, left the attorney general's office in 1999 and is working for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Deputy District Attorney David Thompson, who directed the investigation, works for the attorney general's office in Reno.

Both Wheatley and Thompson are named with Del Papa as defendants in a lawsuit filed by Mike Anzalone, a former attorney general's investigator who once handled the investigation of Harris.

Anzalone alleges Del Papa forced him to quit in 1996. He said he was ordered by Thompson to investigate former control board Chairman Bill Bible and that he was ousted when he refused to obtain Bible's telephone and bank records.

But among the 1,000 pages, there is no memo from Thompson ordering Anzalone to pursue Bible's bank records or an indication he made such a request.

The allegations against Bible, now the head of the Nevada Resort Association, were investigated, Del Papa said, because there were other people making bribery claims against him. The claims turned out to be false, she said.

Cunningham said he's frustrated by a claim in the Wheatley report that he was approached by a United Coin Co. official who said the company would pay $200,000 to fund a sting against rival American Coin Company, which lost its license. Cunningham confirmed that the offer was made, but that it was rejected.

He denied another claim in the report that he killed a police investigation into former Nevada gambling executive Alfred Wilms.

Cunningham, Bible and Rex Carlson, formerly the control board's new-games lab manager, all have said they're contemplating litigation.