Golf clubs play role in Rhodes case

Erica D. Johnson

Friday, Aug. 22, 2003 | 10:01 a.m.

A set of golf clubs was the focus of testimony Thursday as the case of a former North Las Vegas councilman charged with felony insurance fraud got under way in District Court.

Prosecutors claim John Rhodes lied to insurance investigators and falsified receipts for items he claimed were stolen from his North Las Vegas home in a reported 1998 robbery.

The items he claimed were stolen included leather furniture, a personal organizer and a set of Callaway golf clubs he said was worth more than $1,800.

Prosecutors say Rhodes told a State Farm insurance investigator that a man named Mark Farino had sold him the golf clubs and that Farino had since died.

Farino, however, is alive and testified during Wednesday's court proceedings.

Farino, who described himself as a longtime friend of Rhodes, said he'd ordered himself components to build a set of Wood Brothers golf clubs in 1996 and that he ordered Rhodes an identical set at Rhodes' request.

He testified that Rhodes reimbursed him $765, the amount he paid for the clubs.

"I gave him those clubs at the exact price that it cost me to build them," he said. "I don't consider it a business transaction, I consider it a favor."

But in September 1998, Farino said, Rhodes called him and said the clubs were stolen from his home and that he needed a receipt for the transaction.

At that time, Farino said, he gave Rhodes a handwritten receipt. Rhodes later called Farino and said the insurance company had a problem with the receipt for the clubs.

"It was a distressed phone call," he said. "He said the bill of sale is no good. We needed something different."

Farino also got a call from a State Farm investigator, who informed him that Rhodes had told insurance agents that Farino was dead.

"I was told I was dead," Farino said.

Farino was one of several witnesses who helped prosecutors lay out their case against Rhodes. Authorities allege Rhodes tried to cheat State Farm out of a claim worth more than $10,200.

When insurance agents began to question the legitimacy of Rhodes' claim, Rhodes tried to withdraw the claim, authorities said.

Defense attorney Robert Lucherini does not contest that Rhodes misrepresented certain facts relating to the clubs, but claims his false statements do not rise to the level of fraud.

Prosecutors claim Rhodes doctored the receipt for the golf clubs that Farino gave him before submitting it to the insurance company.

When shown the receipt, Farino said that was not the receipt he gave Rhodes and that the signature on the document was not his.

He said there was big difference between the clubs he gave Rhodes and the Callaway clubs Rhodes named in his insurance claim.

Jimmy Brass, who said he regularly cleans carpets in Rhodes' home, said he'd been in the home several times and he'd never seen the leather furniture Rhodes claimed was stolen during the robbery.

Brass said he was cleaning Rhodes' carpets on Sept. 22, 1998, when he noticed a broken window in the home.

He said he called Rhodes on his cell phone and that Rhodes in turn called police and reported the robbery.