Columnist Jeff German: With heat on, Faraci heads south

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 10:54 a.m.

Vinny Faraci has more than the federal government on his back these days.

Discovery Commissioner Thomas Biggar threatened Wednesday to get a bench warrant, if necessary, to force Faraci to give a deposition in a lawsuit against the Crazy Horse Too.

The former Crazy Horse shift manager -- who, according to lawmen, is a key figure in the federal racketeering probe of the topless club -- has been ducking efforts for weeks to get him to answer questions under oath in the civil case.

The suit was filed in District Court by Kirk Henry, a Kansas City man who suffered a broken neck in a parking lot altercation at the Crazy Horse Too in 2001. The incident also is part of the federal probe of the club and its owner, Rick Rizzolo.

On Wednesday Biggar, who is overseeing the gathering of evidence in the civil case, told Faraci's lawyer, Richard Schonfeld, that he had enough of Faraci's "game-playing."

Biggar ordered the ex-Crazy Horse manager to give the deposition in two weeks.

"And your client had better be there," Biggar said. "Otherwise, you know, he can expect the sheriff will be looking for him to guarantee his appearance in the future."

In February I reported that Faraci, the son of a ranking New York crime family member, had abruptly "retired" after 20 years at the Crazy Horse Too. He's now said to be involved in a topless nightclub project in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

And, with pressure mounting in the federal probe and the civil case, it looks as though Faraci may be spending more time south of the border in the near future.

In court Wednesday Henry's lawyer, Don Campbell, told Biggar he has learned that Faraci has sold his Las Vegas home and is building one in Mexico.

That doesn't sound like a man who wants to answer a few questions in Las Vegas.

President Bush certainly has a lot on his plate.

But three weeks have passed, and the White House still hasn't responded to Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt's letter asking Bush to reconsider Yucca Mountain in the wake of reports that scientific evidence there may have been falsified.

Hunt is the only leading Nevada Republican to put the party's president on the spot as the scandal over the soundness of the scientific research has widened.

No one else in the GOP, including Gov. Kenny Guinn, has come this close to standing up to the man who made the decision to send us the nation's deadliest nuclear waste.

Guinn traveled to Washington last week to voice his concerns about the data-rigging allegations at a congressional hearing, but he was too timid to pay a visit to the White House.

All is not lost, however.

Karl Rove, the president's top political strategist, is coming to town April 30 to attend the Clark County Republican Party's annual Lincoln Day Dinner.

Republicans should send Rove back to Washington with a message for the president -- put the wounded Yucca Mountain Project out of its misery.

Smarter heads have prevailed, after all, among Nevada's guardians of higher education.

The agenda item looking to anoint Jim Rogers chancellor of the university system was pulled from Thursday's Board of Regents meeting.

The search is back on, and all of the candidates -- not just front-runner Rogers -- will be considered.

But then you don't have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure out that an appointment as important as this should at least have the perception of being aboveboard.

The regents, however, deserve a passing grade for realizing the error of their ways.