Columnist Jeff German: On Hard Rock’s latest skirmish with regulators

Sunday, Dec. 4, 2005 | 8:21 a.m.

It wasn't hard to predict that the Hard Rock Hotel would land in trouble with Nevada gaming regulators again.

Gaming Control Board agents, I'm told, are taking another close look at the operations of the sometimes mischievous casino, which has become a whipping boy of sorts for regulators over the last several years.

The latest scrutiny stems from a bizarre altercation outside the Hard Rock on Nov. 12 in which a bellman and a parking attendant allegedly stole a taxicab medallion from a Lucky cab waiting to take passengers to the Spearmint Rhino topless club.

The high-profile theft, first reported in this column Nov. 17, is the result of an escalating war between cabbies and limousine drivers competing for lucrative kickbacks from the topless clubs.

Cabbies have been complaining with greater regularity that hotel employees, primarily doormen, are steering their passengers to limo drivers in return for a cut of the strip-club bounty.

In the Hard Rock incident, the hotel workers allegedly diverted the Lucky cab passengers to a limousine and, when the angry cabbie was distracted by a security officer, they removed the medallion -- essentially prohibiting the cab from operating legally on the street.

Nevada Taxicab Authority investigators reported that the Hard Rock bellman, 30-year-old Terrence McCarthy, and the parking valet, 23-year-old Paul Snow, both were arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center early Thursday on felony and gross misdemeanor theft charges.

"This highlights the problem between the limousine and taxi drivers and how deep-seated it is," Taxicab Authority spokesman Rob Stewart said.

And it's a problem that now has caught the eye of the Control Board's Enforcement Division, which has a history of tangling with the Hard Rock, a hangout for celebrities and the 20-something party crowd.

Enforcement chief Jerry Markling said the Control Board has asked the Taxicab Authority for its investigative reports on the Nov. 12 incident. The board also has requested all internal Hard Rock reports.

Agents are examining the Hard Rock's conduct in the theft to determine whether it violates a broad regulation that prohibits gaming licensees from bringing discredit to the industry, Markling said.

Hard Rock officials declined comment.

But according to the regulation, the board can find that a licensee is operating in an unsuitable manner if the licensee fails "to exercise discretion and sound judgment to prevent incidents which might reflect on the repute of the state of Nevada and act as a detriment to the development of the industry."

This is the same authority the board cited in past misconduct complaints against the Hard Rock.

In 2002 the board filed a complaint alleging the resort misused casino surveillance cameras and allowed public sex acts to occur at a crowded nightclub.

And in 2004 the board accused the Hard Rock of breaking an agreement to run its racy advertisements by an in-house screening committee before making them public.

Both complaints ultimately were settled with the Hard Rock agreeing to pay hefty fines.

In the process, however, Hard Rock executives fell out of favor with Bobby Siller, the Control Board's senior member, who oversees the Enforcement Division.

Siller told me in September 2004 that the Hard Rock, with its delinquent corporate behavior, had lost credibility with him.

"We'll be looking at things a little more carefully over there in the future," he said.

Siller wasn't available for comment late last week, but it looks as though the future has come.