Columnist Jeff German: Examining how strip clubs and drivers are working things out — for now

Friday, Dec. 9, 2005 | 8:08 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

It's not the best way to bring holiday cheer to those who bring them business.

But Las Vegas topless clubs say they're fed up with having to pay kickbacks to cabbies and limousine drivers, so they've stopped handing out the cash.

"Everybody has just had enough," says one prominent strip club owner who asked not to be identified. "We're tired of paying these outrageous sums of money."

The ban on paying the drivers went into effect at 6 p.m. Tuesday, and as of Thursday night the clubs were holding firm. They had been paying drivers up to $70 for each passenger brought to their establishments.

"We all agreed to stick to it this time," the topless club owner says.

The decision was made at a rare summit of the clubs Monday night.

Representatives from all of the big names -- Cheetahs, Crazy Horse Too, Sapphire, Treasures, Spearmint Rhino and Scores -- were present.

The summit took place after reports in this column of an escalating war between cabbies and limousine drivers vying for the strip club bounty.

Similar prohibitions on kickbacks have been tried in the past, but none of them lasted very long.

Veteran cabbie Greg Bambic doesn't believe this ban will last, either.

"I just don't see how the clubs can be successful without the cabdrivers and the limousine drivers," Bambic says. "We bring them 85 percent of their business. They can't get along without us."

In June some of the clubs stopped paying cabbies after they received warnings from the county that they were violating a seldom-enforced ordinance that prohibits the practice.

County officials, however, discovered a major flaw in the 20-year-old ordinance. It fails to ban the clubs from giving kickbacks to limousine drivers, which makes it unfair to the cabbies and probably unconstitutional.

So officials decided to back off while they considered modifying the ordinance. They've been struggling with that task ever since, primarily because the long-standing tradition of offering kickbacks has become so pervasive. It would cost the county a lot of resources to really clamp down on the practice.

Three years ago the Nevada Taxicab Authority repealed its own anti-kickback regulation because it was having trouble enforcing it.

County officials, I'm told, now would prefer to let the strip clubs and the drivers, who got themselves into this mess, work things out.

But no one is quite sure whether they're capable of doing that, either.

* * *

Finally, there's some movement in the federal racketeering investigation of the Crazy Horse Too and its embattled owner, Rick Rizzolo.

This is the investigation that has focused on a broad "pattern of lawlessness" at the underworld-linked topless club -- the investigation that was supposed to have come to fruition months ago.

Rizzolo's lawyers, I'm told, are heading to the nation's capital this month to meet with Justice Department officials in a last-ditch effort to fend off an indictment.

The decision on whether to seek charges against Rizzolo and some of his strip club underlings rests with the Justice Department's Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.

Allowing defense lawyers to make their case is a courtesy the Justice Department offers in high-profile investigations. Rarely, however, does it persuade officials to drop a probe.

Now that Rizzolo's lawyers are packing their bags, we can expect to see some action in this much-talked-about case after the first of the year.

Jeff German's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the Sun. He can be reached at 259- 4067 or at german@lasvegassun.com.