Man who tried to extort MGM Mirage, Harrah’s sentenced

By Mary Manning

Thursday, Feb. 19, 2009 | 3:55 p.m.

A truck driver convicted of attempting to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment in exchange for returning confidential casino customer information was sentenced today to 46 months in prison.

In addition, 50-year-old Jeff Greer of Parson, Tenn., will have to serve three years of supervised release after the prison term, said Greg Brower, U.S. Attorney for Nevada.

Greer was found guilty by a jury last October of two counts of interference with commerce by threats or use of fear and two counts of use of interstate facility in aid of racketeering activity. The government argued at sentencing that Greer should receive a substantial prison sentence because he gave false testimony at trial and had expressed no remorse or accepted no responsibility for the crime.

Greer was employed as a truck driver for French Trucking Company of Lexington, Tenn., according to court records and evidence introduced at trial. In March 2007, he was assigned to transport a load of paper refuse from Las Vegas to a Boise Cascade recycling mill in Jackson, Ala. After unloading the truck at the Alabama mill, Greer claimed to have noticed that some of the papers had been left in the scuff band of his truck trailer.

Greer saw the papers were documents from several casinos, including Harrah's and MGM Mirage, and that they contained sensitive information, such as customer names, casino player information and various other casino and hotel operations records, court documents said.

In April 2007, Greer contacted officials at Harrah's and MGM Mirage and told them he had access to vast amounts of highly confidential customer information. Greer told the officials that he would sell the information to casino competitors or the tabloid media, or publicly disclose it, unless they each gave him a 30-day consulting contract and paid him $250,000.

Greer promised with the consulting contract he would tell the gaming properties how he obtained the information and how they could "fix the leak." Greer left the impression with gaming company executives that he had infiltrated their computer systems.

Greer also provided the executives by fax and telephone with some of the information he had recovered, and told them to look at advertisements he had placed on eBay which stated that he was auctioning "gaming family jewels" with a $100,000 starting bid, court documents said.

Realizing they were being extorted, and to effectively and quickly deal with the possible compromise of confidential information, both Harrah's and MGM Mirage contacted the FBI and asked if they could investigate the extortion and assist with the recovery of the gaming properties' information.

Following several conversations with the gaming company executives, Harrah's executives agreed to meet Greer on May 9, 2007, at Harrah's corporate offices

in Cordova, Tenn. FBI agents, posing as Harrah's employees, accompanied the executives to the meeting, which was secretly recorded and filmed.

The executives and undercover agents recovered documents from Greer and gave him a bogus check for $250,000. Greer was arrested by FBI agents as he left the meeting. He was indicted in Nevada in June 2007.

The FBI and investigative staffs from both resorts were able to locate and arrest Greer and secure the confidential information he possessed before he was able to publicize any of the information. Subsequent investigation determined that the Las Vegas recycling plant with which Harrah's and MGM Mirage had contracted to shred their documents had somehow failed to shred documents that ended up in the load on Greer's truck.

Greer has been permitted to self-report to federal prison by April 20.

The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson.