The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has disbanded its travel office and changed its ticket-buying system amid investigations into a gift card scandal.
Jeff German
Jeff joined the Review-Journal in 2010 after a lengthy, award-winning career at the Las Vegas Sun, where he was a columnist and reporter who covered courts, politics, labor, government and organized crime. He has a masters degree from Marquette University and is the author of the 2001 true crime book, “Murder in Sin City.”
Prosecutors plan to oppose the Review-Journal’s push to unseal documents supporting a search warrant executed at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority offices.
Las Vegas police executed the search warrant in March, looking for evidence that LVCVA executives mishandled $90,000 in airline gift cards bought by the tax-funded agency.
The Ethics Commission can move forward with a complaint against the LVCVA’s former chief marketing officer over the use of airline gift cards.
Gov. Steve Sisolak has signed a bill strengthening the law requiring casinos to file emergency response plans in the wake of the Mandalay Bay mass shooting.
Court records shed new light on the criminal case against former City Councilman Ricki Barlow and raise the level of concern about his lobbying at City Hall.
Rossi Ralenkotter also provided the convention authority with little written explanation of what he did for $15,000 a month in consulting fees, records show.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority moved forward Tuesday with a $10 million police substation expansion despite an ongoing police investigation of the tourism agency.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has included $10 million in pubic funds for the substation expansion in its proposed fiscal 2020 budget.
A judge Tuesday ordered the return of the bail posted by a former top tourism executive after prosecutors said they were not prepared to file a criminal complaint against him in the alleged theft of airline gift cards.
The top marketing officer for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority resigned under a cloud this week without a financial separation agreement, knowledgeable sources said.
Cathy Tull, chief marketing officer for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, has resigned amid separate investigations by the Review-Journal and the Metropolitan Police Department into the public agency’s misspending.
Emails show LVCVA executives used British Airways connections and convention authority resources for their personal benefit.
A top Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority executive has been named in the growing criminal investigation into the theft of Southwest Airlines gift cards bought by the agency, a police report obtained by the Review-Journal shows.
Las Vegas police searched convention authority offices and arrested a key former executive to determine whether the agency’s former CEO Rossi Ralenkotter knew that airline gift cards were purchased with public money before he and other staff used them for personal trips, a knowledgeable source said.