It’s a new year in Las Vegas. The Boulevard has been swept clean, but there’s unfinished business on the Strip. It threatens to give the state’s largest industry and its regulators a bell-ringing hangover.
Disgraced Strip casino executive Scott Sibella is gone after having his gaming license revoked Dec. 19 as part of a settlement with the Nevada Gaming Commission. But he shouldn’t be forgotten.
Sibella, 62, pleaded guilty in January 2024 to a single violation of failing to report suspicious casino transactions as required under the Bank Secrecy Act during his 2017-2019 tenure as president of the MGM Grand Hotel. Sibella allowed high-roller Wayne Nix, whom he knew to be an illegal bookmaker, to gamble with cash at the casino. Sibella was sentenced to a year’s probation and agreed to pay a $10,000 fine. He lost his casino license and agreed to a five-year ban, and his former employer paid a $6.5 million fine to settle a money laundering investigation.
Sibella’s troubles surfaced after former minor leaguer Nix began pitching for the government team during a joint investigation by the IRS, Homeland Security and U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In the immediate wake of the Nix revelations, MGM chased at least five longtime customers authorities believe have had ties with illegal gambling, including longtime poker player and businessman Al Decarolis and since-convicted poker pro and illegal bookie Damien Leforbes. The corny revelation seemed to satisfy regulators and much of the press. Informed sources acknowledged months ago that Sibella was far from the only casino executive in Las Vegas who knew about the illegal bookmakers and their associates who for years had been good customers at the MGM and many other Strip properties.
Anyone who has followed the business closely knows the casino executives, who risk losing their licenses if they knowingly cater to the criminal class, have worked hard to keep up appearances and maintain a modicum of plausible deniability. It was that separation that he had violated when he did the unthinkable: Knowing the feds had former pro ballplayer Nix pitching for their team, Sibella told the truth when questioned.
It was ugly stuff. Then it got uglier.
At Resorts World Las Vegas, a gaggle of illegal bookies and their associates were discovered at the casino. Much of the news was first trumpeted by self-styled casino vigilante Robert “RJ” Cipriani, who wound up arrested for battery and cheating for his trouble. Those charges were later to a glorified parking ticket, but the whole ordeal showed a lack of regulatory rigor under Sibella’s leadership. He would be terminated months before he was charged in the Nix case, and then only after a new scandal had erupted.
Mathew Bowyer, the California-based illegal bookie responsible for taking millions off baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, was found gambling like a fiend at Resorts World. Bowyer has since pleaded guilty to operating an illegal bookmaking business.
Prior to his scheduled Feb. 7 sentencing, he has illustrated his contrition by cutting out the bragging on social media instead talking about “how nasty of an addiction gambling can be” while playing a video of himself living a big-league lifestyle. Bowyer, admitted felon, also appears to be in touch with another bro-generation convicted illegal bookie, former drug trafficker Owen Hanson. I suspect they have a lot in common.
The commission revocation of Sibella’s license further diminishes the odds he’ll return to the industry he’s been a part of for more than three decades. No sane bookie would set that number. His precipitous tumble came just three years after he was heralded for guiding Resorts World Las Vegas through the COVID recession and beyond its June 2021 opening as its president.
At the December hearing, Sibella went on the record about what he’s been saying privately for months: He wasn’t alone in knowing the truth about some of the gambling clientele at MGM.
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” he said. You only need to look and see that since the investigation into these issues, MGM Resorts eighty-sixed many bookmakers that had been gambling in its casinos — some of them for over 20 years.”
Twenty years?
That encompasses the tenures of Jim Murren, Bobby Baldwin, Bill Hornbuckle, Bill McBeath and other notable MGM executives. What Sibella was trying to say, I think, was that those illegal bookies were no secret. As far back as late April 2024, MGM Resorts International Chief Counsel John McManus and longtime Las Vegas criminal defense attorney David Chesnoff, who represents some of the banned players, weighed in on the subject.
But here’s something that’s also no secret. Sibella, according to an informed source, has discussed the details of his plight with gaming control agents.
At times sounding aggrieved by his self-inflicted predicament, he again reminded the commission that although he had received training regarding suspicious activity reports and anti-money laundering efforts generally, he wasn’t part of the compliance department. Nor, contrary to the government’s assertion and the experience of other MGM employees, did he benefit from his relationship with Nix.
Then he said something else that should give casino regulators pause:
“I am the only person in the gaming business to be charged for not filing a SAR that had no motive or personal benefit. In case you don’t know, I have lost everything overnight. I have taken a massive hit for every casino worker in Las Vegas. But after today’s hearing, I can now … begin to receive closure.”
He caused his own trouble, but that kind of talk isn’t meant to encourage closure of this issue as it reverberates through Nevada’s gaming regulatory system. It’s intended to open the door to a wider investigation.
Scott Sibella is gone, but I suspect we haven’t heard the last of him.
John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.
