It doesn’t seem to have great shock value when a brotel owner in the great state of Nevada gets busted for bribing an official.
By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
LAS VEGAS — The second time she met with him to negotiate a bribe, Candice Trummell thought brothel owner Maynard “Joe” Richards seemed unusually paranoid.
He was nervous the feds might be following him, she said.
Richards was right to worry.
The 75-year-old owner of three Nye County brothels was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in connection with a political corruption case Trummell helped crack by wearing a microphone and a hidden camera for the FBI.
Richards will spend a year in a Las Vegas halfway house and five years on probation for trying to bribe Trummell in 2005, when she served on the Nye County Commission.
U.S. District Judge Robert Jones also fined Richards $250,000 and ordered him to report any money or “in-kind services” he might give to a public official while he’s on probation.
Jones called political corruption the most serious crime handled by the federal courts.
“Whether it’s a $100,000 or a $5,000 bribe, it simply won’t be tolerated,” the judge said.
