Gotta Love those Casino Hosts!

Today's entry comes to us via a Las Vegas Review-Journal article and the AP, reprinted here for your entertainment.

Jul. 27, 2007 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Spending of mistress listed in complaint
Money used on expensive LV buys
By RYAN NAKASHIMA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The mistress of a Chinese-Mexican businessman accused of shipping illegal drug chemicals to Mexican cartels told authorities she used money he gave her to buy a million-dollar home, jewelry, luxury cars and factory equipment, court documents show.

Michele Wong, a 26-year-old former casino host at The Mirage, used $500,000 that Zhenli Ye Gon wired her to buy air conditioning units and transformers, which she shipped to his pharmaceutical plant in Mexico, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Wong also paid $1.1 million in cash for a Las Vegas home and bought two Mercedes-Benz cars after she said Ye Gon told her he was being blackmailed by drug dealers to launder "dirty money" in Las Vegas, the complaint said. Wong also is said to have purchased jewelry with money Ye Gon gave her.

"Ye Gon told Wong that the group instructed him to launder the money in Las Vegas and that he should gamble with the money and purchase high value items in Las Vegas," the complaint said.

Wong's Las Vegas house was at 2290 Casa Bella Court, near Durango Drive and Sahara Avenue. Using Ye Gon's money, she paid off the mortgage within about three months of its April 2006 purchase, the court document stated.

Authorities seized title records for the house that stated Wong put a $305,108 down payment on the house and obtained a $853,500 loan to cover the rest of the cost, according to court records.

Wong told authorities that Ye Gon last came to Las Vegas on March 9 on a flight from Orange County, Calif., on a private jet provided by The Venetian.

Ye Gon lost more than $125 million playing high stakes games in Las Vegas casinos since 2004, the complaint said.

Ye Gon, also known as "Charley Ye," was arrested Monday by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a suburban Washington, D.C., restaurant. Authorities in March seized more than $207 million in cash and traveler's checks hidden in compartments at his Mexico City mansion.

Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora has said the cash seized at Ye Gon's home was connected to one of the hemisphere's largest networks for trafficking pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in making methamphetamine.

Mora said the ring had been operating since 2004, illegally importing the substance and selling it to a drug cartel that mixed it into the crystal form and exported it to the United States.

Ye Gon has said the chemicals imported by his company, Unimed Pharm Chem de Mexico SA, were legitimate and intended for use in prescription drugs to be made at a factory he was building in Toluca, just west of the Mexican capital.

Ye Gon's lawyers have said he has nothing to do with illegal drugs and is merely a victim of political corruption in Mexico.

Wong was arrested in Las Vegas on Monday and ordered to be detained and transported to Washington, D.C., to face felony money laundering and conspiracy charges in a federal court.

Wong first met Ye Gon in October 2004 when she was a casino host at The Mirage, and he was a high-rolling customer, the complaint said. Their relationship turned romantic a month after she was fired in January 2005.

She told authorities Ye Gon gave her up to $1.5 million over the course of their relationship, and that Ye Gon is the father of her 17-month-old son.

The allegations of money laundering were questioned by Nevada gambling regulators, who said strict procedures mandate extensive record keeping and require gamblers who bring large amounts of cash to take the same cash away with them if they win.

The $125 million Ye Gon lost seemed out of proportion to the perks and cash that he may have received as a standard "discount" on his losses, state Gaming Control Board member Mark Clayton said.

In addition to the flight on a private jet, The Venetian, one of Ye Gon's favorite resorts, gave him a Rolls-Royce, he told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

"It'd be one thing if I come in with a suitcase of $100 bills, I gamble for 20 minutes and then ask for a check. That would be a typical example of money laundering," Clayton said.

"But it's a pretty ineffective way to launder money by losing it all at the casino."

Review-Journal writer David Kihara contributed to this report.


-------Casino hosts aren't the most popular coworkers at any resort, so there's no love lost for anyone else in the business who happens to hear about that whole mess.

And... The only response from the five-star resort guys following the news of the bust of this particular high roller...? "Damn, there goes our tips!"