Gambler who lost millions claims he was plied with alcohol, drugs

November 24, 2009

By Jeff German, The Las Vegas Sun

"NJOY NOW can't get enough of this story.  It is definately fascinating, and being frequent visitors of Las Vegas, we are certain that Terry Watanabe's claims are true.  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas is more then a marketing campaign, it is real life.  NJOY NOW does not want to risk it's comps or access to pills and alcohol, so we will leave it in the capable hands of the Las Vegas Sun to report." John

High-rolling Nebraska philanthropist Terrance K. Watanabe is mounting an unusual defense to charges he failed to pay $14.7 million in Strip gambling debts.

He is accusing Caesars Palace and the Rio, both owned by Harrah’s Entertainment, of providing him with a steady flow of alcohol and — in the case of Caesars Palace — prescription painkillers as his losses increased.

His Las Vegas attorney, David Chesnoff, lays out the defense in a letter to prosecutors, claiming that casino employees will testify that the resorts kept the prolific gambler in a constant state of intoxication in the latter months of 2007 in violation of state gaming regulations.

The Las Vegas Sun has obtained a copy of the seven-page letter, which maintains that Watanabe was in such an incoherent state that he was “incapable of forming the criminal intent” to avoid paying his gambling debts.

Harrah’s Entertainment spokesman Gary Thompson declined to comment on the allegations, saying the company has a long-standing policy of not commenting on legal matters.

A county grand jury indicted Watanabe, 52, on April 29 on theft and bad-check charges, stemming from gambling losses of $12 million at Caesars and $2.7 million at the Rio from October through December of 2007.

Those losses pale when compared with Watanabe’s massive overall losses at Harrah’s Entertainment casinos during 2007, Chesnoff said in the letter.

Watanabe, who is to be arraigned in District Court on Wednesday, lost an astounding $112 million that year at Harrah’s casinos, including $94.1 million at Caesars Palace and $12.2 million at the Rio, Chesnoff said.

With the exception of the $14.7 million in dispute, all of that money was paid back to the casinos through wire transfers, Chesnoff said.

Watanabe’s wealth comes from the Omaha-based Oriental Trading Co., a wholsesale novelty importer founded by his father. The younger Watanabe ran the company from 1977 until 2000, when he sold it.

Chesnoff sent the letter to Chief Deputy District Attorney Bernie Zadrowski, who runs the bad check unit, several days before Watanabe’s indictment, asking the prosecutor to present the information to the grand jury in the hope of derailing the charges.

Zadrowski said he gave the grand jury the letter, but the panel decided to indict Watanabe anyway.

Chesnoff declined to comment to the Sun about the allegations he raised in the letter.

But the Los Angeles crisis management firm Watanabe hired to help him deal with the criminal investigation issued a statement from Chesnoff.

“We look forward to presenting our case in court and to having the charges against Mr. Watanabe dismissed,” the statement said. “Mr. Watanabe has numerous strong defenses that will demonstrate that he could not and did not commit the crime with which he has been charged because he did not, among other things, have the requisite intent to commit the alleged crime.”

According to the letter, the most intriguing aspect of Watanabe’s defense centers on statements from three casino employees who spent a lot of time with Watanabe in 2007. All three will testify that Watanabe appeared in a constant state of intoxication when he gambled the latter part of 2007, often slurring his speech and having trouble walking, the letter said. Watanabe even occasionally would fall asleep at the gaming tables and would be allowed to gamble again once he woke up.

All three witnesses also will testify that Caesars Palace employees supplied Watanabe with the prescription painkiller Lortab, a narcotic that can be addictive, the letter alleged.

Nevada gaming regulations prohibit casinos from allowing “visibly intoxicated” players to continue to gamble.

“Certainly, that type of behavior on the part of a licensee would not be acceptable, but at this point we don’t have a complaint to investigate that I’m aware of,” said Jerry Markling, chief of enforcement at the Nevada Gaming Control Board. “If a complaint is made to us, we’ll certainly look into it.”

The letter said that Christopher Corso, a longtime Caesars Palace bellman who indicated he was assigned full-time to take care of Watanabe’s needs, told defense attorneys that no Caesars Palace or Rio employees “ever attempted to cut off or even slow down Mr. Watanabe’s drinking or gambling.”

Corso also alleged in the letter that Caesars Palace provided Watanabe with “controlled substances, namely prescription painkillers,” from September through December 2007. The letter said Corso will testify that he once saw a Caesars security officer deliver a “children’s candy box” containing Lortab to Watanabe’s room. The box was delivered on behalf of another casino employee, he contends.

Stuart Mitchell, a Red Rock Resort roulette dealer who befriended Watanabe when he gambled at the locals casino, indicated that he often accompanied Watanabe on gambling visits to Caesars Palace in late 2007, Chesnoff said in the letter.

Mitchell told defense lawyers that he learned at the time that Caesers employees were giving Watanabe painkillers. The drugs, combined with the alcohol, “significantly intoxicated and impaired” Watanabe, causing him to gamble more recklessly, the letter charged.

“Rather than assisting Mr. Watanabe in dealing with his intoxication, the Caesars Palace floor managers and pit bosses would turn their heads,” the letter quoted Mitchell as alleging.

Mitchell also raised concerns about Watanabe’s treatment in an e-mail to Zadrowski the day before Watanabe was indicted. Zadrowski gave the e-mail to the grand jury.

Another defense witness, George Denten, a former Caesars Palace security officer personally assigned to Watanabe in 2007, will testify that he didn’t recall ever seeing Watanabe in a sober state during the 25 to 30 hours a week he spent with him from June through December of that year, the letter said.

Denten alleges that he saw a note posted on Watanabe’s hotel room door in late October or early November 2007 that said “the pills” had been delivered to the room and Watanabe was to call if he needed more.

“Mr. Denten understood that ‘pills’ meant Lortabs,” the letter said.

According to the letter, Denten took Watanabe to “rehab for alcohol, drug and gambling” addictions, and that Watanabe completed treatment through an inpatient program.

Chesnoff gave Zadrowski the names, addresses and phone numbers of the three witnesses and the others he named in the letter, including Watanabe’s sister, who lives in San Jose Calif., in the hope the prosecutor would call them to testify before the grand jury.

But Zadrowski said the only defense witness he was able to arrange to testify was Wilson Ning, a Harrah’s vice president of Asian marketing stationed at the Rio.

In his letter, Chesnoff said Ning opposed efforts by Caesars Palace to increase Watanabe’s credit limit in June 2007 because he believed Watanabe was “out of control” and showing signs of being a problem gambler.

But according to grand jury transcripts released last week, Ning denied that he ever saw Watanabe intoxicated at the Rio, and said he did not believe casino employees at Caesars Palace would have given Watanabe prescription painkillers.

Ning, however, also told the grand jury that he had limited contact with Watanabe, and Zadrowski never asked him if he thought Watanabe might have a gambling addiction.

Biz Stone tells Murdoch people will not pay for news, Twitter says he will fail

November 23, 2009

Rupert Murdoch plans to charge for online news and prevent stories being linked to by sites such as Google. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The co-founder of Twitter today warned Rupert Murdoch that his plans to charge for online content, and block Google from using stories produced by his News International titles, were a vain attempt to "put the genie back in the bottle".

In recent weeks Murdoch has launched a vitriolic attack on Google and other web companies, accusing them of "stealing" content created by his titles, including the Times and the Sun. Management at News International is working on plans to introduce an online paywall next spring and prevent stories from being linked to by sites such as Google News.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone today warned that Murdoch "should be looking at it as an opportunity to do something radically different and find out how to make a ton of money out of being radically open rather than some money by being ridiculously closed".

Speaking at an event organised by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) in London, Stone added that the speed of change on the internet meant Murdoch's plan was likely to "fail fast". He was joined in his attack by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of networking site LinkedIn, who added: "I am sure that during the transition from horses to automobiles there were some people bemoaning the loss of horse transport."

In contrast, Stone said Twitter's future lay in making more of the service available to application developers and other partners so they could build on the stream of "tweets" created by its users. The social networking site's users post more than 500 messages per second. The service is increasingly being used by news organisations as a way of discovering breaking news.

"I don't know what the future of traditional media is," said Stone. "But from my perspective and Twitter's perspective I think there is a wonderful co-operative alliance there in terms of the wisdom of crowds, and as we add things to Twitter… maybe we can help."

Twitter, which was valued at more than $1bn just over a month ago, is looking to drive revenues and eventually start making a profit.

It plans to introduce some new features over the coming months. Stone, who set up the company just two years ago, said that by the end of the year it would have begun to offer its corporate users a suite of new analytical tools to help them use Twitter to keep in touch with customers and keep an eye on their brands. An increasing number of corporations, from mobile phone companies to airlines, have added Twitter as a means by which customers can get in touch.

Twitter is also considering giving its users reputation scores, which would help traditional news organisations using the social networking service to spot breaking news stories.

Twitter recently announced search deals with both Google and Microsoft's Bing and the deals added fuel to recent speculation that the micro-blogging site might be a takeover target for either business.

But Stone emphasised a sale was not on the cards: "That was never something we were interested in talking about".

Instead, the company was interested in doing more partnership deals. "One of the things we are seeking to do as we have already done with Myspace as we have done with LinkedIn, as we have done with AOL, as we have done with Google, as we have done with Bing, is to share our data and form partnerships that are long standing... Twitter wants to work with social networks, with mobile networks, with TV networks with search engines… we want to put a little Twitter in everything."

Murdoch vs. Google Search Giant may be forced to remove News Corp content

November 23, 2009

Will Microsoft pay Rupert Murdoch for access to News Corp sites?

That man has a hot ass wife, Wendi Deng.  Good to be rich.

Rupert Murdoch seems to have something against Google.

The chairman of the News Corp media empire has made no secret of his long term plans to remove the stories produced by his newspapers from Google's search engine.

Now, in a move that could have far-reaching implications for news organizations, it appears Microsoft is working on a plan in conjunction with News Corp that would see the world's largest software company pay Mr. Murdoch's empire to "de-index" its news sites from Google.

According to the Financial Times, Microsoft has held early stage discussions with News Corp -- whose media properties include the Wall Street Journal -- and other big online publishers about pulling their content from Google in favour of Microsoft's own search engine, Bing.

The plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them,” said one Website publisher interviewed by the Financial Times.

If search engines suddenly had to start paying news organizations to index their stories, the result could result in millions of dollars in new revenue for publishers, and would conceivably cut into the profit margins of the big search providers, namely Google.

Google and other search engines currently index millions of news stories a day and provide them for free to readers across the Web.

For many news organizations which have blamed the Internet for falling circulation numbers and declining revenues, such a deal could increase the value of the content they produce without forcing readers to pay for online news -- just ask the music industry how difficult it can be to get consumers to start paying for a product again once they've grown accustomed to getting it for free.

For what it's worth, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has said that Mr. Murdoch's plan to get search engines to pay for news stories and other published content is doomed to fail.

I don't think Biz Stone, or Internet chat room whiners realize that great news costs a lot of money to produce.  Murdoch's businesses employ a lot of people, and the reporting standard is quite a bit higher then TMZ's.  I'm sure many newspaper publishers will be watching closely to see how Mr. Murdoch's anti-Google gambit plays out.

More Holiday Shoppers Go Cash Only

November 19, 2009

McLEAN, VA – Seventy-one percent of consumers will use cash or debit cards as their principal payment method when purchasing holiday gifts this year.

Cash is projected to be king (and queen!) this holiday season, with a rising percentage of consumers paying for holiday purchases with cash or debit cards instead of credit cards, USA Today reports.

According a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey released earlier this week, about 71 percent of consumers plan to use cash or debit cards as their primary payment method when purchasing holiday gifts this year, the highest level since 2005.

The shift away from credit cards could depress holiday sales for retailers, who have found that consumers spend more when using credit cards rather than cash or debit cards, according to NRF spokeswoman Ellen Davis.

But it’s not just a matter of purchasing volume. Baylor University marketing professor James Roberts said that consumers who use credit cards to shop are “more likely to buy in the first place.”

According to the NRF survey, 28.3 percent of consumers plan to use credit cards “most often” when purchasing holiday gifts this year, down from 31.5 percent last year and nearly 33 percent in 2007. But the news is not all dour for retailers.

“If people are relying less on credit for holiday purchases this year, retailers hope they will be in a better position to spend for the future,” Davis said.