Las Vegas- A local strip club may be forced to change hands after years of doing illegal business. Crazy Horse Too owner Rick Rizzolo is expected to plead guilty to tax evasion Thursday.
Rizzolo will have to pay almost $20 million as part of this deal. According to the Review Journal, all that debt will mean he’ll have to sell the Crazy Horse within the next year.
Rizzolo will join 16 current and former employees at the Crazy Horse Too strip club who pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Some stemmed from dancers charging ridiculously high prices and when customers didn’t pay up, they were brutally beaten.
Kirk Henry, a Kansas tourist says that happened to him. In 2001 he says his neck was broken by manager Robert D’ Apice after a night of lap dances and drinking at the Crazy Horse.
As part of this plea agreement, Rizzolo will pay Henry $10 million. In addition to that, he’ll have to give up $5 million in fines and almost $2 million to settle his tax liability.
As for the others who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, the agreement reveals they demanded strippers to give them a cut of what they took in each night and male employees who pocketed the cash. Those employees also pleaded guilty to underreporting the cash at the end of each shift.
The 47 year old club owner is expected to be sentenced to no more than 16 months in federal prison, that is if Rizzolo pleads guilty as expected.
The strip club investigation goes back to 1995 when officers used wiretaps to gather information about Rizzolo.
