A member of the Nevada Gaming Control Board said casino mogul Steve Wynn agreed to a $10 million fine in 2023 on allegations of sexual misconduct with female employees only after being shown a witness list that included his ex-wife Elaine Wynn.
George Assad revealed Friday the behind-the-scenes of the Wynn punishment during the annual Gaming Law Conference hosted by the State Bar of Nevada. He also spoke about anti-money-laundering-related violations that have led to tens of millions of fines along the Las Vegas Strip and urged operators to be better or risk federal involvement.
In July 2023, the Nevada Gaming Commission, based on the recommendation from the Board, reached a settlement with Wynn as an individual; he paid a $10 million fine and cut his ties with the industry he helped shape. Wynn admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement stemming from allegations years earlier involving his employees in what regulators called a “blemish” and “dark chapter” in the state’s gaming industry.
In 2019, Wynn Resorts paid a $20 million fine for failing to investigate the sexual-misconduct claims made against Steve Wynn.
Assad said that when he and former Chair Kirk Hendrick came on the Board, they thought the Wynn case was resolved by the operator paying the $20 million fine in Nevada. Massachusetts also fined the the Wynn $35 million and kept the company from putting the name Wynn on the resort that’s known as Encore Boston Harbor. That prompted Assad to suggest that he wished Nevada would have done the same thing with the name Wynn Las Vegas.
“I’m proud to say the Nevada Gaming Control Board was able to eliminate this piece of garbage from Nevada,” Assad said of Wynn, while disparaging his accomplishments. “He is living in Florida now, thank God. The rest is history.”
Assad described the attorney general’s office asking the Board what needed to be done with the Steve Wynn case, since there was a complaint filed against him as an individual.
“We dug into the case and went back and forth in negotiations and he just didn’t want to pay,” Assad said. “It drags on and drags on and finally Kirk comes up with the idea – let’s send his lawyers and him a courtesy copy of the list of witnesses we’re going to call before the Gaming Commission. The number-one witness was Elaine Wynn. Guess what. The check was there in two days.”
Assad wasn’t kind to Wynn when speaking to the state’s leading gaming attorneys. He talked about Wynn’s beginnings running his Father’s bingo parlor in Maryland. He suggested that without the help of Las Vegas banker E. Parry Thomas, Wynn would still be running a bingo parlor.
“He’s not an entrepreneur and he’s not a visionary,” Assad said. “He was the right guy at the right time with the right opportunity. He didn’t have the vision to build the Mirage. What you see today is a replica of the Grand Wailea Hotel in Maui. Check it out.”
From there, Assad talked about the regulatory issues in Nevada that regulators said stained the reputation of the state in 2025.
Last week, the Board nominated Wayne Nix to be considered for inclusion in the state’s Black Book that bans him from casinos. The case is tied to MGM Resorts International being fined $8.5 million for knowingly dealing with an illegal bookmaker as part of an anti-money laundering case. The MGM Grand took $4 million in cash from Nix, while the Cosmopolitan, which it didn’t own at the time, took more than $900,000 in wagers.
His case for Black Book consideration will be followed in January, when the Board considers Matthew Bowyer, an illegal bookmaker who placed bets with Caesars Entertainment and Resorts World Las Vegas. Caesars was fined $7.8 million last month and Resorts World was fined $10.5 million earlier this year. Also this year, Wynn Resorts was fined $5.5 million over unregistered international money transmissions. It also forfeited $130 million to the federal government.
“The Nevada Black Book one is one of the most important tools the Nevada Legislature gave us to keep Nevada on the straight and narrow,” said Assad who referred to Bowyer and Nix as clowns. “The title of this presentation should be, ‘From (mobster) Bugsy Siegel to Wayne Nix and the other people here committing all of the money-laundering violations.’ Nevada’s history is unique in that regard. You can look at it just through the prism of criminals and crime or you can look at it through the evolution of people who built this industry from the beginning.”
Keeping the federal government out of Nevada should be the No. 1 priority, Assad warned. He said some senators want a federal gaming commission and the creation of a federal tax. He urged compliance departments to be vigilant and monitor their customers and their sources of funds or risk more punishment.
Casinos have a long history of looking the other way. Assad said that in the 1970s when he started in the industry as a dealer, casinos catered to bookmakers and drug dealers coming in and nobody cared, as long as the money wasn’t counterfeit, Assad said.
“This is nothing new,” Assad said. “What we need to do today is send a message to the federal government that we can clean up our own dirty laundry and that we’re changing the culture. It’s no fun doing this. I don’t like doing it. We have to do it. We have to keep the industry straight.”
Assad said levying fines against MGM, Resorts World, Caesars, and Wynn helps clean up the culture. The message is for C-Suite executives is to pay attention to know your customer, know their source of funds, and do risk assessments. Employees need to be better trained, he said.
“I’m sorry. It’s not a divided risk that starts with the cage and the dealer,” Assad said. “It may start there and they have a responsibility to report things. But ultimately, somebody has to be held responsible – the chief compliance officer and anybody who oversees the chief compliance officer.”
Assad maintained properties also need to watch money coming in from China, especially considering what happened with Wynn Resorts with international money transfers.
“Watch out for the foreign money coming in and watch out for bill stuff and watch up front money coming in and little bit of a play and they cash out,” Assad said. “This goes way back. It’s nothing new. The whole process of laundering money and cleaning it up has been going on for years.”
