Posted: December 13, 2024, 02:56.

Last updated: 14 December 2024 06:17h.

As Vital Vegas blogger Scott Loben has been trumpeting alone in the Las Vegas media since at least 2017, the failed All Net Arena project north of the Las Vegas Strip has always been an underfunded affair. It was.

Was All Net Arena president Jackie Robinson simply bad at building arenas, or was there something more illegal going on? (Image: chiccompass.com)

Now, investor lawsuits allege that All Net is something even more nefarious, a fraud designed to generate a decade’s worth of income for its founder, former NBA player Jackie Robinson, and his friends and family. It is claimed.

Kent Rimson and his partner TACSIS APC, a California law and accounting firm, The extortion lawsuit was filed on Tuesday. Robinson and All Net Land Development LLC, a company that built a $5 billion NBA arena and raised investments and loans to build a resort that Robinson knew would never materialize. The lawsuit alleges that

This is the land of All Net Arena in 2020, and it looks exactly the same now as it did in 2013. The land is fondly remembered by locals and visitors alike as the home of Wet ‘n’ Wild Waterpark from 1985 to 2004. (Image: Clark County)

In addition to the investments, more than $800 million in short-term loans were collected between August 2014 and December 2019 but were never repaid, the civil lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, seeks more than $6.4 million in damages. This is three times the actual damages suffered by Rimson and TACSIS, and is a fine allowed under the RICO (Racketeers Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

net zero

Robinson, who proposed the project in 2013, personally guaranteed repayments to investors through “performance bonds” issued by AGS Assurity LLC, according to the complaint. However, no bonds were ever purchased with investor funds. Instead, all of it was transferred to a Las Vegas LLC named Dribble Dunk, which Robinson controlled.

This is one of the renderings of the all-net arena used to attract investors. (Image: Allnet)

According to the complaint, Dribbledunk regularly transferred portions of the funds to Robinson, his spouse, and friends and family members who acted as “consultants.” In addition to receiving “significant” consulting fees, these individuals also received “generous” holiday bonuses, according to Rimson and TACSIS.

Another portion of the investment funds went to AGS Assurety’s manager, Timothy Arellano, who, the plaintiffs allege, “never pledged the bonds.”

“Plaintiffs received a performance bond as security for the loan, which Plaintiffs later learned through discovery was a fraudulent counterfeit product,” the lawsuit alleges.

The balance of the investment was used to pay rent and purchase rights to Allnet Land Development for the 26-acre property, according to the complaint. It also paid the fees of attorney Torben Welch of the Utah-based Messner Reeves law firm.

Rimson and TACSIS said the fraud took place while Robinson was fully aware that the Allnet Project was “facing huge deficits in the millions of dollars and could collapse at any time.” It is claimed that ”

All of the aforementioned persons and entities that the lawsuit alleges received Allnet investment funds were named as defendants, as well as approximately 100 Allnet affiliates.

A similar lawsuit was filed in February 2020 by Rimson and TACSIS in the U.S. District Court for Central California. However, the case was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. Many of the accusations in this case were repeated in the Nevada lawsuit.

After more than a decade of stagnation, Robinson was forced to give up All Nets by the Clark County Commission. The Clark County Commission voted 7-0 in November 2023 to deny further extensions to the project’s construction permit. Robinson’s promise was certainly kept.

toll net

Just five months after All Net was euthanized, another group of developers announced their own plans to build a multibillion-dollar resort and NBA-ready arena on the same property.

LVXP claims construction will begin early next year.

LVXP’s proposed resort and basketball arena would include the tallest resort in Nevada at 752 feet, 15 feet taller than neighboring Fontainebleau. (Image: LVXP)

This again seems very suspicious for Vital Vegas, the only media outlet in Las Vegas that doesn’t just copy and paste the real estate group’s ambitious press releases and renderings.

First, an NBA arena is already planned for the Las Vegas Strip. Although it hasn’t been officially announced yet, all signs point to it being built by Oak View Group (OVG) on Rio’s current parking lot.

LVXP also has no history of building arenas, and its principles include:

CEO James R. Frazure, former Managing Director of International Rare Metals Mining Group, Chief of Staff Kristin Richards, professional dancer and choreographer Nick Tomasino, Chief Construction Officer, Sphere Senior Vice President of Construction I managed to make the project a success. More than $1 billion over budget.

In contrast, OVG is a $500 million company with a proven track record of building sports facilities. These include Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, Long Island’s UBS Arena, and Manchester, England’s Co-Op Live.

Oh, and OVG is led by Tim Leiweke, the former president of live entertainment giant AEG, and Irving Azoff, the manager of a small rock band called the Eagles.

Source link