Here in Las Vegas we are seeing the plot of a movie unfolding, a little at a time.

Back during the building boom, a lot of condos and town homes were being built around the Las Vegas area. And an enterprising young lawyer, Nancy Quon, decided there was good money to be made suing the builders for construction defects. Then, there weren't enough homeowner associations (HOAs) willing to hire her to do this, so she and her boyfriend, who was an ex-cop here in Las Vegas came up with an idea to place some of his retired cop buddies on several of the HOA boards, so they could vote to hire Ms. Quon to sue the builders, and vote to hire their crooked construction friends to fix the defects.



The scheme involved finding "straw purchasers" to buy condominiums and getting them to run for seats on the boards. The straw buyers were elected through classic dirty campaign tactics that included forging ballots and digging up dirt on candidates not supported by the co-conspirators.

This all came to light a couple of years ago, and at that time the lawyer, Ms. Quon, who had taken in millions of dollars in fees on these lawsuits, tried to kill herself and burn her house down so that her boyfriend could supposedly collect her life insurance and give it to her children. (This never made a lot of sense to me.)

But she didn't die, so she was indicted for arson and fraud with regard to the HOA scandal.

Things have been grinding along, and last week, Nancy Quon was found dead in her bathtub, apparently she'd committed suicide and succeeded this time.

And then a couple of days ago, another attorney who had pled guilty in the probe was found hanging from a rope in his brother's garage in California.

"He admitted that between March and September 2008, he was paid a $3,000 kickback by his co-conspirators to help rig board elections at Chateau Nouveau and Pebble Creek.

Amesbury also admitted that he participated in a separate scheme to defraud banks while seeking refinancing for the Courthouse Cafe, which he operated under a Clark County contract with former construction company boss Leon Benzer and another partner, former Las Vegas police Lt. Benjamin Kim."

Back in November 2011, soon after he'd entered the guilty plea, he was found severely beaten in a gated Las Vegas area community, but the authorities said they'd found no link to the HOA scandal and investigation.

"He was really beaten to a pulp," the source said. "He had two broken ribs, and both his kneecaps were shattered. He also had a variety of facial injuries."

A bloodied Amesbury was dressed only in his underwear and shoes when he was discovered lying in the street in the quiet neighborhood, according to Henderson police reports.

At one point, the reports said, Amesbury told a nurse he "was beaten up, and he deserved it." He also told a detective that he "planned to commit suicide or try to" and had brought 30 doses of Valium with him.

The police reports show detectives had a hard time pinning down Amesbury about what had happened to him."

Two other people who attracted the interest of authorities in the sweeping federal investigation also have died under unusual circumstances.

Former Las Vegas police officer Christopher Van Cleef shot himself to death a few days after a September 2008 FBI raid in the investigation. A former Vistana homeowners association board member, identified as Robbi Castro, died in 2010 of a drug overdose.

So now, the other living witnesses are starting to get a little nervous: too much coincidence.


We need a new blog category: Crime and Punishment