Go-Go Joints, Dodgy Land Deals and Bank Robberies
Part 3 in my series on Dr. Elias Ghanem: Dr. Feelgood, physician to the stars
Previous posts in this series:
Go-go joints
This part of the story requires us to travel back more than 50 years to the late 1960s. when Elias Ghanem’s older brother, Nasser, shows up in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s not clear where Nasser was prior to that. I scanned old immigration records but, unlike Elias, there doesn’t seem to be any record of Nasser entering the country. Indeed, apart from a few newspaper articles and company records that mention Nasser, he seems to have preferred to stay off the grid as much as possible.
Nasser became the manager of the Pecan Grove Supper Club. In between his undergraduate degree and Duke, Elias managed the sister night club to the Pecan Grove, Grove a-Go-Go.
Nasser went on to manage the House of Beef while still booking acts for the Supper Club and Grove a-Go-Go. If readers recall from my earlier post, it was through these clubs that Elias was introduced to Brother Dave Gardner, friend of Elvis Presley and Presley’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker. (Gardner was arguably closer with Colonel Parker than Elvis - they were known to meet up regularly when the Colonel was in LA.
I won’t go into the Colonel’s background here, but if you are looking for a good read, I recommend the book The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley by Alanna Nash.
Nasser followed brother Elias to Las Vegas in 1976, as did their parents, Farid and Fadwa. When Farid died in 1977 it was proudly reported in his obituary that Farid had been a “self-employed truck driver” - a rather interesting career shift given he was an oil executive in Palestine.
Birth of a bank
Upon landing in Las Vegas in 1977, Nasser caught the entrepreneur fever, founding Ghanem Travel Inc, with offices in the Las Vegas Hilton and in Los Angeles, as well as the company American Foreign Exchange of Nevada Inc. That year, he shows up as an investor in Rom-Amer Pharmaceuticals (hold that thought).
He also found a niche for himself serving as a US-based liaison for Middle East financing. (Sounds a bit Adnan Khashoggi-esque, no?) In 1979 Nasser brought these Middle Eastern contacts to bear in establishing his own Nevada bank. That year an investment group consisting of Nasser Ghanem, Las Vegas Attorney Jack Lehman, Los Angeles attorney Stuart Brand, and a Qatari businessman by the name of Bassam Fahra established a new bank in Nevada. It was called American Bank of Commerce and its charter was to “delve deeply into the foreign exchange business”.
Nasser brought in a number of networked and trusted individuals to fill out his board. He installed as chairwoman the female gaming legend, Claudine Williams: ex-owner of the Holiday Inn Casino (later Harrah’s) and the Silver Slipper (sold to Howard Hughes). While Claudine was never accused or charged of any impropriety, a review of her and her husband, Shelby’s, early careers and investment history makes it fairly obvious that they had strong mafia / mob connections and support.
Other board members of the bank included Robert Bugbee, owner of a home building company and chair of the State Savings Association and the Savings and Loan Appeal Board, and Keith Ashworth, a Nevada legislator in both houses.
And brother Elias.
Land deals done dodgy
In 1986, FBI Special Agent John Bailey opened an investigation into allegations that the Colorado River Commission had been selling land it was responsible for overseeing to developers at steep discounts to fair value. This practice, if true, effectively resulted in a multi-million-dollar loss to the state and residents of Nevada.
Bailey learned that real estate developer John Midby had bought a parcel of land from the Commission at a price of $2,500 per acre in late 1983. In comparison, the adjacent property had recently sold for $45,000 per acre. At the time, Jack Lehman was Chairman of the Commission and Robert Bugbee was a member of the five-person panel.
Bailey had also discovered that between 1982 and 1984, Bugbee, on behalf of the American Bank of Commerce (ABC), had successfully negotiated a very advantageous lease arrangement with Midby on a commercial space for the bank in Laughlin, Nevada. Company records showed that both Lehman and Bugbee were on the board of ABC at the time and both had substantial shareholdings in the company. Lehman had made statements to the Gaming Control Board that he had not been aware of or involved in the negotiations, however Bailey managed to secure three pieces of written evidence that clearly contradicted Lehman’s claim.
In August 1987, Bailey, together with Special Agent in Charge James Weller, brought this evidence to the US Attorney for Nevada and recommended Lehman be prosecuted. Weller, incidentally, was fresh from wrapping up a set of arrests associated with a nation-wide drug smuggling ring called “The Company”. (Hold that thought - you will hear more about drugs in a future installment).
Despite the evidence, the US Attorney for Nevada made the decision not to prosecute, claiming there was not a compelling case from a Federal perspective. They agreed, however, that there was a case for the State of Nevada to pursue perjury charges against Lehman. As a result, the Federal District Judge authorized the release of the relevant evidence to the Gaming Control Board and Nevada Attorney General’s office in June 1988.
Nothing happened.
In fact, on October 5, 1990, Ronald Asher (ex FBI) of the Gaming Control Board told the FBI that “a review of their files failed to disclose any reference to Jack Lehman”.
And why might this be?
Lehman had been chairman of the Commission since early 1971, when he was appointed by the then Democrat Governor, Mike O’Callaghan. (Keep that name in mind as his appointments tend to surface quite a bit in terms of various scandals).
O’Callaghan had just won the Nevada governorship in November of 1970 by a very narrow margin over Republican candidate Lieutenant Governor Ed Fike. His slim victory was largely attributed to a scandal that had conveniently been exposed by Hank Greenspun’s publication Las Vegas Sun just two weeks before the election. Fike was accused of misusing his position as Lieutenant Governor in connection with a land deal. He was found to have been acting simultaneously as Lieutenant Governor and as a director on the board of a real estate company when it negotiated a purchase of 1,090 acres from the Colorado River Commission.
Got to love those October surprises. Bad for Fike, good for O’Callaghan.
The first order of business when Lehman became Chairman was to challenge the legality of land deal made with Fike’s company. The Nevada Attorney General had at the time ruled that Fike’s interest in the company wasn’t sufficiently material as to cause a conflict. Lehman wasn’t satisfied with this. He engaged a second legal opinion, suggesting that the Attorney General’s decision may have been biased based on party (Republican) affiliation.
When Lehman got the opinion he was hoping for, the Commission filed suit, seeking to void the deal. I was unable to find out the outcome of this suit, but if Lehman was successful, it would have been very lucrative. The land in question had since appreciated in value more than three times. A successful suit also would have drawn a definitive line under O’Callaghan’s election, proving him the best candidate and giving him the needed legitimacy as governor.
It’s probably also worth noting that Rich Bryan, the Nevada Governor at the time of Bailey’s investigation in 1987, had taken out a $250,000 loan from ABC, secured by his interest in a real estate partnership.
Nothing to see here, folks: conflict for thee, but not for me.
Death of an Agent
On June 26, 1990, a man dressed as a woman walked into the Las Vegas branch of the Security Pacific Bank. He approached a bank teller and pointed a gun demanding she hand over her cash. The woman screamed and jumped back from the counter. Startled by her reaction, the man aborted his robbery attempt and turned to exit the bank.
FBI Special Agent John Bailey happened to be inside the bank branch at the time. He was at the bank to serve a subpoena for bank records of a person he was investigating. Noticing the commotion, he fired a warning shot, disarmed the robber, and put him in a chair. Before an employee could get Bailey’s handcuffs from his car, the robber jumped up and scuffled with Bailey. As Bailey fell to the ground, the robber, having regained his gun, shot the FBI agent three times. The robber proceeded to flee the scene, joining an accomplice waiting outside in a car, whereupon they drove away.
Shortly afterwards, Agent Bailey died of his wounds.
Intent on quickly apprehending the killer of one of their own, the FBI engaged in a massive manhunt to find the killer, marshalling agents and resources from multiple offices. When they received a lead on a person they were sure was the suspect, they surmised he had likely fled across the border into Mexico.
The Mexican police were enlisted to help. The day after the murder, they located Jose Echavarria 725 miles away in Juarez, trying to board an airplane. He was taken into custody by the Mexican police where FBI agents from the El Paso office joined them a few hours later. The following morning Echavarria signed a confession and shortly after that he was extradited to the US and arrested.
At his arraignment, Echavarria’s lawyers argued to have the confession supressed as evidence. They claimed the FBI and Mexican police had employed excessive violence and physical threats against Echavarria and his girlfriend in their attempts to get him to confess. 20 FBI agents took the stand and testified that this was not the case, with “many of them stressing the fact that Agent Bailey was an FBI agent”. The judge, the Honorable Jack Lehman (yes, you read that right, Jack Lehman), overruled the motion by the defendants, and the confession was allowed into evidence for the trial.
Echevarria was soon convicted by a jury of murder. For this, Judge Lehman imposed a sentence of death. Carlos Gurry, the man charged as an accomplice, was also convicted and sentenced to life with potential for parole.
Echavarria and Gurry’s cases were appealed a number of times in the Nevada Supreme court and Federal Appeals courts, each time getting knocked back. Finally, in 2015 they came with two new pieces of evidence. The first was the details of Bailey’s investigation on Lehman. For some reason the records had been sealed, but the defendant’s lawyers were able to get an order to unseal them. The second was the fact that Lehman had himself acknowledged to the prosecution and to Gurry’s lawyer (but not to Echavarria’s) that he had a potential conflict. Yet Lehman still did not recuse himself at the time.
Given the FBI had been investigating Lehman, the defendants’ lawyers argued that it is reasonable to think that Lehman could have been motivated to remove any barriers to Echavarria’s conviction in order to curry favor with the FBI. And that as such, there was sufficient risk that the two men had not received due process.
The appeals court agreed and the two men’s petition for a retrial was granted. The decision was in turn appealed in 2018, but the ruling for a retrial was upheld.
On May 31 2023, almost 33 years after the initial arrest, charges were suddenly dropped against Carlos Gurry. While an official reason was never given, contributing factors were likely to have been revelations of a witness giving contradicting testimony to identify Gurry and the fact that an FBI agent who acted as a key witness against Gurry had since been convicted of manslaughter and accused of manipulating a crime scene in a separate case.”
As of August 4, 2023 Gurry was still in jail fighting to be granted asylum as he felt he could not return to his home country of Cuba.
Echavarria’s retrial was rescheduled for November 2020. Oddly, I cannot find any articles online that provide an update on what happened at Echavarria’s retrial but, according to a 2021 report by the Legal Defense Fund, Echavarria is one of 66 people awaiting death row in Nevada.
Where are the others now? Judge Jack Lehman continued on as District Judge until 2008 and was bestowed with a Nevada “Legacy of Justice” award in 2013. He died in 2017. Midby, the developer, died in 2015 after a long career of developing land in Nevada and later in Washington state. Robert Bugbee also continued on with his home building business. He died in 1993 at the age of 67.
The FBI building in Las Vegas is now named the “Robert Bailey Building” in honor of their fallen comrade.
The American Bank of Commerce was later renamed to American Bancorp of Nevada. It went through a series of mergers and acquisitions, being acquired by Mormon bank First Security Bank in 1997, which in turn was acquired in 2001 by Wells Fargo.
As for what happened with the Ghanem brothers, well let’s just say we are far from being done on their stories.
Stay tuned for the next installment.