May.16, 2010

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A northern Nevada brothel owner whose Moonlite Bunny Ranch is home to an HBO reality show is planning to buy two bordellos owned by a southern Nevada brothel owner convicted of trying to bribe a Nye County commissioner.

“Believe me, Las Vegas will know I’m there,” brothel owner Dennis Hof said of his plan to buy Maynard Martin “Joe” Richards’ properties, named the Cherry Patch Ranch and Mabel’s Whorehouse, in the hamlet of Crystal, about 75 miles from Las Vegas.

Richards told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the sale includes all his holdings in Crystal, including the brothels, two bars, two restaurants and more than 40 acres of property. A purchase price was not disclosed.

Richards said he plans to keep another brothel in Lathrop Wells, and a strip club and weekly newspaper he owns in Pahrump.

“I’m going to concentrate on my newspaper,” said Richards, whose sentence allows him to leave a halfway house in Las Vegas during the day to tend to his businesses in Nye County.

Richards, 76, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March 2009 in federal court in Las Vegas. He was sentenced last July to a year in the halfway house, five years probation and fined $250,000. His appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is due for a hearing June 7.

Richards had been indicted in 2006 on two felony charges of wire fraud for paying then-Nye County Commissioner Candice Trummell $5,000 to rewrite an ordinance that kept him from building a new brothel in Pahrump, about 60 miles west of Las Vegas.

Trummell was working undercover for the FBI, and the meetings and phone conversations she secretly recorded were key in the government’s case against Richards.

Hof already owns two brothels in Lyon County, east of Carson City. He said he hopes to apply for brothel licenses in Nye County within the next week and close the deal to buy Richards’ properties by the end of June.

He said he intends to promote the Crystal bordellos as “an oasis in the desert,” and has recruited his friend, former “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss, as a consultant not involved in day-to-day operations.

Fleiss once ran a high-priced Los Angeles prostitution ring providing models-turned-prostitutes to wealthy clients. She moved to Pahrump in late 2005, several years after serving 21 months in California prison for money laundering, tax evasion and attempted pandering.

She once promised to open a legal brothel featuring male prostitutes serving female customers, but later dropped the idea. She operates a 24-hour coin-operated laundry, called Dirty Laundry, in Pahrump.

Fleiss is also on three years’ probation after pleading guilty last July to felony charges of unlawful use of methamphetamine and possession of the painkiller hydrocodone without a prescription.

Hof said he planned to use his first foray into southern Nevada’s legal brothel business to campaign against the sex trade in nearby Clark County, where prostitution is illegal.

Nevada allows prostitution in rural counties, but not in its most populous counties and biggest cities, including Las Vegas and Reno.

“I’m excited for the opportunity,” said Hof, whose home in Lyon County is more than five hours’ drive from Crystal. “Now I’ve got to buy an airplane.”