MGM Made Scott Sibella a Fall Guy in Bookmaking Scandal, His Attorneys Say

Attorneys for former MGM Grand and Resorts World Las Vegas president Scott Sibella say their client became the fall guy for an industry-wide problem, as newly surfaced details show a long list of Las Vegas Strip casinos — not just the properties tied to Sibella — extended credit and comped perks to bookmakers swept up in the same federal anti-money laundering probe that ended his career.

Mathew Bowyer has drawn most of the headlines as the bookmaker at the center of the sports betting scandal that also ensnared Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani. But Bowyer wasn’t the only illegal bookmaker moving big money through Las Vegas casinos. Wayne Nix and his associates, Kenneth Arsenian and Edon Yoshida Kagasoff, were prosecuted in the same broader investigation, and records show they gambled at a wide swath of marquee properties, including MGM’s Aria, Bellagio, Cosmopolitan, MGM Grand, The Mirage and Park MGM, along with Caesars Palace, the Tropicana, the off-Strip Red Rock in Summerlin, The Venetian and the Wynn. MGM and the Tropicana both extended Nix credit.

“It’s Hard to Walk Through a Casino Without Bumping Into a Bookmaker”

John Spilotro, Sibella’s Las Vegas-based attorney, argues that book making activity of this kind has long been an open secret across the Strip, not a problem unique to the properties where his client worked. “That’s always been the case in Las Vegas,” Spilotro said. “It’s hard to walk through a casino without bumping into a bookmaker.” Spilotro and Richard Weber, another attorney for Sibella and the former head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS, say they remain outraged that Sibella has borne the brunt of accountability while other operators tied to the same bookmakers have largely avoided similar scrutiny.

Sibella’s legal troubles trace back eight years, to his tenure as president of the MGM Grand. He was charged with a felony for failing to file a Suspicious Activity Report after Nix made a $120,000 cash payment on July 27, 2018, to settle a marker at the casino. Federal investigators later revealed that Sibella had been caught on wiretapped calls with Nix, who made statements strongly suggesting he was operating as a bookmaker, including a reference to accepting a $5 million bet on the Super Bowl. Sibella ultimately admitted to law enforcement that he suspected Nix’s activity and pleaded guilty to the federal charge.

A Career Undone, A Broader Pattern Left Unresolved

Sibella’s plea led to a one-year probation sentence and a $9,500 fine, along with the revocation of his Nevada gaming license and a five-year ban from the industry. MGM Grand and The Cosmopolitan separately reached non-prosecution agreements with the Justice Department, paying a combined $7.45 million and accepting responsibility for laundering Nix’s illicit funds. MGM Resorts International later agreed to an additional $8.5 million fine tied to the same activity, while Resorts World Las Vegas, where Sibella worked after leaving MGM, settled with Nevada regulators for $10.5 million over its handling of Bowyer.

What Sibella’s attorneys are now highlighting is the disparity between his outcome and that of executives and companies at other Strip properties that hosted the same bookmakers without facing comparable consequences. With Nix’s associates already sentenced and Bowyer having pleaded guilty to operating an illegal gambling business, the case has continued to raise questions about how selectively the fallout from Las Vegas’s anti-money laundering failures has been distributed among the casinos involved. Whether that scrutiny expands to the other properties tied to Nix’s operation remains an open question as the broader investigation winds down.