Former MGM Grand President Scott Sibella was prosecuted for failing to file a Suspicious Activity Report after a bookmaker paid a $120,000 casino marker in cash in 2018. Haynes Boone Partner Richard Weber spoke with Casino Reports about the case and why he believes Sibella was not the type of person who should have been charged with money laundering or Title 31.
Read an excerpt below.
“Mr. Sibella was just not the type of person that should have been charged with a money laundering or a Title 31, failure-to-file-a-SAR charge,” said Weber, who worked hundreds of money laundering investigations during his career as a prosecutor and chief of IRS-CI. “It just did not fit within the category of cases that the government should have spent the resources on.” …
“The fact that he was even having conversations with someone that the government was interested in, I think put him in a negative light,” Weber said, noting that it was Nix’s phone, not Sibella’s, that was tapped. …
Indeed, Weber said he’s unaware of any casino president ever being prosecuted for failing to file a SAR or some kind of internal, pre-SAR notification. In fact, he said that when he was with the government, one of his talking points was that financial institutions would only be held accountable for willful, sustained, systemic AML program deficiencies, not for isolated SAR decisions or for not filing a single missed SAR. …
“Sibella was not the person that was the most culpable in terms of AML responsibilities and SAR responsibilities,” Weber said. …
“I think they wanted an executive,” Weber said. “I think it was very important for the government to have at least one individual charged, to take the responsibility for these AML compliance failures. I think they very much wanted to have a deal with the casino, and in the casino’s cooperation with the government, Sibella was identified.”
Read the full article from Casino Reports here.
