Kristi Torgerson will take over as chief of the enforcement division of the Nevada Gaming Management Board (NGCB). Her new job is efficient on the finish of this month.
J. Brin Gibson, pictured above. The Nevada Gaming Management Board’s chair named Kristi Torgerson chief of the enforcement division. (Picture: Las Vegas Evaluate-Journal)
NGCB Chair J. Brin Gibson introduced the appointment this week. She’s going to change James Taylor, who’s retiring. He has labored on the board for 27 years.
Torgerson presently is deputy chief of the NGCB’s enforcement division. She had this job for about three years. She labored on the board since 1997.
Following Sept. 11, 2001, Torgerson was named an officer with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Job Drive. Earlier, she labored in counterintelligence and translation for the US Military.
Integrity of Gaming
“Deputy Chief Torgerson’s spectacular profession with the Gaming Management Board, the army, and federal legislation enforcement ought to give Nevadans confidence within the security and integrity of gaming…,” Gibson stated in an announcement.
The NGCB historically has investigated on line casino chip theft and slot machine manipulation. Extra lately, it investigated world cybersecurity.
Torgerson will work to make sure the security of Nevada’s residents and guests, in addition to the continuity of the gaming trade’s advantages to the … financial system,” Gibson stated.
Taylor’s Tenure
Over his NGCB profession, Taylor has led main investigations. In 2020, Taylor introduced the NGCB opened 111 investigations into potential compliance failures at state casinos.
The division performed 1,453 inspections and observations of nonrestricted casinos to find out whether or not state-mandated well being and security measures had been correctly executed.
The NGCB additionally performed 6,008 inspections of restricted gaming licensees. Restricted licenses permit an institution to deal with and function not more than 15 slot machines, and gaming have to be incidental to the first enterprise.
The enforcement division is the board’s legislation enforcement arm. It has 5 places of work statewide.
The division undertakes legal and regulatory investigations, and arbitrates disputes between patrons and licensees. It additionally conducts background investigations on work card candidates, gathers intelligence on organized criminals, and gives suggestions on candidates for the record of individuals excluded from the state’s casinos by being positioned within the Black E-book.
The Black E-book was created in 1960 in an effort to reassure vacationers that Las Vegas was not run by the Mafia. It targets people with “a infamous or unsavory status that might adversely have an effect on public confidence and belief that the gaming trade is free from legal or corrupt developments.”
In August, Kendrick Laronte Weatherspoon, an alleged pimp with a historical past of violence in opposition to ladies, was banned from the state’s casinos. His identify was included within the Black E-book by the NGCB.
Since 2000, Weatherspoon confronted 30 circumstances within the Las Vegas Justice Courtroom. Fees embrace drug dealing, impaired driving, housebreaking, home battery, intercourse trafficking of an grownup, battery by strangulation, sexual assault, kidnapping, and accepting the proceeds of prostitution. He has been thrown out of not less than 5 Las Vegas casinos for his actions.
