Schuetz: Dana Resnick Gentry Gets To The Bottom Of What’s Going On In Vegas

“The journalist’s job is to tell the truth.”

— Ernest Hemingway

She was born of gambling royalty in Las Vegas, if one can imagine the terms “royalty” and “Las Vegas” ever being used together. Her father, who would be defined as “colorful” back in the day, knew not only how Vegas worked, but also how it didn’t. He was a legend in his time, and it was best not to cross him. The stories about him have only gotten better. His name was Irving “Ash” Resnick.

Gamblers loved Ash, for he was a gambler’s gambler. Regulators and government types sometimes had issues with him, however. This tension has led some writers to suggest that Ash was compromised. I believe that this is nonsense. Ash was just not always understood, as is often the case with visionaries.

Back in the 1940s, Ash did run into some trouble for bookmaking back east, but one needs to understand that he was probably doing something very common, and the real crime may have been not paying the police or politicians for protection. 

He was a major player in introducing junkets to Las Vegas and is said to have opened the first baccarat game in Sin City. He also brought golf tournaments and boxing matches to the city.

Then, of course, there are the stories of eight sticks of dynamite found under his car, and someone shooting at him as he left Caesars Palace. From my experience in Las Vegas, these things were just a way of communicating, much like an interoffice memo. If a real mob guy had wanted Ash gone, Ash would have been gone. Ash was too smart to get gone.

When I was at the Frontier back in 1984, we had a car in our parking lot that was blown up during a union strike. The car was far away from anything important, and no one was near enough to get hurt. I believed that it was pure theater … nothing more. It was part of the negotiations. It was orchestrated drama.

As a result of this blast, our corporate parent wanted to send a few of us top executives to an evasive-driving school and was willing to support and fund our efforts to secure concealable weapons and permits. My god, casino executives screw up enough things without needing a gun — and I know of what I speak. Corporate officers are often well-intended but naïve. Actually … more than often.

During my tenure in Vegas, there were often stories of someone being shot at or something damaged, and I believe that some percentage of this was orchestrated by the “victims” themselves, looking for some street cred.

Ash, Tark, and the champ

Ash was also a magnet for many famous athletes who came to Las Vegas, as he had played professional basketball. At a Nevada Gaming Commission meeting, both Sugar Ray Robinson and Jerry Tarkanian testified on his behalf. That is serious juice. And if you do not know who Sugar Ray Robinson and Jerry Tarkanian are, you are up beyond your bedtime.

One of my favorite stories about Ash’s daughter Dana was that when her father went on collection trips when she was a child, he would sometimes take her along. They would hide the cash in her Barbie doll cases.

Dana’s mother, Marilyn Marie Johnson Resnick, was a beauty with all of the credentials. Considerably younger than Ash, she was Miss Hollywood for 1956. While I could echo her incredible accomplishments here, I could never improve upon this brilliant biography. It should be read, and my guess is that Dana and her sister Lara wrote it.

I do not remember how I came to know Dana, but it was some time ago. Sometimes my mind is like a steel trap — totally rusted shut. 

Once, while visiting Las Vegas, I called her to see if she would like to have breakfast.  We had talked about such a meeting a few weeks earlier on the phone, but on this trip, she had to decline, for she was under a deadline, or some such thing. 

Dana and I then talked on the phone for about 10 minutes. I was with my girlfriend, and after the call, my girlfriend suggested it sounded like a fun conversation, with lots of banter and laughter. I said that I thought of Dana as a good friend. My girlfriend then asked me when I met her. I replied that I had never met her, per se. Every conversation we had ever had involved a phone and/or a computer. We have known each other for many years, but we have never met in person. In modern times, I suspect, you can become close to someone and never physically meet.

Who owns the media?

Dana Resnick Gentry is a great many things, and one of those things is a very competent and qualified investigative journalist. That is an important distinction in Las Vegas because it has a curious history regarding journalism. 

I will leave this story for other voices, but suffice it to say that on Dec. 11, 2015, Nevada’s largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was sold for $140 million, a substantial bump from its sale nine months earlier for $102 million. It turns out Sheldon Adelson and his family orchestrated the purchase, and efforts were made to keep it a secret.

It should also be understood that Adelson had a history of strained relationships with the press, often involving costly litigation. See here and here.

Another very wealthy and powerful casino figure in Las Vegas, Steve Wynn, was also not shy about litigating against people who said things he did not like. Many reporters in the market are quite careful not to bury themselves in litigation, which may cause the investigative process to suffer. Investigative journalism has a hard time flourishing when very rich and powerful people want to craft their own stories and will make an effort to crush reporters who don’t go along with their plan.

A result of all of this has been the creation of a very niche sub-market of publications in Las Vegas staffed by many competent journalists, several of whom are refugees from wars with Adelson and Wynn.

Dana Resnick Gentry is now a senior reporter for The Nevada Current, an online nonprofit news organization covering Nevada. She has an impressive and long biography.

Since attending UNLV and receiving a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, she has been a communications director, an executive producer, a news writer, a news anchor, and essentially everything else that can involve the collection, preparation, and dissemination of news. Throughout this journey, she has maintained an excellent reputation.

A noteworthy investigation she was involved in focused on Aspen Financial and Jeff Guinn (son of Kenny Guinn, Nevada’s governor from 1998 to 2006). Gentry spent years investigating Guinn and Aspen, and let’s just say that it did not end well for either Guinn or Aspen. This morphed into a case before the Nevada Supreme Court involving Nevada’s shield law for reporters, a case Gentry won.

Gentry’s investigative work in this area also led to a book she wrote entitled The Anointed Son, which cast a bad light on both Jeff Guinn and his father, the ex-governor.

Particular areas of interest

Dana has also been a thorn in the side of property developers and homeowners’ associations that had seemingly developed some bad habits in how or who they were protecting.

There are a few areas where Dana may expand her role beyond strict investigative reporting, and that is when she addresses issues involving children and animals. In these instances, she sometimes gives a hint of representing, lobbying, and advocating for those who often do not have representatives, lobbyists, or advocates. The main lesson from this is that she is a sentient human being. When it comes to animals and children, she will use her pulpit. Oh, and if you do something bad to an animal or a child, you may want to explore moving to a different part of the world.

My favorite area of Dana’s work is in gaming. Because of her longtime association with Las Vegas and gaming, she knows where most of the bodies are buried, who can be trusted, and the large body of folks who cannot. She has great sources and has been a material contributor to stories over the last few years in Las Vegas gaming, where money laundering has been something that many of the big operators were apparently unaware of or comfortable with. 

This clearly indicated the importance of an engaged and integrous press. Someone needs to keep an eye on those stores, and when the operators and regulators are asleep at the wheel, or worse, the press is critical for working to ensure the industry operates with character, honesty, and integrity. Dana’s contributions to the recent stories surrounding MGM Resorts and Resorts World were stellar.

I was also terribly impressed by one of her articles on artificial intelligence. It showed a keen understanding of how AI could be used in the casino compliance function, as well as addressing the reality of why it isn’t. As her article indicates from the experience of convicted bookie Matt Bowyer, a casino can benefit from breaking the rules, even if they are caught. The relevant question then becomes, why don’t they utilize better controls? The answer, it seems, is that there is no money in it. 

There are a great many men in Las Vegas who have been considered big deals and apparently warranted great community adoration. Through time, we have found many of them had feet of clay and were either disgusting, incompetent, or fundamentally lacking in integrity. I am honored to know a person who has great intelligence and integrity and works every day to tell the story of these bad guys. 

Her name is Dana. And I hope she keeps kicking ass and taking names for a great many years.

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Richard Schuetz entered the gaming industry working nights as a blackjack and dice dealer while attending college and has since served in many capacities within the industry, including operations, finance, and marketing. He has held senior executive positions up to and including CEO in jurisdictions across the United States, including the gaming markets of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno/Tahoe, Laughlin, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In addition, he has consulted and taught around the globe and served as a member of the California Gambling Control Commission and executive director of the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission. He also publishes extensively on gaming, gaming regulation, diversity, and gaming history. Schuetz is the CEO of American Bettors’ Voice, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving sports bettors a seat at the table.