Eurasian syndicates target car dealers, credit cards in Las Vegas

FBI agents knew from the moment they began investigating Dimitar Dimitrov that he was not a typical criminal. In secretly recorded conversations, they overheard the Bulgarian-born Dimitrov threaten to cut off the ears of a former associate and use them as cigarette holders. He also suggested tying a witness to a tree, pouring gasoline over him and then standing nearby with cigarettes and a lighter.

Agents believe Dimitrov, a 58-year-old felon, is one of the leaders of a Bulgarian crime ring that defrauded local car dealers out of $1.6 million through an elaborate credit scheme and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars more from ATMs with the help of stolen PINs. This is the new organized crime in Las Vegas, where running numbers and hustling high-interest loans on the street take a back seat to the art of the high-tech scam.

The new organized crime is close-knit and mobile with international connections, especially to mobsters in Eastern Europe and countries that made up the former Soviet Union. Like the traditional Mafia that once ruled the streets of Las Vegas, these groups are capable of violence. But they would rather spend their time reaping the rewards of swiping stolen credit cards on the Strip or using their knowledge of technology to stay ahead of authorities on the computer-assisted crime circuit.

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Parking attendants trained to watch for terrorists

While recently attending a course in the "Entertainment Capital of the World", a colleague in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, told me that 17 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are located in Las Vegas. That is a truly significant statistic, with many implications. One of those implications is that large numbers of people congregate in, and move around, "The Strip" and other major attractions in the city. A second implication is that with such large assemblies and its iconic status, that "Sin City" is a target for terrorist attacks, maybe as much as New York City is.

However, Las Vegas and other cities are fighting back with parking attendants and meter maids being drafted into the nation's latest line of defense against terrorist attacks. A new government program aims to train thousands of parking industry employees nationwide to watch for and report anything suspicious — abandoned cars, for example, or people hanging around garages, taking photographs or asking unusual questions. Organizers say parking attendants and enforcement officers are as important to thwarting attacks as the two Times Square street vendors who alerted police to a smoking SUV that was found to contain a gasoline-and-propane bomb.

“We can no longer afford as a nation to say, `It doesn't impact me or my family, so therefore I'm not getting involved,'" Bill Arrington of the Transportation Security Administration told parking industry professionals at a convention this week in Las Vegas. "We're saying, 'Please, sir, get involved.'" The program has been in the works for about a year and gave its first presentation at the convention, attended by hundreds of people who run parking operations for cities, universities, stadiums and other places around the country.

• "City of London security guards told to report 'suspicious' photographers", The Guardian, 5/13/10.
  

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Inside the Fusion Center

When a tip arrived about a threat of violence at a southern Nevada high school football game, a Clark County School District police officer helped plan a response. When a Colorado man was arrested on terrorism charges, a Department of Homeland Security analyst probed whether he had Las Vegas ties. Though the two cases are very different, the officials who worked them were in the same cubicle-filled room at the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center.

Open for more than two years, the Las Vegas "fusion" center is battling terrorism and street crime, a dual mission that has affected how local and federal law enforcement agents view each other and their jobs. The fusion center concept, which was developed by the federal government after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is grounded in the idea that information flow between police agencies is the key to stopping terrorism.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, the concept has evolved to include a broader "all crimes, all hazards" approach. A sign that federal law enforcement has embraced this strategy came last month when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Las Vegas and praised the local fusion center as a national model.

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