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.
NGCB Chair J. Brin Gibson introduced the appointment this week. She’s going to substitute 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 Process Pressure. 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 mentioned in an announcement.
The NGCB historically has investigated on line casino chip theft and slot machine manipulation. Extra just lately, it investigated world cybersecurity.
Torgerson will work to make sure the protection of Nevada’s residents and guests, in addition to the continuity of the gaming business’s advantages to the … economic system,” Gibson mentioned.
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 have been correctly executed.
The NGCB additionally performed 6,008 inspections of restricted gaming licensees. Restricted licenses permit an institution to accommodate 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 workplaces statewide.
The division undertakes prison 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 Guide.
The Black Guide 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 fame that will adversely have an effect on public confidence and belief that the gaming business is free from prison or corrupt developments.”
In August, Kendrick Laronte Weatherspoon, an alleged pimp with a historical past of violence in opposition to girls, was banned from the state’s casinos. His title was included within the Black Guide by the NGCB.
Since 2000, Weatherspoon confronted 30 circumstances within the Las Vegas Justice Courtroom. Prices 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.