By Rolando Larraz
Las Vegas Tribune
Former corrupt Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Captain Frank Sutton died last week. Sutton, a corrupt Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Captain was involved in a homeowners association fraud scandal manipulated by Leon Benzer back in the last decade.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Gordon refused to listen to Federal Prosecutors who wanted Captain Sutton to serve one year in prison for his role in the homeowners association fraud and gave him a sweetheart sentence of home confinement and $20,000 fine and ordered him to serve 100 hours of community service.
Back then Sutton asked the court for home confinement so he could care for his ill wife, but ironically he passed before his “ill wife” did.
In 2012 Sutton, who retired from the police department to save his pension, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Sutton, 61, pleaded guilty in May 2012 to one felony count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, but unlike roughly three dozen other defendants who pleaded guilty in the case, he did not spend one day behind bars.
Captain Sutton, like many other friends of the Metro administration, was allowed retirement with a full pension and full retirement credentials, and collected his pension while on a six-month home confinement and his three years of probation.
On May 20, 2015, a Las Vegas Tribune editorial emphasized the need to have all the individuals involved in the HOA Scandal be punished to the fullest extent of the law, but we won’t hold our breath for that to happen, knowing the lack of justice in our community.
“The real culprits behind this financial disaster for many, yet a money-making opportunity for animals like Leon Benzer, Ralph Priola, Frank Sutton and the rest of the defendants, need to pay for their crimes with real time, real punishment, and real financial consequences,” stated the Las Vegas Tribune editorial, but it seems like U.S. District Court of Nevada Judge, Andrew Gordon “refused” to make that happen.
In the early part of 2000 Leon Benzer told the Las Vegas Tribune during an unrelated interview with the newspaper that he has local judges and law enforcement agents in his pocket; later in a Federal Bureau of Investigation report, FBI Special Agent Michael Eliot wrote “he often claimed he had local judges and law enforcement in his pocket,” confirming what the Las Vegas Tribune had published earlier.
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