Ex-commissioner Lance Malone released from federal prison

By Rich Coleman

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 | 5:41 p.m.

A former Clark County commissioner who in 2006 pleaded guilty to violating federal racketeering laws for bribing commissioners was released from prison Wednesday.

Lance Matthew Malone, 49, was released to a halfway house, according to the Bureau of Prison, and will be released July 30. Sun columnist Jon Ralston reported Malone's release Wednesday afternoon.

Malone was one of four former commissioners involved in “Operation G-Sting,” the moniker for the FBI investigation into bribes between Michael Galardi and former Clark County commissioners Dario Herrera, Erin Kenny and Mary Kincaid-Chauncey.

Galardi and his step-father owned a strip club named Cheetahs in Las Vegas and they wanted to expand adult entertainment to the Las Vegas Strip, over which the county commission has jurisdiction.

Galardi wanted ordinances to permit the women to dance nude and to allow the dancers to serve alcohol. And he wanted to block any proposed ordinance that would have prohibited the women from performing lap dances on the customers.

The FBI wiretapped telephone calls between Kincaid-Chauncey and Galardi and Malone. Malone received a six-year prison sentence.

Herrera was tried with Kincaid-Chauncey in 2006 and was convicted of 17 counts of corruption. He was ordered to prison for 50 months, fined $50,000 and ordered to forfeit $60,000. Kincaid-Chauncey was sentenced to a federal prison near Victorville, Calif., and Herrera was sentenced to Federal Prison Camp in Florence, Colo.

Galardi and former County Commissioner Erin Kenny cooperated with the investigation and pleaded guilty to various charges.

In an In Business Las Vegas interview with Malone’s attorney, Dominic Gentile, from March 2010, Gentile said he considered Malone a friend and held “the highest regard” for him.

“There was a time in this community when the return to the community of a man that has Lance Malone’s integrity would have been celebrated, and he would have been greeted with open arms and embraced,” Gentile said. “Lance Malone was offered the moon to give testimony against other people in this community. He did not do so and he would not do so. It would have required him to compromise his own integrity and No. 2 to tell lies. Instead of doing those things, Lance Malone went to prison. I know I will be glad to see him come home.”