ML - Vegas Magazine

2014 - Issue 1 - Winter

Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.

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Chesnoff with his client Alistair Overeem, a UFC fighter who tested positive for high testosterone levels, before the Nevada State Athletic Commission in 2012. Overeem was suspended for nine months. wild parties, they'd invite me, and I'd tell them that I couldn't go, in case everyone gets in trouble and you all need me. In truth, I was working extraordinary hours." It's a work ethic that resulted in bravura closing statements and countless cases won. Clients embraced him because he found innovative ways to prove them innocent. His reputation grew exponentially. Through it all, however, didn't he realize that many of the people he represented were actually guilty of what they were accused of? "Except when you win," Chesnoff says. "Then they're not guilty." He hesitates for a beat, then adds, "I believe in our system. When somebody notorious gets protected, that is how it should be, and it protects everybody. When things are corrupt and rules are not applied, that's when I see the country in trouble." A s Las Vegas evolved, so did Chesnoff. The mob was driven out of town and his practice changed. He got involved in cases arising from major marijuana, hashish, and cocaine seizures. "Vegas was a hub for drug [deliveries] because it's a 24-hour city, there's a lot of money in town, and you can get to a lot of places from here," says Chesnoff, who explains that the nature of the business made for some weirdly humorous scenarios. In one cocaine case, he says, "some of the drugs were in a small casino-hotel called the Continental, which is no longer there, and they busted the airplane coming in. I represented a guy involved in that case for a long time and didn't even know his real name. Now he's out of jail and living in Colombia." He also represented poker pro Mike "The Mouth" Matusow on a drug charge. "Mike was in deep trouble," Chesnoff says. "He wound up going from facing state prison time to a very short sentence in the jail downtown"— where Matusow still managed to lose a six-figure sum by placing sports bets with bookies on the outside. "His whole life would have been unfairly different if I hadn't been able to convince the court that this was really aberrant behavior on his part and that he really wasn't a drug dealer." Chesnoff established himself as a favorite of poker stars, advising Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, and the late Chip Reese, among others. When Jamie Gold won the World Series of Poker in 2006, there was a dispute with a card-playing TV producer who claimed to have been promised half of Gold's winnings; Chesnoff went to bat for the producer and the suit was eventually settled. After poker great Phil Ivey enlisted Chesnoff to represent him in his 2009 divorce, the line at the hold'em tables was that Ivey had hired the Phil Ivey of attorneys. These days, every casino boss in town has Chesnoff flagged on his iPhone. "I get calls from casino executives to help big customers of theirs, and it isn't to help because they want to see the guys go away," he says. "Casino management understands that people are in Vegas and things will happen." Such was the case when he received a middle-of-the-night wake-up regarding a high roller from Hawaii who had just been arrested in a casino 88 for overdue markers around town. "I got to see the guy in jail, I got him out, and we got him put on electronic monitoring in one of the hotel's gorgeous suites with a butler," Chesnoff recalls. "Eventually I got the case dismissed and he was back in action." I half-joke that it sounds like a whale's dream come true, but Chesnoff isn't laughing when he responds. "The casino executive wanted to keep the customer, but there was also an open-mindedness that just because you get accused of something, that doesn't mean you did it. That attitude comes from the fact that, historically, casinos had people involved with them who were on the edge. A lot of people who make up the original community of Las Vegas understand the perils of closed-mindedness, whether they're Jewish or Italian or Latter-day Saints." Reinvented beyond the wildest dreams of the city's great pioneers, by the start of the 21st century, Las Vegas was a magnet for young Hollywood, superstar athletes, some of the prettiest girls on the planet, and the wellheeled trendsetters who gravitate to that universe. For Chesnoff, it's only been good for business. He had already made a name for himself among LA attorneys via a series of high-profile cases there—a courtroom artist's rendering of Chesnoff and controversial rap magnate Suge Knight hangs in the lobby of the US District Court in Los Angeles—and he was an obvious person for celebrities to call when they got jammed up in Vegas. As for Knight—the alleged former Bloods gang member whom Chesnoff kept out of jail after the state charged him with battery in 2008—the attorney maintains a favorable view. "The whole world has an opinion on Suge Knight, but I don't have that opinion," Chesnoff says, adding that he remembers Knight from his days as a defensive end with the UNLV football team. "I recall being in Miami for the Super Bowl, and Suge was in town with Snoop Dogg. He called to ask me to get him a table for 15 at The Palm on the night before the Super Bowl. I managed to do it, but he canceled and still asked me to get seven steaks and seven lobsters to go. He and his guys ate in the car, but he wouldn't stiff the place. He and I never had an issue. Part of that is because I always kept my word to him. He's an amazing guy." But didn't Knight once hang somebody by his ankles out an office building window? "I never believed that story. It's like an urban legend. So said his attorney." VEGASMAGAZINE.COM 084-089_V_FEAT_Chesnoff_Winter14.indd 88 1/10/14 11:00 AM

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