Steve Wynn, the founder of the eponymous Wynn Resorts founder and a former finance chair of the Republican National Committee, was perhaps one of the biggest corporate casualties of the #MeToo reckoning that started with Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. The one-time “King of Las Vegas” stepped down as chairman and CEO of the company he helped create in February 2018, after WSJ published a lengthy expose on decades of sexual abuse allegations. The report sent the company’s stock reeling, as investors were repulsed by a story about Wynn coercing a woman into sex in the late 1980s because he reportedly “wanted to know what it was like to have sex with a grandmother”
But more than a year later, investigators, including regulators in Massachusetts – who are wondering why they never heard about these allegations when they gave Wynn Resorts the green light to operate the $2.6 billion Encore Boston Harbor resort that’s set to open in June – are still trying to piece together exactly what happened.
Steve Wynn
And in the latest salacious twist in the ongoing saga, a report filed Tuesday in connection with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission investigation included Wynn’s account of what he said really happened. According to Wynn, whose testimony was taken from a separate legal battle with his former investment partner and his ex-wife, he was conned by the manicurist whose story formed the crux of WSJ’s initial report.
It was 2005, and Wynn was receiving a manicure by a manicurist who worked at Wynn when the woman started rubbing his leg. The two had sex after she came on to him. But later on, she turned on him, claimed that he raped and impregnated her, and threatened to go to the authorities with her story.
Wynn eventually paid her $7.5 million in a private settlement, which wasn’t disclosed to the Massachusetts Commission.
Here’s how Wynn described it, according to BBG:
A report filed Tuesday in connection with a Massachusetts Gaming Commission investigation into allegations of sexual harassment at Wynn Resorts Ltd. included Wynn’s own testimony on the event that led to his downfall. “It started off as a manicure,” he said in a 2017 deposition in an unrelated case that was included in the report.
[…]
The former chief executive officer, now 77, said he was sitting in a T-shirt and loose-fitting shorts when the manicurist, who hasn’t been named, started rubbing his leg. “I realize now I should have reported it,” he said.
[…]
“Along comes this gal who had a turn with me, obviously being advised on what to do,” Wynn said in the deposition. “Anybody who is over 10 years old and knows what goes on in the world knows what happens next. The story gets sensational.…So in this context seven and half million was not a significant number. And I paid it.”
Wynn’s story something out of an episode of Ray Donovan. But then again, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2WGOOtV Tyler Durden