Struggle for control of Mob Experience escalates

The struggle for control of the Las Vegas Mob Experience escalated Thursday, with lenders to the attraction saying its founder Jay Bloom has hijacked its website as part of an effort to sabotage the company.

Attorneys for Vion Operations LLC and Strategic Funding Source Inc., which say they’re owed $4 million from the Experience and Bloom as secured creditors, filed papers in Clark County District Court:

• Opposing a temporary restraining order Bloom gained against the Experience on Tuesday requiring an accounting of its finances since Bloom left the business this summer and the return of material that may have been taken from the Experience.

• Asking that Larry Bertsch, a local certified public accountant, be appointed special master of the Experience to conduct a “thorough accounting” of its books. Bertsch regularly works as a special master in lawsuits in Clark County District Court.

• Asking for their own injunction requiring Bloom to turn over the passwords and other information necessary to reactivate the website; and that Bloom stop making representations that he has a substantial ownership position in the Experience’s parent company, Murder Inc.

When Bloom stepped away from the Mob Experience this summer as its manager, he signed an agreement transferring 95 percent of his stake to a lender/investor, GC-Global Capital Corp. of Toronto, court records show.

That deal was made after the Mob Experience defaulted on its financial obligations and had been sued by numerous creditors, including mob family members who provided artifacts.

The deal in which Bloom left was made to induce investors to put up additional money to keep the Experience afloat, records show.

Bloom now says this arrangement involved his equity being put into “escrow,” that he still owns Murder Inc. and that current manager Louis Ventre should be removed so Bloom can return as manager of the Experience.

Vion and Strategic Funding complained in Thursday’s court filing that on Monday, Bloom took the Mob Experience’s website offline, even though the registration fee for the site was paid by Murder Inc.

“By killing the Mob Experience’s website, Bloom has limited marketing and promotion opportunities and also hindered Murder Inc.’s day-to-day operations and revealed his claims to be acting in the company’s best interest as false,” said the lenders’ filing by attorneys with the Las Vegas law firm Lionel Sawyer and Collins.

“Bloom only holds a 5 percent equity interest in Murder Inc., yet he represents himself to Mob Experience management and the public as owner of Murder Inc.,” their filing said.

While Bloom claims Vion and Strategic Funding are not creditors of the Mob Experience at the Tropicana resort, Vion and Strategic Funding said in Thursday’s court filing they are secured creditors and to prove it, they filed merchant cash advance agreements with the court signed by Bloom this spring.

Under those contracts, Vion and Strategic Funding paid $3.147 million to Murder Inc. in exchange for future receivables of $4.092 million.

Vion and Strategic Funding also filed dozens of pages of financial records that they said disprove Bloom’s allegations that they and Ventre, a former Bloom partner, have been looting the business.

The actual looter of the business, Vion and Strategic Funding said, is Bloom.

“At the time of Bloom’s resignation (this summer), based on Murder Inc.’s representations of its capitalization, approximately $5 million is simply unaccounted for,” the lenders said in their filing Thursday.

Bloom and his attorneys have not yet responded to Thursday’s court filing.

The issues may be aired during a hearing set for Sept. 30, though a hearing could happen sooner based on the rapid-fire court action involving Bloom and the Experience in recent days.