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- Former NBA player Jackie Lee Robinson promised to transform a vacant lot on the Strip into a world-class arena and resort.
- The project was never built. Investors are suing to recover millions.
LAS VEGAS — Even in a city accustomed to outlandish projects and long-shot bets, Jackie Lee Robinson’s $5-billion vision for Las Vegas stood out.
The NBA champion proposed building an arena — sheathed in giant LED screens and crowned with a retractable roof — to anchor an enormous development without a casino in a less-visited part of the Strip.
At a celebratory news conference in October 2022, a promotional video promised to transform 27 acres of barren land into a world-class destination. Robinson called it the All Net Resort and Arena, using basketball slang for a shot so perfect the ball passes through the net without touching the rim.
A member of the powerful Clark County Commission seated next to Robinson praised “the faith, the belief, the moxie to dream outside the box,” while Nevada’s then-lieutenant governor gushed that the privately financed project “truly is incredible.” Small-time investors had faith in Robinson, too, and had poured millions into the undertaking.
But the land between the Sahara and Fontainebleau hotel-casinos remains empty. A Times investigation has found that Robinson and his companies have left a trail of jilted financial backers, questionable spending and broken promises.
Robinson claimed to have secured billions to build the arena-resort — and told the news conference he also had the resources to bid for an NBA franchise to play there. But the jackpots never materialized.
He acknowledged in a deposition that the mortgage for his home in a Las Vegas country club was paid by a bank account for his company developing the project. Bank statements for the company show purchases at luxury retailers in Beverly Hills and wire transfers to Robinson’s wife.
Days after telling investors in a letter that the project had run out of money, he received a $50,000 check from his company. The memo line read, “MERRY CHRISTMAS.” In a deposition, Robinson said the company he formed paid himself and others for work done.
Standing 6-feet-6, Robinson at 69 still exudes the commanding presence he did on the basketball court. He has a serious face, sincere voice, and projects a sense of urgency in emails and text messages — pleading, encouraging, reassuring.
For years, such assurances won the project local government approvals and private investment. More than $65 million had been raised, one Robinson attorney told a county government meeting in 2023, from “people who believe in this development.” Internal project records list dozens of investors from Southern California, Nevada and beyond. They include physicians, real estate agents and a military pilot.
The All Net saga — with Robinson playing the central role — unfolded over more than a decade. It spanned the globe, reaching Malaysia and Mexico, Switzerland and Qatar, but always returned to the desolate lot in Sin City that’s about the size of 250 basketball courts.
MLB insiders and experts on sports ethics say the handling of the Ippei Mizuhara affair is a case study in how not to deal with the challenge of illicit betting by players.
Robinson did not respond to numerous interview requests and detailed written questions from The Times. Five lawsuits against the businessman, his companies involved in the arena-resort, or both, seek more than $30 million. Accusations include civil fraud and borrowing money with no intention of repaying it. His companies face at least $17 million in civil court judgments.
The lot where Robinson’s plan was to become reality is a painful reminder to investors who believed in his vision, even as projected opening dates came and went. Some asked that their names not be published because of deep embarrassment and fear of damaging their professional reputations.
“This is our hidden secret,” the pilot’s wife said. The couple invested six figures. “Nobody in our friend circle knows. Nobody in our family knows. We thought when the money started flowing in we’d be able to bless people.”
Las Vegas: Big ambitions, big debts
Almost half a century ago, Robinson was one of the country’s most sought-after high school basketball players, a standout at Inglewood’s Morningside High School described by The Times as a “man among boys, built like Dr. J after a summer at Muscle Beach.” Robinson thought Las Vegas would be the last place he would attend college, but after he and his deeply religious mother visited on a recruiting trip, she raved about the kindness of residents.
“I was surprised she said, ‘Son, this is where you need to go to school,’” Robinson told the news conference in 2022.
At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he became an integral part of the powerhouse teams coached by the legendary Jerry Tarkanian. The UNLV media guide called Robinson a “very popular player” in “a town full of celebrities.”
In Tarkanian’s autobiography, Robinson is quoted as saying his college career delivered benefits in Las Vegas that extended beyond basketball: “The thing is that when you play at UNLV and if you’re a good person, the community is there to give you a chance in business.”
After college, Robinson played in 22 regular season games across three seasons and was with the Seattle SuperSonics when they won the NBA title in 1979.
“I’m not a quitter, I’m stubborn, and if I feel I belong, I’ll try again, until my last breath,” Robinson told The Times in 1980.
He seemed to bring the same tenacity to his post-basketball ventures. They included airport shops, a firm that owned Pizza Huts in Southern California, and an unsuccessful effort to build a hotel and casino on a different part of the Strip. He was inducted into UNLV’s Athletics Hall of Fame, the state’s higher education board named him a Distinguished Nevadan, and a company biography hailed his “distinguished role in the history of Las Vegas.”
But Robinson also encountered legal problems. He faced at least five lawsuits filed between 2007 and 2011 on matters not connected to All Net, which was incorporated in 2013. They accused Robinson, his companies, or both of not paying debts, including a loan for a Corvette. In four of the cases, the bills were eventually paid or the suits dismissed, but financial problems appeared to mount.
In January 2013, a court entered a $1.6-million judgment against Robinson and a partner — it is still active — in a breach of contract lawsuit by a Las Vegas shopping mall after they defaulted on a clothing store lease. An attorney for Robinson wrote in a court filing six months later that his client was “primarily indigent.”
When he didn’t reply to texts, the family of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs went from worried to fearful.
According to court records, the bank holding the loan for the couple’s home alleged that they were 22 months delinquent on payments.
But in December 2013, five months after the claim of indigence, Robinson announced plans for the All Net Resort and Arena. He leased the lot on the Strip with an option to buy and told the Las Vegas Sun that “we have proper financing in place” for the project then estimated to cost $1.3 billion. A news release suggested the arena-resort could open in three years.
Nine months later, as Robinson pitched the Clark County zoning commission on the project, he recounted playing for UNLV and winning a championship with the SuperSonics, then told a story about bumping into Sammy Davis Jr. in the 1980s. The entertainer said he hoped to see a fellow Black person own a hotel on the Strip.
“I’m asking the commission to give me the opportunity to give back to the community that gave me everything,” Robinson said.
“I’m sure that not only Sammy Davis, but your mom is smiling down on you today,” responded Steve Sisolak, a commissioner who would become Nevada’s governor.
In late 2014, a festive groundbreaking ceremony was held at the lot, with Robinson, politicians and former pro basketball players posing for photos with shovels and hard hats.
“It’s like the ‘Field of Dreams.’ Build it, and the NBA will come,” former NBA player Spencer Haywood told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Qatar: Money promised. And lost.
The defining feature of the lot is a vast pit excavated for the project. Storms filled it with greenish water, spawning online quips about the “All Net Arena swamp” and prompting health officials to survey for mosquitoes. In an email to the county, a man whose condo overlooks the pit called it “lake malaria.”
The pit was the result of a meeting in February 2017, according to a deposition, when Robinson told a construction company, Las Vegas Paving, that financing was in progress. The company excavated about 15 feet deep, then stopped work several months later when it wasn’t paid.
“We heard everything — that the money was sitting in a bank in San Francisco, there was problems with it being domesticated,” Las Vegas Paving general counsel Jim Barker said in the deposition. “That it was being tied up by Homeland Security, that financing had fallen through, had to look for somebody else, any number of instances.”
Las Vegas Paving placed a $12.6-million lien on the property in September 2017. That same month, Robinson signed a contract in a hotel conference room in Zurich, Switzerland, to borrow 2.3 billion euros (about $2.6 billion) from an entity referred to variously in loan documents and depositions as the International Bank of Qatar Invest, IBQ Invest and IBQ Invest Holding AG.
It was the latest in a series of byzantine plans to finance the arena-resort through entities scattered across the world.
A few weeks later, Robinson told a Las Vegas television station: “We have 100% of the money.”
A memo to Robinson from a consultant, later included in a court filing, claimed IBQ Invest was a unit of the International Bank of Qatar. The memo said IBQ Invest managed “the personal wealth of the Royal Family of Qatar and their network of associates and friends.”
A stamp used on project loan documents for “IBQ Invest Holding AG” listed the company’s locations as “Qatar - Zurich - Berlin.” The Times did not find any record of it, and Robinson did not respond to questions about IBQ Invest.
By May 2019, the money hadn’t appeared when Robinson addressed county commissioners. He told them the delay “with the International Bank of Qatar” was due to the difficulty of moving so much money from Qatar to the U.S. through Switzerland. The next month, he assured commissioners the windfall would soon arrive and be used for construction: “We have 100%, which is $2.6 billion, that has been transferred ... to our accounts.”
But two former executives at the International Bank of Qatar, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the bank’s dealings, said it had no connection to IBQ Invest or the arena-resort.
“I never heard of this project,” one former executive wrote in an email, “nor did we ever offer any commitment to finance it.”
Southern California: Unpaid loans
Kent Limson still has a photo from the first time he toured the lot with Robinson several years ago. Blue skies. Smiles. Acres of potential for the All Net Resort and Arena.
A partner with a Torrance accounting and law firm called TACSIS, Limson remembered the walls in a construction trailer covered with line-by-line accounting of how each dollar would be spent.
A memo from Robinson assured Limson in November 2018 that the project had executed a multibillion-dollar loan with the International Bank of Qatar Invest via a Swiss bank and a $300-million loan agreement with two South Korean firms. But the money, the memo acknowledged, hadn’t arrived.
Later that month, Limson and TACSIS made the first of seven loans to one of Robinson’s companies, All Net LLC, that eventually totaled $2.2 million. Limson said in a declaration that he received a signed contract to become Robinson’s financial director when the arena-resort opened and “truly believed” in the undertaking, at least early on.
“Due to the rushed need for the money,” Limson’s declaration said, “I was not able to confirm certain details until after the loans were given and found that some of the information I was given was either false or misleading in order to get me on board to lend.”
The same month the TACSIS cash started flowing, Mark Vakili, president of Newport Beach-based MMV Investments, pleaded with Robinson to repay millions the company had lent several years earlier. MMV alleged in a court filing that the loans totaled $12.1 million.
In an email later attached to a court filing, Vakili reminded Robinson that he had “supported you from day one,” adding, “I expect to hear from you with a written plan ASAP.”
MMV sued to collect the debt, but a judge dismissed the case because the statute of limitations had expired. The company appealed and a ruling is pending.
TACSIS sued, too, after All Net didn’t repay the seven loans as agreed. A judge recently found Robinson and All Net in default, citing a technical reason — because they didn’t retain counsel after their previous attorneys had pulled out of the case.
Another loan came from the pilot and his wife. They agreed to lend All Net six figures in exchange for a small stake in the project, according to a contract reviewed by The Times. To raise the money, the pilot said, he reenlisted and used part of his bonus for the investment.
“We were a little hesitant, but we saw Clark County records and approvals and news coverage, and it really made it appealing,” the wife said.
Their contract specified the loan would be repaid in a year with 10% interest. The couple said it didn’t happen.
Las Vegas: ‘Obviously, I’m the highest’
As the lot on the Strip remained empty, Robinson lived in a 5,200-square-foot home deep inside the Canyon Gate Country Club, which has views of the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
Partial bank statements reviewed by The Times show monthly payments from a business account for Dribble Dunk LLC — Robinson’s company developing the project — for his mortgage. When an attorney asked Robinson during a deposition if such payments were operating expenses, Robinson replied, “Well, if I can’t live in a house, how can I be able to operate and build and do the work I need to do?”
The project was his lone source of income, Robinson said in the deposition, and he received a monthly stipend, as did several project consultants. Payment size was based on the level of outside investment.
“Obviously, I’m the highest,” he testified.
In a different deposition, Robinson said he took a stipend “whenever there’s funds available” and that the stipend was “not compensation,” but for “things I might need to do for home ... or, you know, any type of bills that need to be paid.”
Another Dribble Dunk statement shows a $60,000 wire transfer to Robinson’s wife in November 2018. He said in a deposition that the payment to Maria Robinson was made because “we hadn’t gotten a stipend for several months and so that one stipend was for that and everyone was also paid a stipend at the same time.” She didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The following month, Maria Robinson received a check from a Dribble Dunk account for $40,000. The memo line read: “MERRY CHRISTMAS.”
The statement for a different Dribble Dunk account several months later shows payments to Gucci ($1,938) and Louis Vuitton ($1,740) in Beverly Hills, Hanging with Mr. Cooper Custom Clothiers in Newport Beach ($5,535), along with more than $10,000 spent at hotels in Beverly Hills and Huntington Beach.
Robinson continued to ask for more money. An email to investors in December 2020 sought $300,000 to $500,000: “A project of this size and magnitude has numerous monthly expenses and we have exhausted our current funds.”
Eight days later, Robinson received a check from a project account for $50,000. Again, the memo line read, “MERRY CHRISTMAS.” The following month, Maria Robinson got a check for $25,000.
When a company associated with a Las Vegas oncologist lent $4.5 million for the project in February 2021, statements from a Dribble Dunk bank account show that a wave of transfers followed. A million dollars was wired to a wealth management firm “For Further Credit To: Jackie Robinson And Maria Robinson.”
Maria Robinson received a $200,000 wire transfer from the account the same day, while a combined $200,000 was transferred to Jaquelyn Robinson — the name of the couple’s daughter — and Jackie Robinson.
The same company later lent an additional $3 million. Some of the subsequent Dribble Dunk expenses appear related to the project. For example, more than $1 million was paid to an architecture firm, the lot’s owner, lawyers, and consultants. Bank records also show a $350,000 wire transfer from the account to Maria Robinson, as well as $200,000 in transfers to the wealth management firm in the name of the Robinsons.
As money flowed in, some investors got upbeat, minute-long video updates every week or two from a Las Vegas physician named Loring Jacobs. An All Net website identified Jacobs, who called Robinson “my best friend for 50 years” in a video, as a company board member. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Videos from Jacobs in 2021 praised Robinson’s morals (“He’s never smoked, he’s never used drugs, he’s never drank” ). Tried to lift spirits (“He’s trying to make everybody financially independent here”). Touted the imminent start of construction (“You’ll see bulldozers out there at the end of the summer”). Predicted investors would soon be made whole (“You guys should have your money back by the end of the year for sure”).
All Net’s website offered more hope that fall: “Scheduled to open in 2024.”
Las Vegas: More promises
Of all the plans to pay for the arena-resort, perhaps none attracted as much attention as the news conference in October 2022 to announce financing had finally been secured.
The project would cost an estimated $4.9 billion, Robinson told the audience, but that wasn’t all.
“Do we have the assets and resources to put in a bid for a [NBA] team?” Robinson said. “The answer is yes.”
Joining Robinson at the front table were Lisa Cano Burkhead, then Nevada’s lieutenant governor, and Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom.
A day later, campaign finance records show, Dribble Dunk contributed $4,000 to the lieutenant governor’s campaign. This wasn’t unusual. Since 2018, Robinson and Dribble Dunk have given state and local elected officials at least $62,000. Segerblom has received $15,000.
“I can’t say how proud I am to be part of this fantastic project,” Segerblom told the news conference.
Torben Welch beamed at the end of the table. The attorney with Messner Reeves, a law firm with offices across the country, said it had worked with Robinson for more than a year and that “when this project is developed, there will be very little, if any, debt.”
“Do we have the assets and resources to put in a bid for a [NBA] team?” Robinson said. “The answer is yes.”
The supposed funding source sat between Welch and Robinson. Todd Owen, who is a former Navy SEAL and California Highway Patrol officer, represented the Clearwater Premiere Perpetual Master Trust. The company had been registered as an LLC almost five months earlier. Welch told The Times that Owen owns 100% of Clearwater. Owen declined to comment through the attorney and never responded to later requests for comment from The Times.
“I can’t say enough about my team here sitting up here in the front row,” Owen told the news conference. “We jumped in with both feet and fell in love with Jackie and his project.”
Malaysia: A ‘fraud alert’
Even in the weeks after the news conference, skepticism was growing among some county commissioners.
“Last time, it was magic money from the Middle East,” Commissioner Justin Jones said during a public meeting in November 2022. “I’m really trying to understand where the money is actually coming from.”
In response, an attorney with the project produced a letter from PG Asia Investment Bank Ltd. in Malaysia. The letter confirmed a $5-billion letter of credit to Clearwater to fund the arena-resort. The commissioners granted a one-year extension to start construction.
But the bank added a notice to its website in 2023 under the heading “ATTEMPTED FRAUD ALERT NOTICE” that said it “is not in any way associated or involved in the financing” of the project. According to the notice, the bank’s logo and email had “been used by unauthorised third parties without our prior knowledge nor approval.”
Welch, the attorney, said Robinson’s companies — All Net and Dribble Dunk — were the actual “victim of the fraud.”
Less than a week after the presentation to the commissioners, the owner of a large parking lot near the arena-resort site sued Robinson and Dribble Dunk. They had leased the lot, the landlord alleged, but four of Dribble Dunk’s checks bounced, including the security deposit, and the company defaulted on the agreement. The landlord eventually won a $4.9-million judgment. It hasn’t been paid.
The All Net website remained optimistic: “Scheduled to open in 2025.”
Mexico: ‘100% of the cash’
As another deadline to start construction loomed, an attorney told the county in an August 2023 letter that the project had once again secured funding. An attached receipt showed a $5-billion transfer from Clearwater to Dribble Dunk through a company called Fides Gestion Financiera in Monterrey, Mexico. The receipt offered a simple explanation: “to be used in a deal in Las Vegas.”
Addressing the Winchester town advisory board that November — the lot is in unincorporated Clark County — Robinson said, “We have 100% of the cash” to build the arena-resort.
The money still hadn’t arrived when he appeared before county commissioners a week later seeking a fourth extension of time to commence construction. He told commissioners “this town has raised me” and recalled Tarkanian recruiting him to play at UNLV.
A project attorney said more than $14 million had been spent on “construction and administrative fees and costs” over the last three years.
Robinson said the long-standing Las Vegas Paving debt would be paid shortly. He emphasized that the “$5 billion is totally under my control.”
But Segerblom, the commissioner who backed the project for years, finally had enough.
“We’ve followed the money everywhere around the world and, truthfully, it hasn’t happened,” Segerblom said. Though it “breaks my heart to do it,” he voted against an extension. So did the other six commissioners.
Two Southern California gamblers who told The Times they bet regularly with the alleged bookmaking ring linked to Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter describe the operation as regimented and businesslike.
“The truth is I tried to give him every chance possible,” Segerblom later told The Times. “He seemed like such a nice guy. … I take partial responsibility, but honestly this is what politicians do. We promote things. I have no regrets, as far as I know. It was ‘local boy makes good.’”
In a video update after the vote, Jacobs, the longtime Robinson friend, still sounded optimistic: “I just got off the phone with Jackie. He’s not the slightest bit worried. ... Jackie wanted you to know that your money is safe because he has $5 billion in Mexico and that just needs to be monetized and moved to the states.”
By January 2024, however, another developer wanting to pursue its own project quietly finalized an agreement with the owner of the lot. Robinson isn’t involved.
Two months later, the landowner sued Robinson and his companies, alleging they owe more than $17 million after the landowner paid Robinson’s old Las Vegas Paving debt to prevent the firm from foreclosing on the property.
That didn’t dissuade Jacobs from sending another video to some investors in April: “Whatever you’re hearing out there about Jackie and the project, it’s exactly the opposite. … Cheer up. It’s a big home run. It’s gigantic.”
Nine days later, the new developer, LVXP, unveiled plans for a “transformational” development on the lot that would include an arena, casino and hotels.
In May, Messner Reeves stopped representing Robinson and his companies in two cases. A court filing cited “substantial” delinquent amounts owed to the firm. Messner Reeves later filed to pull out of two other cases. Welch and the firm didn’t respond to questions about whether they still represent Robinson.
“Whatever you’re hearing out there about Jackie and the project, it’s exactly the opposite … Cheer up. It’s a big home run. It’s gigantic.”
But the businessman’s glossy vision remained alive on the All Net website. It showcased an animated video of the proposed development, as guests enjoyed the pools and the arena’s roof slid open. The website offered a prediction: “Scheduled to open in 2026.”
Then, the website vanished in September and All Net was dissolved with the Nevada Secretary of State.
A lawsuit by the company associated with the oncologist — he died in 2023 — alleged that All Net and Dribble Dunk “misled and defrauded” it. The company secured a default judgment against All Net and Dribble Dunk in November for more than $12 million.
In December, TACSIS accused Robinson and several others of civil racketeering in a lawsuit filed in Las Vegas federal court. The complaint alleged Robinson was the center of a “fraudulent scheme” in which he “lured individuals into loaning funds to his entity for the project with the promise of high interest, quick repayment and foolproof lending.” He hasn’t responded.
In the last year, the area around the site where Robinson promised an “iconic” development collected all manner of debris — a purple negligee, discount cards for a strip club, cardboard boxes flattened into a makeshift bed, a soiled diaper. The area has been largely cleaned up, but the pit that once held “lake malaria” remains, though dry.
Some investors received correspondence from Dribble Dunk as winter approached pledging repayment. The money, one of them told the The Times, still hasn’t arrived.
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