Resorts World Turns a Compliance License Into an Arena Bid

Nevada licensed Resorts World Las Vegas President Carlos Castro on March 26, 2026, a year after a $10.5 million anti-money laundering fine. The commission took the item without opposition.

Castro had spent that year telling regulators the $4.3 billion north Strip resort now puts compliance ahead of the host book. He is using the same license to sell vacant land next door as an NBA site, while a former Treasury specialist who worked inside that rebuild is suing over his firing.

Nevada Licensed Castro After a Year of Rebuild

The March agenda listed Carlos Robert Castro as president and chief financial officer of Resorts World Las Vegas LLC, and as president, secretary, and treasurer of Genting Assets, Inc. He took those operating titles in February 2025, after earlier Nevada findings of suitability in 2006 and 2016.

The Control Board recommended approval on March 12, 2026, following an hour-long hearing. Castro told the board the first job was the people in the room.

I’m proud of where we are now compared to where we were. It is the intangibles that you have to fix first. It’s the leadership team and people that sit in that leadership meeting and look you in the eye and say I’m not going to let you down. I’ve strived to rebuild that leadership team for ‘compliance first.’ That is a very clear directive from the (board of directors).

Carlos Castro, President and CFO, Resorts World Las Vegas, Nevada Gaming Control Board hearing

He said the old floor was “very casino-host-centric,” with hosts driving play and facing little pushback. Marketing, operations, and surveillance now speak with compliance, he said, and anyone who fails the business test is put on a gaming ban or, in a hard case, a full property ban.

Control Board Chair Mike Dreitzer said Castro’s file left little doubt on suitability and that the last 12 months showed “substantive and thoughtful change,” with “substantial evidence” the property was doing the work. Board member Chandeni Sendall called the year’s improvement “remarkable.”

The Nevada Gaming Commission heard the same application two weeks later. Counsel Erica Okerberg presented Castro. A commissioner moved approval as recommended. No one opposed.

The $10.5 Million Fine, Second-Largest in Nevada

The license sat on top of a penalty the Nevada Gaming Commission levied on March 27, 2025, against Resorts World and parent Genting Berhad. The $10.5 million fine is the second-largest the commission has issued, behind the $20 million Wynn Resorts paid in 2019. The vote was 4-0. Commissioner Abbi Silver recused, citing a long relationship with former Resorts World president Scott Sibella.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board had filed a complaint on August 15, 2024, first with 12 counts, later amended to 10. Resorts World and Genting neither admitted nor denied the allegations. The board kept the right to come back if federal authorities act.

At the center were two illegal bookmakers, Mathew Bowyer and Damien Leforbes. Six of the 10 counts involved Bowyer, who, regulators said, gambled at the property for about 20 months and lost just under $8 million without the compliance committee ever locking down his source of funds. Among the people known to have bet with Bowyer was Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani.

Nicole Bowyer, his wife, was a registered independent agent contracted by Resorts World, which let her take a cut of his casino play. Her separate disciplinary file had not been decided when the property’s fine was imposed. Bowyer’s run overlapped Sibella’s tenure as president and chief operating officer from pre-opening in 2019 through September 2023. Nevada later revoked Sibella’s license over anti-money laundering failures at MGM Grand, fined him $10,000, and barred a new application for five years, with the Control Board’s deal also resolving any Resorts World responsibility attributed to him.

The day before the fine vote, the resort confirmed layoffs of “less than 50 full-time” workers.

THE PATH TO THE FINE AND THE LICENSE

1. June 24, 2021: Resorts World Las Vegas opens at 11 p.m. as Genting’s $4.3 billion north Strip resort, the first new Strip build in more than a decade.
2. August 15, 2024: The Control Board files a disciplinary complaint alleging a culture that welcomed people with illegal-bookmaking ties.
3. March 20, 2025: The parties sign a stipulation for settlement and order.
4. March 27, 2025: The commission approves the $10.5 million fine on a 4-0 vote.
5. April 2025: Jennifer Roberts is named chief compliance officer.
6. March 12, 2026: The Control Board recommends Castro for a license.
7. March 26, 2026: The commission licenses Castro without opposition.

Genting told shareholders the settlement approved on 27 March 2025 closed the Control Board complaint at state level. The same filing walks through the August 2024 complaint, the March 20 stipulation, and the commission hearing.

The Gap Between Malaysia and the Casino Floor

Board member George Assad, speaking at Castro’s Control Board hearing, said he wished Castro had been there when the doors opened in 2021. He described a new property that “needed some guidance,” with people removed, people hired, and a local board installed so the casino was not run only through messages to Malaysia.

This was a new property that needed some guidance. We were able to structure a plan moving forward and institute some new measures. Some people had to be separated from the company and some new people had to be brought in. Obviously, a board had to be brought in that was local instead of communicating with the folks in Malaysia (with parent company Genting Berhad). That’s a positive side.

George Assad, Member, Nevada Gaming Control Board

Genting had opened the resort on an 87-acre north Strip site without that local board in place. The Control Board’s original complaint said the property, even with an AML program and trained staff, still ran a culture in which people tied to illegal books, felony gambling cases, and organized crime were welcomed, comped, and allowed to wager large sums.

By the March 2025 fine hearing, Genting had named Alex Dixon chief executive and stood up a board that included former MGM Resorts chief Jim Murren, former Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett, human-resources executive Michelle DiTondo, Genting president K.H. Tan, and former Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a former Gaming Commission chairman. Sandoval later became board chair. Burnett and Sandoval received their own licenses in early 2026. Murren is now advising management on the NBA process.

Castro told the Control Board the silos were gone. A compliance department that still answers to the C-suite on staffing is a different test, and that is the fight now in federal court.

What the Settlement Still Requires

The March 2025 order did more than collect $10.5 million. It left the gaming license in place with homework that still has not all come due, including a full internal AML review two years after approval, which lands on March 27, 2027.

TERMS THAT OUTLIVE THE FINE

Those conditions are why Castro’s “know who we’re going to do business with” line mattered in March. They are also why a firing inside compliance six months after the fine, and a lawsuit a year after that, sit badly next to the license praise.

A FinCEN Veteran Took His File to Federal Court

Preston Banks, a former U.S. Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network specialist of about 16 years, worked at Resorts World from September 2022 until September 29, 2025. On September 14, 2026, he filed a federal whistleblower complaint filed in September in U.S. District Court in Nevada, alleging retaliation under the Anti-Money Laundering Act and wrongful termination under Nevada law.

A Resorts World spokesperson called the case “frivolous,” said the company “strongly denies the allegations and characterizations in the lawsuit,” and said it would address the claims in court.

The complaint centers on what Banks calls the “Argentina Scheme,” a cluster of patrons first described as mostly from Argentina that he says grew to between 60 and 150 people from several countries. He alleges unverified sources of funds, credit fraud, repeated third-party marker payments, chip passing, chip walking, light play, and offsetting bets. In one AML committee meeting in the first half of 2025, the complaint says Executive Vice President of Casino Operations Al Meranto called some of that activity “cultural.”

Banks sent a detailed report to Roberts and other compliance staff on September 2, 2025. Nine days later, on September 11, the property banned 28 patrons tied to alleged casino credit fraud and sent about $12 million to $13 million in unpaid casino credit to the Clark County district attorney. He was fired 27 days after the report. Human Resources Director Bob Napierala, the complaint says, told him the reason was the “Argentina Scheme” and that the order came from the “C-suite.”

Banks also alleges that a copy of his report later shown to Control Board agents had been changed, dropping the “cultural” remark and an exception to a third-party payment rule he says he opposed. He filed with the U.S. Department of Labor in December 2025 and later with FinCEN and the Justice Department.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The filing: Banks sued on September 14, 2026, after a Labor Department whistleblower complaint in December 2025.
• The bans: Resorts World barred 28 patrons on September 11, 2025, and referred about $12 million to $13 million in unpaid credit for collection.
• The company’s line: Resorts World denies the allegations and calls the suit frivolous.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The scheme itself: The size of the patron group, the “cultural” remark, and the altered-report claim are Banks’s allegations, not findings.
• Federal follow-up: Whether FinCEN or the Justice Department will act on his tips is not public.
• The C-suite order: Napierala’s alleged statement has not been tested in court.

Roberts had been in the chief compliance job only since April 2025, a month after the fine. Banks’s report landed in the same rebuild year Castro later described to Dreitzer. The 28 bans show the property did cut off a block of credit patrons. The firing, if a jury believes Banks, shows that cut did not protect the person who wrote the file.

Empty Acres on the North Strip

Asked at his Control Board hearing about Genting’s unused land, Castro talked about an arena. “Rising tides lift all boats, and we want to raise the tide of the north Strip,” he said. In a later statement he said new north Strip resorts had created a luxury corridor and that “we believe strongly that the north Strip is the right place for an NBA arena.”

Genting used about half of the 87-acre site for the hotel-casino that opened in 2021. More than 40 acres next to the towers remain undeveloped, with only temporary event structures on parts of the dirt. Murren, who led the T-Mobile Arena project when he ran MGM, told an interviewer the south Strip is congested and that the NBA could have “their own neighborhood” at Resorts World, with access off Sammy Davis Jr. Drive.

That pitch is now in a live fight over where a Las Vegas expansion team would play. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said on September 14, 2026, that T-Mobile Arena is the preferred location for now but that locking a site is premature, and that ownership and the venue may wait until the end of the year. Golden Knights owner Bill Foley is a leading bidder for a franchise that could cost as much as $10 billion and has talked about putting $300 million to $400 million into T-Mobile, a 20,000-seat building that the league says would need a major upgrade for a full NBA season.

SITES IN THE ARENA ARGUMENT

• T-Mobile Arena: Existing south Strip building; Silver’s current preferred home, with a large renovation bill attached.
• Resorts World land: More than 40 undeveloped acres on Genting’s 87-acre north Strip parcel; Castro and Murren are selling it as a new neighborhood.
• Former Frontier tract: About 38 vacant acres across from Wynn Las Vegas; Wynn has declined to discuss plans.
• VICI and Caesars mid-Strip: A possible arena on 50 acres behind Horseshoe, Paris, and Planet Hollywood.

A Resorts World spokeswoman said officials have met NBA bidder groups about the north Strip and would not name them. Genting, in its second-quarter 2026 results, reported hotel occupancy of 88.0 percent in the second quarter and an average daily rate of $274, compared with 80.2 percent and $265 a year earlier, and said convention volume helped. The rooms are filling. The dirt lot is the chip Castro is putting on the table.

North Strip operators have watched the south end collect the Knights, the Raiders, the Aces, and a $2 billion Athletics ballpark due in 2028. They want the next building. They also watched earlier arena talk at this same campus fade. Silver still has T-Mobile first. Castro has a clean license, a vacant lot, and a federal complaint that says the compliance rebuild was not finished when he sat for that license.

The two-year AML review required by the $10.5 million order comes due on March 27, 2027, after the league’s site decision is supposed to be made.