A Las Vegas man involved in a multi-vehicle crash in January died from injuries he sustained, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
Luis Flores, 68, was driving a 2003 Ford Explorer eastbound on East Pebble Road toward Pollock Drive on Jan. 24 around 11:30 a.m. Flores’ truck ran a red traffic light and struck a 2012 Dodge Challenger traveling northbound, according to evidence, witness statements and traffic footage gathered by Metro. His truck entered the westbound lane on East Pebble Road and hit a 2013 Chevrolet Traverse before striking a tree and light pole on the sidewalk, police said. Flores was transported to Sunrise Hospital, while the other two drivers suffered minor injuries.
A Swiss man with ties to Las Vegas pleaded guilty to securities fraud Tuesday after he and several others defrauded victims out of close to $6 million as part of a vast scheme, federal officials said.
Martin Schlaepfer, 67, is scheduled to be sentenced in June, according to a news release from the United States Department of Justice. He faces up to 20 years in a federal prison, according to the DOJ.
Schlaepfer was indicted in 2013 but lived overseas before he was arrested in Italy in September 2024 pursuant to an Interpol Red Notice and extradited to the United States last year, the department said.
Three of Schlaepfer’s co-conspirators — Anthony Brandel, James Warras and Sean Finn — were found guilty of conspiracy and multiple counts of wire fraud and securities fraud following separate jury trials in 2015 and 2020. Each were sentenced to over seven years in prison.
A fourth defendant, Joseph Micelli, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud in 2015 and was sentenced to five years in prison. A fifth defendant, Hans-Jurg Lips, remains at large outside the U.S.
The Justice Department’s Fraud Section alleged that investors were lured by promises of astronomical returns into contributing $100,000 to $1.2 million to a phony Swiss company called the Malom Group.
Securities & Exchange Commission court filings said the Malom Group, an acronym for “make a lot of money,” bilked 30 investors out of more than $11 million between 2009 and 2011. Schlaepfer, the justice department said, identified himself to victims as the chief executive officer of the Malom Group.
Beginning as early as October 2009, Schlaepfer and his co-conspirators in Switzerland and Las Vegas orchestrated a scheme in which they sold investments they knew to be fictitious, the department said.
Schlaepfer and the others told victims that, for an up-front payment, Malom would provide access to investment opportunities and substantial cash loans. Victims were given fabricated bank documents purporting to show that Malom held hundreds of millions of dollars in overseas bank accounts, officials said.
When victims wired their money into an escrow account controlled by the co-conspirators, however, the money was released and disbursed to, among others, Schlaepfer for his own personal use, federal officials said.
Uber has partnered with Zoox to add robotaxi rides bookable on the ride-hailing giant’s smartphone application.
The partnership will launch this summer in Las Vegas, allowing riders to book rides in Zoox’s purpose-built robotaxis using Uber’s app, the two companies announced Wednesday. Rides can still be booked using Zoox’s app.
“We are excited to partner with Uber, a company that shares our vision for transforming mobility,” Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said in a statement. “This partnership is an opportunity to continue advancing the use of autonomous mobility in daily life. Through our collaboration, Zoox will provide a differentiated rider experience to those who already know and love the convenience of riding with Uber.”
Amazon-owned Zoox has been operating a free robotaxi service in Las Vegas since last fall, offering free rides to and from Resorts World, Topgolf, New York-New York and Area 15. The rides bookable on the Uber app will also be limited to Zoox’s approved sites.
Zoox plans to expand its site list this year while implementing a fee to ride the service. Zoox has deals in place with T-Mobile Arena and Sphere to add dedicated ride zones at both properties. Zoox and Uber also plan to expand their partnership, adding shared rides in Los Angeles by the middle of next year.
The partnership with Uber marks the first time Zoox has struck a deal with a third-party ride-hailing platform.
Since 2019, Zoox has been operating in Southern Nevada and are based out a 190,000-square-foot headquarters located in the southwest valley.
Zoox robotaxis are four-seater pods, with two seats on each side facing each other, with no steering wheel or pedals and have the ability to move forward and backward at 75 mph. Riders can charge their phones inside the vehicles and they can control the temperature and music from screens located within the robotaxi.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have taken at least 240 Clark County Detention Center inmates into custody since a local-federal agreement went into effect at the jail in late 2025.
The 240 were among 264 inmates with ICE warrants issued between mid-December, when the department inked a 287(g) agreement with ICE, and March 5, according to Metropolitan Police Department figures.
Even so, Sheriff Kevin McMahill said his agency’s relationship with ICE hadn’t changed since it re-entering the jail-based program last year.
“ICE still doesn’t pick up everybody that is eligible, that they’ve said that they wanted to come get from my jail,” McMahill said during a wide-ranging March 5 interview that covered a variety of topics including the department’s cooperation with the Trump administration’s enhanced illegal immigration enforcement.
A 287(g) agreement allows ICE to issue warrants for inmates it wants to pick up for immigration enforcement, giving agents up to 48 hours to pick them up after they’re slated to be released from the jail.
The contract was affirmed in June, but a number of Metro Detention Services Division’s staffers had to complete federal training before it formally went into effect in December, the police department said.
The trained officers flag all foreign-born inmates for ICE, which then conducts background checks on the individuals, McMahill said.
“ICE then takes their personally identifying information, makes a determination whether they’re in the country legally or not, and that they want to deport them or not,” he said.
In some cases, ICE just wants to talk to the inmates, he said. Metro issues a second notification four hours before they are set to be released.
McMahill reiterated that Metro’s role is strictly administrative and limited to the jail.
“I don’t have any way to determine whether or not that person is in the country legally or not,” McMahill said. “That’s why I make the notification.”
Previous informal collaboration
Prior to the agreement, Metro was already notifying ICE when booking foreign-born inmates on allegations of violent crime, DUI and domestic violence. The Laken Riley Act in early 2025 expanded the list of qualifying charges to include theft-related offenses.
About 350 inmates at the county jail had been flagged for ICE on one day in early June, McMahill said last year. At the time, the inmate population fluctuated with an average of 250 overall daily arrests.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada challenged the 287(g) arrangement in a lawsuit. A District Court judge on Friday ruled that the organization didn’t have a standing.
Metro and the city of Las Vegas previously participated in an version of the program at the jails but withdrew in 2019 after a court decision raised concerns about the arrangement’s constitutionality.
“The reality is that whether it’s in this matter or another matter, a court is going to ultimately make a decision on the merits of this agreement, because we will not stop filing challenges on this,” said Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada.
Only Sergio Morais-Hechavarria — who was at the center of the lawsuit — had been held past the 48 hours, said McMahill in the March 5 interview.
In the lawsuit, attorneys said that Metro had delayed the man’s court-ordered release into a treatment facility for weeks before he was taken by ICE. Police argued that he was held because there were no beds available.
McMahill said requests by several federal agencies asking for Metro to participate in immigration enforcement outside the agency’s limited role at the jail have stopped. He told the Review-Journal about a year ago that he had turned down a number of such requests.
McMahill signed the ICE agreement on May 30, a day after President Donald Trump’s administration declared the city of Las Vegas as a so-called sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.
Last year, he said the agreement had been weeks in the making. Nevada landed in a Department of Justice list of sanctuary states months later.
The state was later removed after Gov. Joe Lombardo’s administration signed a memorandum of understanding pledging full collaboration with immigration enforcement.
Deportations without local due process
McMahill gave differing opinions on situations in which undocumented suspects agree to self-deport before their case can be tried in court.
He said he would like undocumented suspects to answer for their alleged local crimes before they’re turned over to immigration authorities.
“I don’t like the fact that ICE is picking up an individual before their case is adjudicated completely,” the sheriff told the Review-Journal.
But on the other hand, he added, “if a guy’s recklessly driving and he kills a woman, why are we releasing them back out into our community?”
He was referring to the case of Angel Antonio Franco Merida, who was allowed to self-deport soon after posting bail in the killing of Amber Brown in 2025.
Metro accused the motorist of running a solid red light before he hit the Las Vegas nurse on a crosswalk. ICE picked up Franco Merida after he posted a $50,000 bond.
McMahill said there were similar cases.
“Same thing with the number of individuals that are charged with sexual assault of a child, and then some judge chooses to let them back out into our community,” he said. “I don’t want them out here.”
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, Brown’s mother and the suspect’s lawyer lamented that Franco Merida was deported before the U.S. justice system decided his fate.
Should public tensions occur in Las Vegas?
McMahill said he has considered what could happen if the Las Vegas Valley found itself in the position of Minneapolis earlier this year, when federal agents killed protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The two U.S. citizens were shot amid increased immigration enforcement operations.
Enforcement surges have occurred in the Las Vegas Valley, including after Customs and Border Protection agents were dispatched here a while back, McMahill said.
Metro had participated in a tabletop exercise with federal agencies to examine what would happen if someone was shot by officers and what role each entity would play investigating it, the sheriff said.
“It was enlightening to say the least,” McMahill said. “I can tell you, I’m not sure that all of them knew those answers.”
He added: “Trying to get through what these things are going to look like as we move forward, I think is an important part of my role as a sheriff is to lead our way through these things.”
McMahill participates in monthly briefings with federal agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. He said he does so to see how their operations might affect the county.
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