Posted on: May 8, 2024, 06:54h.
Last updated on: May 8, 2024, 06:54h.
A high roller who wants to find out who allegedly spiked his drink in an MGM Grand VIP room has just raised the stakes, The Las Vegas Review Journal reports.
California real-estate investor and sports agent Dwight Manley has doubled the reward to $1 million for anyone who has information that can shed light on the perpetrator’s identity. He’s also splashed out on a billboard campaign in Las Vegas to publicize the fact.
Manley, who was Denis Rodman’s agent in the 1990s, claims his drink was spiked with ketamine in December 2021 while he was a guest at the exclusive MGM Mansion. A longtime VIP client of MGM Resorts, he had been invited by casino management who laid on a private jet for him and his entourage.
But a purportedly drugged drink caused him to drop $2 million in casino markers playing blackjack, a lawsuit filed against the MGM Grand in November 2022 alleges.
Loss of Control
According to that lawsuit, on December 10 at around 1:45 p.m., Manley ordered an “old fashioned” cocktail that he said tasted “bitter.” He finished the drink, nevertheless, and ordered a second. At this point he began to feel disorientated, per the lawsuit.
At around 4 p.m., Manley broke a glass ashtray, cutting his hand, which bled onto the gaming table. The casino staff moved him to a new table but did not offer any medical assistance other than some Band-Aids, the suit asserts.
But they did offer him a line of credit up to $3.5 million, a line of credit he claims he was in no fit state to sign off.
At around 5:15 p.m., Manley’s friends took him back to his villa, where he passed out. The next day, he described feeling he had been drugged. When he returned to California and saw a doctor, who concluded “to a reasonable degree of medical probability, that Dwight Manley was poisoned with ketamine in the early afternoon of December 10, 2021, at the MGM Grand Mansion.”
‘Unjust Enrichment’
Ketamine is a dissociative, psychotropic anesthetic commonly used in veterinary medicine that also doubles as a party drug. It can cause short-term memory loss, incapacitation, and hallucinations.
Manley’s lawsuit accuses MGM of negligence, unfair or deceptive trade practices, unjust enrichment, and breach of implied covenant. The lawsuit seeks declarative relief and unspecified damages.
The billboards around Las Vegas direct anyone who knows anything about the incident to a new website for Manley’s campaign, 1millionreward.com.
“Any tip is worth looking at,” Manley said in a news release Tuesday. “Someone knows who did this and we want to keep it from happening again. I could have died.”
