Fact-checking payday lending, cryptocurrency claims in the Democratic AG primary

A recent debate between Democratic attorney general candidates Treasurer Zach Conine (D) and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro (D-Las Vegas) got heated, at times devolving into mudslinging.

But did one candidate kill a ballot initiative on payday lending? Is the other one cozy with Trump-affiliated cryptocurrency groups? Below, we fact-check some of the most notable claims.

CLAIM: Cannizzaro "represented bank founded by President Donald Trump's Treasury secretary, 'The Foreclosure King'"

A campaign ad from a political action committee (PAC) affiliated with Conine highlighted that Cannizzaro represented the bank founded by former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, which foreclosed on thousands of homes in the Silver State. Mnuchin ran the bank from 2009 to 2015 as CEO and chairman.

When Conine brought it up during the debate, Cannizzaro said that she has "never once, not once, represented Steve Mnuchin." She said that she took a job at the firm Brooks Bauer right out of law school, in the middle of the Great Recession, when jobs were few and far between. 

"As soon as I realized that firm did not represent my values, I went looking for another job, and I found one as soon as I could for public service," said Cannizzaro, who subsequently took a job at the Clark County District Attorney's Office. "For you to characterize a place that I worked at for several months, as what I was doing here in Nevada, or that that's my record on helping people when it comes to housing, that is also completely false."

Court records show Cannizzaro was one of three attorneys listed as representing the bank, OneWest, in four foreclosure lawsuits during her time as a litigation associate attorney at Brooks Bauer from November 2010 to October 2011. She was listed as a lead attorney on one of the cases. 

OneWest foreclosed on 3,654 homes in Nevada between April 2009 and October 2016. 

Brooks Bauer described itself on its website at that time as "specializ[ing] in mortgage banking" and played a prominent role in the foreclosure space.

Cannizzaro defended her record on housing, pointing to legislation she passed to develop $130 million in affordable and attainable housing, $35 million for rental assistance and her work on a ban on corporate landlords buying up housing that ultimately did not pass out of the Legislature.

CLAIM: Conine is "part of the MAGA crypto crowd attacking democracy"

Conine has been criticized for connections to the cryptocurrency world, with a PAC affiliated with Cannizzaro going so far as to release an ad saying he is part of the "MAGA crypto crowd" and calling him "Zach 'Crypto' Conine."

The ad hinges on more than $2.6 million since 2020 that Conine and affiliated political action committees have received from Jeff Berns, the CEO of technology company Blockchains LLC, the majority of that came this year. It also focuses on Conine's support for state legislation on the digital representation of dollars and his attendance at the 2024 pro-cryptocurrency event, "America Loves Crypto," organized by a group that primarily backs Republicans and endorsed President Donald Trump.

In the debate, Cannizzaro said that the treasurer brought crypto-friendly bills to the Legislature and that crypto companies have donated disproportionately to pro-Trump super PACs, with one report showing more than $20 million from the industry to those entities.

Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, told The Nevada Independent that, as a whole, tech-related donations skew more toward Republicans than Democrats. She noted that as crypto and tech employees become wealthier, they are looking to the Republican Party to preserve that wealth, and it doesn't hurt that Republicans hold the power at the federal level.

She noted that this election cycle, big tech companies have pledged more than $350 million in political spending. 

A blog post from a Bitcoin company website indicates that speakers at the event Cannizzaro referred to called for electing pro-crypto candidates in Nevada. Conine appears to be the only Democrat to have attended and spoken at the event. 

His campaign noted that Conine was there to speak about the importance of a strong regulatory environment to protect Nevadans.

Campaign finance records show that Berns has donated overwhelmingly to Democrats, with upwards of $2.9 million going to Democratic candidates and $15,000 to Republicans. 

Cannizzaro received $5,000 from Berns in 2020, but Berns' more than $2 million donation to pro-Conine PACs this cycle has been game-changing in the race, representing about 55 percent of all contributions over $100 made since Conine and Cannizzaro entered the race.

The records show the Conine-affiliated PAC has distributed some of the funding to other Democratic candidates, and Conine said during the debate that the money allowed his campaign to give $200,000 to the state party — one of the largest donations in its history.

Statehouse records show that Conine released a plan in 2018 to allow alternative digital payment methods at marijuana dispensaries in Nevada as a way to prevent dispensaries from being locked out of the banking system, and testified in support of a bill he proposed in 2021 that would allow Nevada to accept digital representations of U.S. dollars for state and local government payments. 

In his testimony on the legislation, Conine said the changes aimed to modernize the way the state does business and to accept transactions through digital representations of dollars, which he referred to as "stablecoin," but specified that they did not include bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. 

The legislation came the same year as a proposal for "Innovation Zones," a system in Nevada that would allow companies such as Blockchains to form local governments on land they own, granting them power over everything from schools to law enforcement.

The company envisioned developing a 36,000-person Painted Rock Smart City run on a stablecoin. The proposal received enormous skepticism and ultimately failed.

Though state lawmakers expressed concerns that stablecoin was connected to the Innovation Zones proposal, Conine said that was not the case. 

The stablecoin legislation did not advance out of committee. 

Conine described the "Crypto Conine" critiques as "hilarious" during the debate, saying he has "never actually owned a single bit of any sort of cryptocurrency," and joked that his father, who served as a cryptographer during the Vietnam War, is the true "Crypto Conine."

CLAIM: Cannizzaro has "received more money from payday lenders than any other person in the history of the state"

Reporting shows payday lenders gave Cannizzaro more than $140,000 in direct campaign donations and contributions to a PAC she runs. About half of that money came in 2024 — a year with higher-than-usual industry donations — when Dollar Loan Center gave $60,000 to her PAC.

She also received $10,000 in March from a group that opposed a previous proposal to crack down on payday lending.

The total makes Cannizzaro the top candidate to have received the industry's donations since 2012.

CLAIM: Cannizzaro has "not held payday lending accountable"

During the debate, Conine said a 2024 ballot initiative that would have cracked down on high-interest lending in Nevada was dropped in 2026 because of the donations Cannizzaro received. A top Cannizzaro adviser was a spokesperson for that initiative. Conine alluded to a conversation in which "the CEO of the company told me that it was cheaper for her to buy you off than it was to fight a ballot initiative."

Cannizzaro vehemently denied the accusations, calling them "ridiculous" in light of her legislative record. She said she has a record of holding payday lenders accountable, including passing legislation that protects borrowers' savings and wages from debt collectors, establishing a lender database system to ensure that multiple loans can't be taken out at once, and imposing lending caps based on individual borrowers' salaries. 

The Nevada Independent has not been able to independently verify, with two sources, the comments Conine said about the CEO, who has not been identified.

Conine's campaign has also pointed to social media posts featuring the Senate majority leader at an event with Daily Pay, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that challenged the payday lending ballot measure. She touted legislation she passed with the company that established earned wage access, allowing employees to draw a portion of their earned wages before official payday. Daily Pay offers earned wage access, but it charges fees that critics such as the National Consumer Law Center have described as "predatory" and as "disguised payday loans." The center also lodged complaints about the legislation.

Campaign finance records show Daily Pay donated $5,000 to her campaign in January 2025, and other plaintiff donations, including from Nevadans for Financial Choice and Active Hours, accounted for $11,500 in the last two years.

CLAIM: Conine is "funded by one crypto billionaire"

Berns' donation made Conine the top fundraiser in the attorney general race, and marks Berns as Conine's largest donor for the election cycle. The donation accounted for more than 73 percent of all money that Conine or his affiliated PAC received from donors who gave at least $100 since he launched his candidacy last May.

The PAC affiliated with Conine, Let's Get to Work, was completely funded through Berns' donation.

Cannizzaro said in the debate that nothing she has taken from payday lenders compares to the $2.5 million Conine received from an individual donor. 

Conine contended during the debate that Berns has "never asked me for anything."

Along with his role as Blockchains' CEO, Berns, who has been described as a multimillionaire, served as lead counsel in a successful lawsuit representing half a million borrowers challenging Wells Fargo's mortgage practices in 2010. The representation is what Conine has pointed out in response to Cannizzaro's critiques.

During the debate, he said that his supporters appreciate good government and his work as treasurer. Conine said Berns didn't appreciate that Cannizzaro had represented the banks he had fought against.

Cannizzaro called the donation from Berns "unprecedented" during the debate and said Berns didn't give money for altruistic reasons and had previously shown up at the Legislature with a proposal for "Innovation Zones."

The proposal eventually fizzled amid public opposition, though Cannizzaro and other lawmakers did bring a study to examine the issue.

This article was corrected on 6/5/2026 at 6:33 a.m. to indicate that Cannizzaro was lead attorney on one of the foreclosure cases.