Like the overflowing sewer that it is, the ooze boiling up from the vast investigative files of the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein continues to splash on the billionaire class and political elite.

With the stench of corruption growing, it’s possible to forget that Epstein’s friendship with Apollo Global Management founder Leon Black placed the private equity firm in a precarious spot just four years ago during its 2022 licensing hearings before Nevada gaming regulators. The Nevada Gaming Commission approved operator Apollo’s $2.25 billion investment in the $6.25 billion acquisition of The Venetian and The Palazzo on the Strip after attaching seven conditions that included a promise from Apollo to distance itself from Black.

At the time, a hopeful Gaming Commissioner Ben Kieckhefer said, “We shouldn’t have ongoing concerns (with Black) given all of the structures that we have in place.”

The carve-out was intended to create a firewall between the licensee and one of its founders, who at the time was also its largest stockholder. But considering all the revelations in the Epstein scandal, keeping Black’s reputation at a distance isn’t easy to do.

The Justice Department’s latest dump of 3 million pages from the Epstein investigation files shows the offices of the Manhattan district attorney and U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York investigated allegations by several women who accused Black of sexual assault and other crimes.

No charges were brought against Black, who has long maintained his innocence, but he remains a much-discussed player in the Epstein affair. And for good reason. He was Epstein’s biggest source of funds in the final years of his life.

Less than a year before Apollo pleaded its case in Nevada, Black stepped down as CEO after the company confirmed that he’d paid Epstein more than $158 million from 2012 to 2017 for financial advice and art-related services. That move came nearly a decade after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor younger than 18. (And after he cut a sweetheart deal with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida.)

Black’s lack of judgment is undeniable but the convenient timing of the decision to oust him raises questions about Apollo’s leadership. The company has long noted that Epstein, despite his apparent spell on Apollo’s founder, never actually worked for the company.

In his own defense in the face of the audacious payments he made to Epstein, in an October 2020 statement to investors Black denied “that I engaged in any wrongdoing, because I did not. And any suggestion of blackmail or any other connection to Epstein’s reprehensible conduct is categorically untrue.”

Three months later, Black stepped down as CEO. Although he said he was “completely unaware of, and am deeply troubled by” the Epstein revelations, it doesn’t explain why he thought it was kosher to get financial advice from a convicted sex offender whose notorious reputation was no secret among the elite business and political class. But, hey, that’s yesterday’s news, right?

Say it’s all in the past, but the past keeps boiling up.

With its Black problem resolved and its license in hand, since 2022 Apollo has continued its remarkable empire-building. In July 2024, it acquired slot behemoth IGT and gaming financial technology supplier Everi Holdings in a $6.3 billion deal.

Given Black’s integral historical position with Apollo, the ease with which the commissioners went along with the carve-out made them look more like facilitators than regulators. It’s also important to remember that the commission made its decision following a 3-0 vote by the state Gaming Control Board, which in theory completed a full investigation of Black and the Epstein connection.

Between the company’s convenient Black inquiry and the commission’s carve-out, the arrangement appeared so well-oiled that it left me suspecting it was rushed.

Even taking into account the undeniable fact that the gaming industry has a tangled regulatory history, Apollo’s arrangement with Nevada regulators raised plenty of eyebrows. The state that boasts of its reputation as the “gold standard” of regulation had once again found a way to balance its interests and an infamous threat to its credibility.

I couldn’t help being reminded of a line from the end of trailblazing Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown’s book, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story. She wrote that many such inquiries are “designed more to mitigate reputational and financial damage than to hold anyone accountable.”

In a state dominated by the casino industry, is this the game we play and call it regulation?

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.