Attorneys believe fugitive Mustang Ranch owner Joe Conforte has died

For years, Nevada brothel operator Joseph Conforte would call Las Vegas attorney Richard Wright from Brazil, interested in returning to the United States and later, in resolving his legal issues so he could visit Italy.

“He wanted to pay X amount of money and come back, and I’d float the balloons with the government and the answer was, uniformly and always, we’ll deal with him when he’s here. In other words, we’re not going to plea bargain with a fugitive,” Wright said in an interview.

The two last had contact in 2017.

Conforte fled the country in the 1990s to escape tax evasion charges, according to prior Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting.

Federal court minutes from a 2020 hearing state that prosecutors believe Conforte has since died, but they were unable to obtain a death certificate. Some online sources, including Wikipedia, place his death in 2019 in Brazil but do not cite official confirmation.

If alive today, he would reportedly be 100.

Conforte was a notorious and well-publicized Nevada character.

Proprietor of the Mustang Ranch brothel, he was profiled by Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times. Nevada journalists covered him extensively, and Reno Evening Gazette and Nevada State Journal staff won a Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for editorials aimed at him. Actor Joe Pesci played a character loosely based on him in the movie “Love Ranch.”

Conforte also had a role in bringing down Nevada U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne, who was impeached after a tax evasion conviction, telling the FBI that he had given Claiborne bribes meant for appellate judges and testifying at Claiborne’s first trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury.

“He personified what most people think of our state back at that time,” Wright said of Conforte.

His was the first legal and fully licensed brothel in the United States, according to prior Review-Journal coverage.

“I’ve never been ashamed of the business,” Conforte said in 1985. “You are never going to eliminate prostitution. If you are going to have it anyway, then isn’t it better to have it controlled?”

An ex-cab driver who moved from Oakland and began his Nevada brothel operator career in 1955, his life was punctuated by legal problems.

Conforte had previously been convicted of tax evasion and had fled the country to Brazil, but made a deal with federal authorities to provide information on claimed bribes to officials. He agreed to come back and testify against Claiborne, who had been his lawyer.

Wright said it seemed like Conforte initially wanted to return to the United States, but when he became older, his goal was to negotiate his case so he could travel to Italy.

He told Wright he wanted to visit relatives and graves, the attorney said.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.