NORTH LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — In August, Channel 13published a series of stories on Life Legacy Venue, an event space in North Las Vegas, that abruptly shut its doors, allegedly scamming dozens of customers out of thousands of dollars in deposits and fees.
That money was allegedly taken by the venue's owner, who is nowhere to be found, and now clients who feel cheated, want their money back.
“That's when we found out that his number was disconnected and the office number was disconnected,” said Nillani Fonseca, who had booked the venue for an event to celebrate her late husband in October.
Justice is what Fonseca and other clients are seeking. Many of them reached out to the North Las Vegas Police Department, only to be told law enforcement could not step in.
“If something was going wrong with the venue, refund everybody their money back. I think that just needs to prevail for people that are doing things like this. This is not right,” said Glenda Johsnon, who planned to have her wedding at the venue in September.
“It's intentionally using a business and a venue to scam people,” said Las Vegas attorney Sagar Raich.
Raich explained the reason the police couldn’t help is because this is a civil matter, where a contract was breached.
“These cases, while they might seem small and you think ‘hey they lost a few hundred bucks,’ it’s not that it could be easily tens of thousands of dollars,” Raich said.
Raich says if the people impacted can show the venue's owner purposely did this, it goes beyond a broken contract.
“This goes into fraud. A lot of planning went into this. This wasn’t just a wake up in the morning to get a bunch of people kind of day, it was planned. It was methodical. It was intentional from what I'm seeing,” Raich said
With customers left feeling hopeless, some are deciding if they want to take legal action against a business that has seemingly vanished overnight.
“It's not even about the money, at least for me, it's about the principle in the situation,” Fonseca said.
Channel 13 has reached out to Devin Brooks, the owner of Life Legacy Venue on several occasions, but nobody has responded to our requests for comment.
Raich offered free consultations for anyone impacted by the venue's closure. He can be contacted here.
