LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — Two women who say they were trafficked for years inside Las Vegas hotel-casinos have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the properties knowingly benefited from and enabled sex trafficking by convicted sex offender Nathan Chasing Horse.
Andreozzi + Foote and co-counsel, The 702 Firm, filed the civil lawsuit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.
The suit was filed on behalf of two survivors identified by their initials.
The complaint names Boyd Gaming Corporation, which owned and operated The Cannery Casino & Hotel; Cannery Hotel and Casino, LLC, which did business as The Cannery Casino & Hotel; and Station Casinos, LLC, which operated the Santa Fe Station Hotel and Casino, as defendants.
It also names additional unidentified corporate defendants listed as “Roe Corporations I–X.”
According to the complaint, the survivors were trafficked at the properties between approximately 2014 and 2022 and were forced into commercial sex acts.
The lawsuit alleges the hotels ignored clear warning signs and allowed the trafficking to continue by repeatedly renting rooms and enabling the trafficker’s operation.
The complaint says Chasing Horse exploited his position as a self-proclaimed spiritual leader within the Lakota community to manipulate and control victims, using coercion, isolation and threats of violence to force them into commercial sex acts.
It further alleges that victims were visibly branded with a spider tattoo that would have been observable to hotel staff.
The lawsuit says both victims were trafficked for years inside the hotels, where they were closely controlled by the trafficker and forced to engage in repeated commercial sex acts with multiple buyers.
Hotel staff is also accused of failing to intervene despite visible signs of distress from the victims, and interacting with Chasing Horse and offering him gifts to keep him at their hotel.
Chasing Horse was convicted in January 2026 on charges stemming from sex trafficking and sexual abuse and was sentenced this week to 37 years to life in prison.
The lawsuit was brought under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which allows survivors to pursue civil claims against entities that knowingly benefit from participation in a trafficking venture.
The suit also brings claims of negligence, gross negligence and recklessness.
“Convicted sex trafficker Nathan Chasing Horse has been held criminally accountable, but this lawsuit focuses on the role that businesses may have played in allowing the trafficking to continue,” Alex Marcinko, the Andreozzi + Foote attorney handling the case, said.
“The complaint alleges that clear and repeated signs of trafficking were present over a period of years,” Marcinko added. “When businesses fail to recognize and act on those warning signs, it can create an environment where exploitation continues unchecked.”
The survivors are seeking accountability from the hotel-casinos that allegedly enabled the trafficking, as well as recognition of the physical, emotional and psychological harm they say they endured.
