Strip club kingpin Jack Galardi dies

Jack Galardi, who started his strip club empire in Las Vegas in the 1970s, died at his Georgia ranch on Saturday, close friends confirmed. Galardi, 80, was one of the country's most successful strip club owners, owning nearly 50 over the years, according to longtime business partner Ron Stevens. Galardi had spent the last two decades of his life living near Atlanta. He owned a 60,000-square-foot mansion on a 400-acre ranch outside Jackson, Ga. He became entangled in headlines in 2003 when his adopted son, Michael Galardi, was targeted in a sweeping federal political corruption investigation dubbed Operation G-Sting. Three former Clark County commissioners were convicted and Michael Galardi ended up losing his strip clubs Cheetah's and Jaguars and was imprisoned. Jack Galardi was not part of the investigation. A rift that had developed a few years before the probe widened after it and the Galardis were not on good terms for more than a decade. "Jack left Las Vegas because people kept saying he was associated with the mob. He was not," said Stevens, a business partner and close friend since the 1960s. The strip club empire includes operations in Florida and Atlanta. Stevens said Jack Galardi was "close to a billionaire," with private airplanes, a helicopter and mansions. One of his mansions, now vacant near the Scotch 80s, was built in the mid-1990s after Galardi purchased comedian Shecky Greene's home, bulldozed it and built a 15,500-square-foot residence on the site.