Bail set at $460K for alleged pimp in Vegas case

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A judge set bail Monday at $460,000 cash for a 28-year-old man who investigators allege was a Las Vegas Strip pimp who threatened and beat a woman when she tried to quit working as his prostitute — including putting a wet towel over her face and suffocating her in an experience she told police was like being "water boarded."

Arman Izadi won't post bail and intends to fight the 20 felony charges filed against him, his attorney said outside court. The charges include kidnapping, pandering, living from the earnings of a prostitute, battery, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, extortion and coercion.

"There is a wide difference between what has been charged and what is true," Izadi's attorney, Ben Nadig, said.

Izadi's mother watched in court from a motorized wheelchair as Justice of the Peace Cynthia Cruz ordered that before posting bail, Izadi would have to prove the money came from legal and legitimate sources. Izadi told Las Vegas police before his arrest that he was a casino host.

Izadi also faces sentencing May 15 in Clark County District Court in another criminal case alleging he attacked a man he had hired to film a music video.

Izadi pleaded guilty in October to a reduced charge of attempted battery with substantial bodily harm in a plea deal that would have gotten him probation.

Prosecutor Marc Schifalacqua said he'll seek to have that deal withdrawn. The state court judge who approved it already has ordered that if Izadi is freed in the pandering case, he will be held without bail pending sentencing.

Cruz also scheduled a May 20 preliminary hearing in the new case stemming from Izadi's arrest last Wednesday, but Schifalacqua said prosecutors have served notice that they may take the case to a grand jury. That could move the case to state court and make the evidence hearing moot.

Izadi could face up to life in prison if he is convicted of kidnapping, and decades in prison on other charges.

He is accused of pandering and living off the earnings of three women, and of attacking one of them in a walk-in shower.

That woman told police that for more than an hour Izadi choked her with his hands, beat her, cut on the leg with a knife and held her beneath a spray of water that he changed from scalding hot to ice cold before placing the wet towel over her face.

The woman told police she felt as if she was drowning, but that Izadi slapped her face to rouse her before she lapsed into unconsciousness.

Izadi also allegedly led the woman to an apartment balcony and threatened to throw her over the rail.

The attack stopped when she agreed to have Izadi's name tattooed on her neck, according to the police report. While at the tattoo shop, she was able to send a text message to her mother saying that he was trying to kill her, police said.

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Woman in Las Vegas seeking cosmetic surgery dies, pair charged

Ruben Dario Mattallana-Galvas, 55, has been charged with one count of murder. STORY HIGHLIGHTSNEW: The victim's daughter says her mother was injected by one suspectNEW: A suspect says the woman left off after getting a buttocks injectionTwo Colombian nationals have been charged with murder in Las VegasThey were caught as they were about to board a plane for South AmericaRELATED TOPICSMurder and HomicideLas VegasColombiaCosmetic Medicine (CNN) -- Las Vegas police caught two people as they were about to board a plane for Colombia, then charged them with the murder of a woman who went missing hours after being dropped off for a cosmetic surgery procedure.

The female victim was dropped off Saturday morning to undergo a cosmetic procedure, according to a statement from the Las Vegas Police Department.

The victim's daughter contacted police after she was unable to find her mother at the same location where she had dropped her off about eight hours earlier. A police report, obtained and posted online by CNN affiliate KLAS, quoted the daughter as saying the office did not even have the same furniture in the office as was there earlier in the day.

The report claims that, before she left originally, the daughter saw the victim, identified as 42-year-old Elena Caro, disrobe and be injected in the buttocks by a man later identified by the daughter as one of the suspects, Ruben Dario Mattallana-Galvas. The daughter told police she got a call about an hour later from her mother, and was told to return several hours later.

In that span, authorities learned that the woman had been picked up in an ambulance about three miles north from the original location and taken to a local hospital. There, she was pronounced dead, according to the police statement.

Las Vegas police detectives soon identified two suspects as Mattallana-Galvas, 55, and Carmen Olfidia Torres-Sanchez, 47. Both are from Medellin, Colombia.

The pair were arrested Saturday night at McCarran International Airport, while preparing to board a flight for Colombia. The pair actually had tickets for April 22, but were hoping to leave the United States earlier, according to the police report.

Instead, they were taken to the Clark County Detention Center and each charged with one count of murder, police said.

Mattallana-Galvas and Torres-Sanchez are due to be formally arraigned in court Tuesday on the charges, according to Las Vegas police.

After being informed he was being arrested for murder and being read his Miranda rights, Mattallana-Galvas told detectives that Caro had come into his office that day for a buttocks enhancement procedure, the police report stated. He claimed that, afterward, Caro had walked away from his office.

Mattallana-Galvas admitted to authorities that he was not licensed to pr active medicine in Nevada, but claimed he was a homeopathic doctor in Colombia.

Also Saturday, Las Vegas detectives interviewed an assistant to Mattallana-Galvas, who claimed that Mattallana-Galvas told her to cancel his appointments for that afternoon because "something had gone wrong," the police report said. The assistant said that her husband eventually took Mattallana-Galvas to the airport.

The toxicology report examining the exact cause and timing of Caro's death is still pending, John Fudenberg, the assistant coroner for Clark County, said Monday evening.

CNN's Marlena Baldacci contributed to this report.

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