Steve Wynn has finally come out of the closet! No not in that way. He finally admitted that it was him who had given an anonymous $2 million dollar donation to the United Way which enabled poor families in Nevada to receive a gift card with $500 on it. The donation was the largest that the United Way has ever received and over the last few months a huge Las Vegas puzzle was trying to figure out who had donated the money.
Right before Christmas in 2001 the first round of families received $500 gift cards. The Saturday another 2,000 families went to pick up their gift. Recipients had no idea how much the gift was for or who had given it to them. Wynn admitted he was he was behind the funds and the families were not informed either.
Vegas is no stranger to amazing charitable donations. Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson has opened up healthcare clinics all over the State. Wayne Newton takes in abandoned animals and Andre Agassi opened up a multi-lingual charter school for at-risk Nevada teens.
Las Vegas has been one of the hardest hit areas in the hardest hit state of the recession . Streets lined with foreclosed homes, a decimated construction industry and massive unemployment are just some of the problems Nevada faces. Las Vegas’ unemployment rate was 11.6 in April, and one in every 285 homes is in foreclosure.
Steve Wynn is one of Las Vegas’ highest earning individuals. A local newspaper named him Las Vegas’ highest-earning executive of 2011. His company made a $1.3 billion profit in the first quarter of this year. He has two ultra luxury hotels on the Vegas strip the Encore and the Wynn Las Vegas.