{"id":243724,"date":"2022-01-29T10:24:23","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T16:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=243724"},"modified":"2022-01-30T12:01:10","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T18:01:10","slug":"gov-burgum-aware-of-data-center-developers-dark-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=243724","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Burgum aware of data center developer\u2019s dark past"},"content":{"rendered":"

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 Gov. Doug Burgum was aware of the troubled past of a businessman involved in the construction of a $1.9 billion\u00a0data center\u00a0<\/a>in northwestern North Dakota, a spokesman said Friday.<\/p>\n

Montana-based FX Solutions President Richard Tabish was convicted and then acquitted of killing a Las Vegas casino executive more than two decades ago.<\/p>\n

Burgum on Wednesday hailed the center being built by Tabish\u2019s company and operated by Montana-based Atlas Power as one of the biggest such centers in the world, and one that will help diversify the economy in the Williston area that has suffered oil boom-bust cycles for decades.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Uses for data centers include the mining of bitcoin and other digital currencies. Atlas Power currently operates a 75-megawatt data center in Butte, Montana. The North Dakota data center owned by Atlas would be nearly 10 times as large as the Montana facility, once completed.<\/p>\n

Related Story:\u00a0Ground breaking Sept 14 for Applied Block Chain, Jamestown.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cYes, we were familiar with Rick\u2019s background, including his parole in 2010,\u201d Burgum spokesman Mike Nowatzki said in a statement. \u201cHe has done business in North Dakota for over a decade, to our knowledge without incident, including with a number of companies in the oil and gas sector.\u201d<\/div>\n

Nowatzki said Tabish had companies that specialized oilfield spill cleanup and waste disposal in western North Dakota\u2019s oil-production region.<\/p>\n

Tabish, who lives in Missoula, Montana, did not immediately return an email message for comment on Friday.<\/p>\n

Tabish gained notoriety at his Las Vegas murder trial in 2000, when he and co-defendant Sandra Murphy\u00a0were convicted of murdering 55-year-old Ted Binion<\/a>\u00a0at his Las Vegas home in 1998 and stealing from his vault.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the motive was a piece of Binion\u2019s $55 million estate and a cache of more than $5 million in silver bars and coins that Binion had buried in an underground desert vault.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors alleged that Murphy and Tabish forced Binion to ingest lethal levels of heroin and the antidepressant Xanax before suffocating him.<\/p>\n

Tabish and Murphy were later acquitted of the murder charges in 2004 after the Nevada Supreme Court granted a new trial. The second jury convicted them of charges related to silver theft.<\/p>\n

Murphy was released for time already served. Tabish was paroled in 2010.<\/p>\n

The Republican governor\u2019s office the said the project has not received any state grants or loans, but could qualify for a sales tax exemption allowed by state law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) \u2014 Gov. Doug Burgum was aware of the troubled past of a businessman involved in the construction of a $1.9 billion\u00a0data center\u00a0in northwestern North Dakota, a spokesman said Friday. Montana-based FX Solutions President Richard Tabish was convicted and then acquitted of killing a Las Vegas casino executive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":243730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243724"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243731,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243724\/revisions\/243731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/243730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}