Cameras caught Nebraska's top liquor regulator taking a bundle of cash under a strip club table.
Lincoln police stumbled onto that video while working a double homicide at a Lincoln strip club.
But the cash was not the most disturbing thing Rupe tried to slip past Nebraska's governor.
The Footage Came From a Double Homicide Investigation
Hobert Rupe stood in a Lincoln federal courtroom on October 28 and pleaded guilty to fraud and extortion.
The homicide that cracked his case open happened at The Office, a strip club in southwest Lincoln once co-owned by Brent Zywiec.
During the investigation of a double homicide at The Office that occurred in 2024, officers found footage that showed Zywiec slipping Rupe a stack of money beneath a table, out of view of everyone else in the room.
Not long after, prosecutors say, Rupe was spending cash on a private session.
Rupe ran Nebraska's Liquor Control Commission for 21 years, deciding who in the state got to pour a drink and who didn't.
Before that, he worked as a state prosecutor for nearly 10 years.
In exchange, prosecutors say, The Office and its sister club, The Night Before Lounge, kept him supplied with cash, free liquor, free entry, free dances and sex acts from club employees.
Staff tracked the money taken out of the safe for Rupe on sticky notes labeled COB – cost of doing business.
Investigators also recovered "at least one compromising video" of Rupe from Zywiec's iCloud account.
Their texts show how cozy it got – Zywiec once told Rupe about pulling a gun on a knife-wielding patron during a brawl at The Office, then sent him a photo of a bloody hand.
Rupe Sent State Investigators After Club Omaha and Club 180
What the clubs got back, prosecutors say, was a regulator who would "effectively insulate" them from law enforcement.
Rupe aimed the state's investigators at the competition instead – Club Omaha and Club 180, less than an hour up Interstate 80 – with accusations of liquor license violations.
He also fed Zywiec "sensitive law enforcement investigative techniques and plans" so he knew the heat was on his rivals.
The man Nebraska trusted to keep bars honest was using the state's enforcement machinery to clear the field for a strip club.
The Omaha Club Owner Told to Bring $40,000 to a Gas Station
Shane Zywiec, another defendant, told an Omaha club owner he had someone on the inside at the Liquor Commission.
The owner then met a go-between at a gas station off Interstate 80 and handed over $40,000, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Ann Mruz told the court.
Part of the cash went to Brent Zywiec and part went to Rupe.
The owner's troubles with the commission went away – for a while.
He paid $20,000 more, then another $5,000, until the money ran out.
Police write-ups soon started piling up against his club.
He gave up his liquor license and closed for good.
"Public corruption undermines the trust of all Nebraskans in their officials," U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods said when the indictment came down.
Rupe Quietly Pushed a Rule Letting Customers Touch Dancers
The day after Rupe's charges were unsealed, Governor Jim Pillen found a commission rule change sitting in the pipeline.
It would have stripped out the rule treating kissing or intimate touching between workers and customers as a disturbance at any business holding a liquor license.
Pillen said Rupe had "quietly pushed" it.
The change would "effectively provide government permission for customers to touch the dancers at a strip club," the governor said.
Pillen killed it on the spot, calling it an "immoral, inappropriate and profoundly misguided policy change."
A day earlier, he had already branded the scandal a "failure of leadership" at the agency.
Pennsylvania's Liquor Board Took Golf Trips but Nebraska's Took Lap Dances
In 2015, federal prosecutors charged the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's former marketing director, James Short Jr., with taking private-jet golf trips and cash from companies angling to get their products into state stores.
That scheme was about which bottles got shelf space.
Rupe's scheme was about which clubs got to stay open – and which ones got raided.
The Clubs Rupe Was Supposed to Police Were Picking Up His Tab
The two counts are honest services fraud conspiracy and Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, and prosecutors will drop the other seven under his plea deal.
He faces up to 20 years and a $250,000 fine on each count when U.S. District Judge Susan Bazis sentences him in February.
"We've been very cooperative," his attorney, William McGinn, told reporters, adding that Rupe "wants to make it right" with Nebraska taxpayers.
That cooperation came late – the commission had suspended him without pay back in May 2025, after federal agents served a search warrant.
Every honest bar owner in Nebraska was playing a rigged game while the referee drank for free.
Pillen deserves credit for torching that rule without waiting for a judge to tell him it was wrong, and so do the FBI agents and Attorney General Mike Hilgers' investigators who ran this case down.
Rupe got caught on footage that surfaced in a homicide investigation – and Nebraskans have every right to ask how long he would have kept collecting without it.
Sources:
- Andrew J. Nelson, "Once Liquor Enforcement's Point Man in Nebraska, Former Official Pleads Guilty to Fraud, Extortion," Courthouse News Service, October 28, 2026.
- U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Nebraska, "Former State Official and Lincoln Club Owner Indicted," U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Nebraska, September 25, 2025.
- Office of Governor Jim Pillen, "Gov. Pillen Issues Statement Following Federal Indictment of Former Liquor Control Commission Director," Office of Governor Jim Pillen, September 24, 2025.
- WOWT, "Former Head of Nebraska Liquor Commission Changes Plea in Fraud, Extortion Case," WOWT, October 28, 2026.
- News-Press Now, "Pillen Rejects Strip Club Rules Rupe Sought," News-Press Now, September 2025.
- Philadelphia Magazine, "Former PLCB Official Charged in Kickback Scheme," Philadelphia Magazine, September 1, 2015.
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