In this photo illustration a martini sits on a bar on January 03, 2025. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
LINCOLN — The former executive director of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission faces seven felony charges, including some that allege he deprived Nebraskans of his honest work as a public official by letting two Lincoln strip clubs give him cash, lap dances, sexual favors and free drinks.
He visited often enough that employees tallied the amount his visits pulled from the cash register on sticky notes left for their bosses that they labeled “COB” for the cost of the clubs doing business, according to a federal indictment of the state official unsealed this week.
Part of the state official’s job was to help the commission dole out, discipline and rescind Nebraska liquor licenses. That role included weighing in after police investigations of rival Omaha strip clubs the indictment alleges the state official shared with the co-owner of the Lincoln clubs and looking up dancers in law enforcement databases. And the indictment alleges he demanded a total of $65,000 from one bar owner to protect a liquor license.
The grand jury charged former commission director Hobert “Hobie” Rupe with three counts of honest services fraud — the charge that means a public official or employee depriving the people of an official’s honest work — one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count of extortion.
It charged a co-owner of Lincoln strip clubs The Office and The Night Before Lounge, Brent Zywiec, with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. All are felonies carrying sentences of up to 20 years in prison. All must still be proven in court.
Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, who attended a news conference at the FBI’s Omaha office with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to announce the indictment, said it should serve as a warning to anybody who would seek personal gain from public service.
“Nebraskans expect that their public servants give them honest services, that they act with integrity and follow the oath of office they swear to uphold,” Hilgers said of Rupe, who served as executive director from 2004 until June 2025. “That’s not what happened here.”
Gov. Jim Pillen, in a statement Wednesday, expressed disappointment at the “failure of leadership at the Liquor Control Commission.” He said he would do “everything in my power” to make sure the agency, which is run independently of his administration, meets public expectations “going forward.”
“The conduct alleged in the indictment … falls completely short of what Nebraskans expect of officials placed in positions of public trust,” Pillen said.
Rupe served almost 10 years as an assistant attorney general prior to joining the commission. He did not immediately return calls seeking comment. One former number had been changed. The other went straight to voicemail. The Liquor Control Commission had suspended him without pay from his $130,596-a-year job in May after a search warrant was served.
Liquor Control Commission Chair Bruce Bailey of Lincoln had said in May that Rupe’s alleged offenses related to his “fitness and ability” to serve and required an immediate suspension. No new information had been available until this week.
The shake-up at the Liquor Commission could have impacts beyond liquor cases, because the members of the board also serve on the new Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission and the two commissions began sharing funds after Rupe’s departure.
A woman who answered the phone at The Office Gentlemen’s Club in Lincoln said the club would have no comment. One person at the club said Zywiec had been “suspended.” No one immediately answered the Examiner’s calls to The Night Before Lounge. Efforts to reach Zywiec were unsuccessful Wednesday.
The indictment alleges that payments and services were offered at the clubs from January 2022 through May 2025. Among the gifts offered and accepted, it said, were free entry into bars that usually charge $20 cover fees, free drinks and cash to cover free lap dances, free VIP dances and services that included oral sex.
A single private dance at the club can cost about $100 for three songs, while a turn in the VIP lounge can cost up to $500. The feds say at least one surveillance video investigators secured showed Rupe receiving sexual favors. Some videos of people in compromising positions were saved to the owner’s iCloud account, the indictment says.
Rupe, in addition to sharing sensitive information with Zywiec about law enforcement investigations into rival clubs, also ignored violations he saw occurring in the Lincoln clubs, the indictment alleges.
Text messages between Zywiec and an unnamed cohort who is likely cooperating with the feds show the two had developed coded language to speak about visiting the club, the indictment alleges. They used the term “team players” to discuss whether a particular dancer might be willing to offer favors, it adds. The two used the words “book” or “papers” to discuss cash, authorities allege.
“Like I said if I don’t know em. Know em i can’t endorse em,” Zywiec allegedly wrote in one text message exchange. “But that shouldn’t stop you.”
Rupe replied, the documents allege: “You know me. Always on the lookout for team players.”
In another text exchange, Zywiec and an unnamed co-conspirator discussed a “new blond” who “just took Hobie to vip.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is requesting a jury trial in Lincoln.
Nebraska Examiner Reporter Zach Wendling contributed to this report.
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