Kim Blandino: Extortion Case, Appeal, and Civil Rights Suit

Kim Dennis Blandino is a Nevada man convicted in March 2022 of extorting a Las Vegas traffic court judge and impersonating an officer, after he demanded money, an apology, and an ethics course from the judge in exchange for not filing complaints against him. He was sentenced to probation with house arrest, lost his appeal in December 2023, and has a longer history of combative legal conduct that includes a 1990s kidnapping conviction and a formal vexatious litigant designation from a Clark County court.¹

What He Did to the Judge

The case grew out of a traffic ticket. In August 2018, Blandino appeared before Judge Pro Tempore Michael Federico in Las Vegas Municipal Court, and Federico, a private attorney serving as a temporary judge, found him guilty. A city marshal later described Blandino’s behavior during the hearing as “continual disruptions, outbursts, and disorderly courtroom behavior” despite repeated warnings from the bench.²

Instead of appealing, Blandino went after the judge personally. In April 2019 he showed up at Federico’s private law office and dropped off a two-page handwritten letter announcing he intended to file complaints against him. He appeared in Federico’s courtroom on April 25 with no business there and had to be removed, then returned to the law office with another letter.²

The following month, Blandino sent Federico a written “proposed settlement agreement” listing his demands: $25 for the cost of a courtroom recording, a written apology, and either completion of an ethics course at the National Judicial College in Reno at the judge’s own expense or a $500 donation to the Clark County Law Library. In exchange, Blandino said he would not file complaints with the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline, would not report the judge to the FBI, and would not disclose alleged misconduct to Federico’s law firm.¹

To give the threat weight, Blandino claimed to be an “unpaid volunteer investigator” for the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline. The commission’s general counsel testified at trial that no such role existed and that a private citizen would never be authorized to negotiate settlements with judges on the commission’s behalf. Blandino was arrested on May 21, 2019, and a grand jury indicted him that July on one count of extortion and one count of impersonation of an officer.¹

The Trial and His Religious-Belief Defense

A seven-day jury trial in March 2022 before Judge Michelle Leavitt in the Eighth Judicial District Court featured testimony from Federico, his receptionist, the judicial discipline commission’s general counsel and executive director, investigating officers, and a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department lab supervisor. The State put Blandino’s letters and his written settlement demand into evidence.³

Blandino took the stand and essentially admitted the underlying acts, but argued that sincere religious beliefs motivated his conduct and made it legally impossible for him to have committed a crime. The jury convicted him on both counts.¹

Sentence

Judge Leavitt sentenced Blandino to 12 to 120 months in the Nevada Department of Corrections on the extortion count and 364 days in the Clark County Detention Center on the impersonation count, to run concurrently. Both sentences were suspended, and she placed him on three years of probation with high-level GPS monitoring, continued house arrest, and a daily 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew.¹⁴

The Appeal

Blandino appealed to the Nevada Court of Appeals, arguing that the district court had wrongly revoked his right to represent himself, that the jury should have received a mistake-of-fact instruction, and that his repeated motions to disqualify Judge Leavitt should have been granted. The Court of Appeals rejected each argument and affirmed the conviction on December 20, 2023.¹

His Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit

Alongside the criminal case, Blandino filed a federal civil rights suit against the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and others in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, case number 2:22-cv-00562-GMN-EJY. He alleged that after refusing a DNA collection at the Clark County Detention Center in May 2019, he was held in a “super cold punishment cell” without clothing or standard amenities for about 72 hours and that his legal mail was destroyed. He alleged similar mistreatment when he was remanded in January 2020 for a competency evaluation, and he claimed the evening curfew imposed as part of his supervision violated his First Amendment right to practice his religion.⁴

On August 15, 2023, U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro dismissed the claims against former Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, dismissed the Free Exercise Clause claim without prejudice on the ground that the curfew was reasonably related to legitimate penological interests, and found Blandino had not sufficiently stated an Eighth Amendment claim over his conditions of confinement.⁴

Vexatious Litigant Status and Ongoing Filings

Before the extortion case began, the Eighth Judicial District Court had already declared Blandino a vexatious litigant. The formal order was entered on July 2, 2018, under case number 18-A775478-J, meaning he must obtain court permission before filing new lawsuits.⁵

He has continued filing anyway. In a separate federal case, Blandino v. Herndon et al., 2:18-cv-00600, he sued a Nevada Supreme Court justice and others; Chief Judge Miranda M. Du dismissed the claims in October 2018, and the Ninth Circuit dismissed his appeal in August 2020 for failure to prosecute.⁶

More recently, in a habeas corpus matter (A-24-907619-W), Blandino filed a 139-page “Emergency Motion” seeking to disqualify Judge Leavitt and every other Eighth Judicial District judge, again invoking his self-appointed status as a judicial discipline investigator. Chief Judge Jerry A. Wiese II heard the motion on November 6, 2025, and denied all relief on December 1, 2025, calling it an untimely rehash of previously denied requests and admonishing Blandino against further repetitive or duplicative filings.⁷

The 1990s Kidnapping Conviction

Blandino’s use of religious belief as a legal defense long predates the extortion case. In the early 1990s he was convicted of kidnapping his two young sons from their mother in Las Vegas in an eight-month abduction. On appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, he argued his waiver of counsel was invalid and that he had been prosecuted for religious beliefs that included the view that his wife and children were his “property.” The court affirmed the conviction 4-0, and he served six years in prison.²

1
Findlaw. Kim Dennis Blandino v. The State of Nevada
2
Las Vegas Review-Journal. Man Accused of Trying to Extort Las Vegas Traffic Court Judge
3
vLex. Blandino v. State
4
CaseMine. Blandino v. Las Vegas Metro Police Dep’t
5
Nevada Courts. Vexatious Litigant List
6
PACER Monitor. Blandino v. Herndon et al
7
Our Nevada Judges. Order Denying Motion to Disqualify