Once liquor enforcement’s point man in Nebraska, former official pleads guilty to fraud, extortion

Hobert Rupe, a former state prosecutor and 21-year executive director of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, directed investigators away from Lincoln-area strip clubs and to their Omaha competitors in Omaha in exchange for cash and sexual favors, prosecutors say.LINCOLN, Neb. (CN) — The former head of Nebraska’s liquor commission pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to honest services fraud and extortion, 13 months after a grand jury charged him with providing favors to a Lincoln strip club in exchange for money, free lap dances and sexual favors.The plea was a result of an agreement between Hobert Rupe, 59, and prosecutors. Rupe was executive director of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission — which regulates alcohol and oversees liquor licenses — from 2004 until his June 2025 resignation.Rupe faces up to 20 years and a $250,000 fine on each count. While U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline DeLuca conducted the proceedings Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bazis will impose the final sentence.Rupe’s attorney, William F. McGinn of Council Bluffs, Iowa, told reporters after the hearing that he hoped his client would get far less than the maximum sentence. “We’ve been very cooperative,” McGinn said. “He was very forthcoming.”Asked by Courthouse News what his client had to say to the taxpayers of Nebraska, McGinn said: “He wants to make it right with them. It’s not what you think of when you are in the middle of making bad decisions.”The remaining seven counts of the superseding indictment will be dismissed as part of the agreement.More specifically, Rupe pleaded guilty to honest services fraud conspiracy and Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right. The Hobbs Act prohibits interference with commerce via extortion.Rupe is among four indicted in the case. A grand jury indicted him and strip club impresario Brent Zywiec, one-time co-owner of The Office Gentleman’s Club and The Night Before Lounge in Lincoln, in September 2025. A grand jury indicted two others, Shane Zywiec and Dan Thomas, the following November.In the superseding indictment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Ann Mruz says Rupe “was provided personal and financial benefits, to include sexual acts performed on him by employees of the strip clubs, cash, free alcoholic beverages, free cover charges for his entry into The Office and The Night Before clubs on various occasions, free dances and other items of value …”Prosecutors say they’ve obtained surveillance video footage, taken in 2024, showing Zywiec “handing a bundle of cash to Hobert Rupe under a table to keep others in the room from witnessing the cash handoff. Shortly thereafter, Rupe was observed transacting cash in a private room to pay for a private session,” prosecutors say in the indictment.In court Wednesday, Mruz said Lincoln police investigators came into contact with the video during their investigation of a 2024 double homicide at The Office located in southwest Lincoln.According to prosecutors, employees of The Office would “indicate on sticky notes the amount of money taken out of the business safe and provided to Hobert Rupe.” The sticky notes would read COB: the cost of doing business.Investigators said they also recovered, from Zywiec’s iCloud account, “at least one compromising video of Hobert Rupe receiving oral sex from the dancer.”Prosecutors say in exchange for this VIP treatment, Rupe would “effectively insulate” Zywiec’s two strip clubs from law enforcement, while directing state investigators to Zywiec’s competitors, including Club Omaha and Club 180, a short drive up Interstate 80 in Omaha, claiming liquor license violations.Rupe would also “pass along sensitive law enforcement investigative techniques and plans to Brent Zywiec to let him know law enforcement was actively investigating competitor clubs,” prosecutors said in the indictment.Between 2021 and 2025, Zywiec paid Rupe around $65,000, according to the indictment.In court Wednesday, Mruz said one Omaha club owner made a $40,000 payment to someone he met at a gas station between Omaha and Lincoln after Shane Zywiec, another defendant in the case, told him he had a contact on the Liquor Commission. Some of that money went to Brent Zywiec, and some went to Rupe, temporarily ending the club owner’s troubles with the Liquor Commission. The owner made more payments, one for $20,000 and another for $5,000, but eventually ran out of money to make them.His club, “began receiving tavern reports from law enforcement,” Mruz said Wednesday. The owner surrendered his liquor license and closed his club, she said, “after not being able to pay any further extortion payments to Shane Zywiec, Rupe or Brent Zywiec.”In May 2025, the three-member Nebraska Liquor Commission voted unanimously to suspend Rupe without pay after a federal search warrant was served to investigate Rupe’s conduct. The Lincoln Journal Star reported earlier this year that ownership of The Night Before had changed since the indictments, and other owners were trying to separate Zywiec and another defendant in the case from The Office.Before his tenure as Liquor Commission director, Rupe served as a state prosecutor for nearly 10 years.Wednesday’s hearing took place on a mild fall day in a quiet courtroom in the federal courthouse on a quiet afternoon in Nebraska’s capital city. It contrasted with some of the details in the indictment, which highlight the seedy underworld of the capital city’s strip clubs.Mruz in the indictment related communications between Rupe and Brent Zywiec, where Zywiec describes pulling a gun during a brawl at The Office, when an unruly patron pulled a knife. Zywiec texted him a photo of a bloody hand lying on a pillow or cushion.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads