Last month I wrote about the slowdown in Las Vegas: the city has among the most hard-hit real estate markets in the country, and traffic is down as Americans travel less as they cope with high gas prices. Vacancies are up and room rates have fallen by more than 20%.

And yes, the city's brothels are reporting slower business, according to the MSNBC video below. Business is down as much as 25% at some locations, and some think it could get worse.

One of my favorite television shows is House Hunters -- if you're planning to buy a home and looking to learn more about the process, you should absolutely watch this show. You'll learn a lot.

I recently watched an episode that featured a middle-aged couple looking to buy a second home in Las Vegas, preferably a condo. They lived in Los Angeles and were enthusiastic about buying an "investment property" and the real estate agent was equally enthusiastic about Vegas' prospects. She had a commission to earn.

But as they looked at condos, there was just one problem. The units were nice and the locations seemed ideal, but the sounds of new construction were a major turn-off. Who wants to wake up to that? But every condo they looked at suffered from that problem.

Of course the show was taped in 2005 -- the height of the Vegas real estate bubble that has been crashing lately -- so it's easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, but it's interesting nevertheless: did any of these people looking at condos hear the construction and wonder "Will demand keep up with the rapid building? If there's a glut of condos available, won't people want the fancy new ones instead of this old one?"

But they never thought of that. No one ever suggested that all the new construction could be anything but good, amazing given that a huge increase in supply would tend to drive down prices, which is exactly what ended up happening.

Another thing: all the discussion about an "investment property" aside, I never heard any mention of rental rates, vacancy rates, cap rates, etc. I think they were planning to buy the unit as a second home, calling it an investment property. But remember the golden rule of real estate investing: if you aren't generating income, you aren't investing. You're speculating (i.e. hoping) that rising prices will bail you out of a bad investment.

A few years ago, a bunch of female colleagues asked me to join them for a jaunt to Las Vegas. As I had never been to Vegas, wasn't dating anyone, and wasn't totally and completely stupid, I jumped at the chance. Between cheap Spring Break flights and shared hotel rooms, the trip didn't really cost all that much, and we had a lot of fun.

Julie (one of the women I went with) steadfastly refused to marry and subsequently divorce me (I was hoping to get the first marriage out of the way, but, alas...). Instead of tying the knot, I blew a little bit of money on the slot machines, played a couple of hands of blackjack, and ended up more or less breaking even.

For me, though, the real draw of Vegas was its outrageousness -- the insanely huge casinos, the ridiculous displays of wealth, and the surprisingly cheap prime rib. While gambling is all well and good, you can't really see the town from a seat at a gaming table. And I didn't just see the town, I painted it red, with the style and panache that only an impoverished college student can muster!

Listeners tuning to oldies radio stations aren't the only ones who are California Dreamin'. The 1965 Mama's and Papa's song could also be an anthem for car thieves.

In 2007, four out of the top 10 regions for car theft were in the Golden State, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). This year Modesto, California topped the list, knocking the area of Las Vegas and Paradise, Nevada, to second place in the ranking of the most vehicle offenses per 1,000 residents.

The auto theft problem in Modesto has police stumped. The city of 208,107 is at the epicenter of the nation's subprime mortgage crisis, but the problems predate that, according to Sgt. Craig Gundlach, a department spokesman. "If we knew, then we wouldn't be up there at the top," he said, adding that the city is a "high intensity area for methamphetamine (use)."

According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, one reason why car theft is rampant there is because car owners do not take the necessary precautions. "Most car thieves are amateurs who steal cars for transportation, i.e., 'joy riding,'" the department says on its web site. "The Las Vegas Valley is no different than any other large metropolitan area, but with its added 32 million-plus tourists annually, the problem can be magnified."

To be sure, plenty of other regions face problems with car theft -- many of them on the West Coast. Rounding out the NICB's list for top 10 metropolitan statistical areas for vehicle theft are San Diego/Carlsbad/San Marcos, California; Stockton, California; San Francisco/Oakland/Fremont, California; Laredo, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Phoenix/Mesa/Scottsdale, Arizona; Stockton, California; Yakima, Washington; and Tucson, Arizona (AOL Money & Finance has a slideshow of the top 20 regions).

I've always been a believer that if "you broke it, you bought it." If you cause someone to lose money, you should pay them. If you've incurred a bill, the business has a right to collect the money. But this kind of stuff can be taken a little too far. And The Westin Casuarina Hotel & Spa in Las Vegas has done exactly that.

Here's how the story goes. A bunch of people attended a four-day dental conference at the hotel in October. The conference was organized by the Coaching Center of Austin, a consulting group that reportedly ended up not paying about $50,000 owed to the hotel. But The Westin apparently found a handy solution. They'd just collect the money from those who attended the conference.

What? You heard it right. The hotel started charging the credit cards of attendees over $600 each, calling it a "pro-rated amount per attendee," according to the story. Their reasoning? The hotel's fine print says that guests can later have their credit cards charged for unpaid charges. Yet, guests say that they thought it meant their personal unpaid charges related to their rooms, not unpaid charges by the conference organizer.

And I'm pretty sure that's what we all believe when we sign up for a hotel room. That we'll be liable for our own personal unpaid charges, not those of a broke consultant who isn't paying their conference charges. What a crock!

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.