Leaping Lizards!
A quick internet search of Las Vegas conferences/seminars/trainings/events/etc for Dec 2009 shows a huge amount of results, some on the possible dates in question, with space for 3000 attendees.
The harder ones to track down are the fly-by-night "get rich quick seminars." Wealth building, Rich Dad-Poor Dad, etc. are plentiful but difficult to track actual schedules with this amount of time removed from the dates being looked at.
Another thing that I learned doing this quick internet search is that for some of the more "legitimate" looking scams, if one person has paid the registration fee they can bring a guest for free.
May SK was invited to be a guest and this was what he was may have been excited and up-beat about. It might also be why his actions prior to that weekend were almost anxious in nature, perhaps he thought that this was his big break and he wanted to let AN know about it because there is some speculation that she may have been the "one that got away." But, if he thought he had a good job waiting for him and wanted to let AN know so that this might make him appear as if he was an up and comer with more to offer a prospetive wife, the impromptu trip starts to make some sense.
Many of these seminar scams are 1-3 days in length and as most of us know, they play to your emotions, letting it build so that at the end of the final day, they then hit you with the fee for investing or getting started and people are so reveved up they buy in. They've also been soothed into a false believe in the legitimacy of the seminar because they have received a lot of freebies including DVD, handouts, intro to training material to encourage the build up to the buy in.
With all of the individual scammers and the larger ones like the John Beck Free & Clear Real Estate Program or Rich Dad Poor Dad, it would take a great deal of work to track down all of the seminars that could have been scheduled during that weekend in December plus the sheer number of venues that Vegas has that can accommodate these seminars.
The good news is...if we could track down some of the most likely seminars that SK may have been lured too, Vegas has unrivaled surveillance systems and they keep them for years at a time to track players who maybe trying to scam the house, document crimes, etc.
If we could pursue this, we might be able to narrow down the venue/Casino and could encourage a review of their cctv footage. Lots of work, a bit of a long shot, but might pay off.
Another thought is that several of my probationers tried to or actually did go to Sacramento to sell security systems, all for the same company, that hired you on the spot, regardless of work history, criminal record, etc.
The company promised that if you could relocate to Sacramento at your own expense, that you could sell their product and that the market in Sacramento was hot, claiming that some of their sales reps were making $10,000 or more a month. It was strictly commision base. I checked back on my case files and the probationers that did go to Sacramento went in Fall/Winter of 2009-2010 after having attended a training seminar that this company conducted.
The way they hired people was you just showed up to their offices, you handed them your resume, if you had ever had a job or anything like a sales job, you then had a "mock" interview, then they would tell you at the end of the interview that you were "hired."
It sounded like they put on a good show of making it appear as though they were discerning on who they would hire, but anyone who didn't look like they were a homeless person would get hired. If you were well groomed, you got the "you're exactly the type of person we're looking for" encouragement speech followed by a relatively believable dissertation about how successful "someone with your talents" will be.
They then instructed you to come to their 2 day training for all new employees, 20-60 people at a time. They explained that due to the high demand and how hot the Sacramento market was, they were hiring only the best people and had a goal of getting them all trained and out making money ASAP, thus explaining away why there were such a high number of people being trained all at once.
The beauty of it, is that it required an exceedingly small investment up front from the employees. Just a $200 deposit for the briefcase that contained an operating demo of the security system. It wasn't strictly cold-calling, but luke warm leads that the sales reps would respond to. The "sales reps" were also sharing apartments as roommates as part of the company's temporary "relocation plan." All the more enticing.
Though some of my probationers did make money from this company, and it wasn't exactly a scam by the strictest of definitions, it was shady and it didn't deliver as promised. But if you weren't making the money you thought you would be, it was attributed to you "just need to hang in there are try harder."
All of their "sales reps" were considered to be "independent contractors" so they were not actually employed by the company and the company didn't have to withhold taxes, pay worker's comp, offer health insurance, and so forth. But, the company took a huge chunk of the person's earnings...up to 40% to cover their operating costs. The idea of being an independent contractor is sometimes presented under the guise of "being in business for yourself, being your own boss, setting your own hours" and so forth.
If SK thought that he had been hired by a business like this or this exact business, that would explain the comment about Sacramento, the trip to see AN to tell her maybe let her know that he had more to offer and find out if she would be interested in dating him when he returned after he had accummulated some success/money, and then the trip back to St.G and onto Henderson for the actual "training event." He might have believed that if he was able to make $10k the first month, that he could pay the landlord and also prove to his family that he was successful.