Terrence Lanni has been one of the gambling industry's most powerful players – and Kirk Kerkorian's main man in Vegas. His departure this afternoon came out of the blue and just happened to coincide with the WSJ checking into his academic credentials. Lanni says his decision to step down was a lifestyle choice (his wife lives in Pasadena). "I have thought long and hard about this. I came very close to making this decision a year ago," he said in an interview with the Journal. No connection with the credential issue. Er, okay. Thing is, there's a problem:

Officials at the University of Southern California -- responding to an inquiry from the Journal -- told the company that it had no record that Mr. Lanni had earned a master's degree in business administration from the school. A corporate biography of Mr. Lanni on MGM Mirage's Web site says he holds an MBA in finance from USC. The university contacted MGM Mirage on Wednesday following the Journal's inquiries about a recent discovery by Barry Minkow, a private fraud investigator in San Diego, of a discrepancy between Mr. Lanni's corporate biography and a database of college degrees accessible to private investigators. As recently as late Thursday, company officials said Mr. Lanni had earned the MBA degree. But USC disagrees. "No [MBA] degree was conferred," said James Grant, a USC spokesman, adding the school had completed a rigorous search of its records in response to the Journal's queries.

Lanni insists that he took a series of classes toward an MBA and was awarded an honorary degree from USC sometime in the 1970s. The USC spokesman says the last time the school handed out an MBA was in 1933.