Tony Spilotro wasn’t the type to sit back and wait for things to happen. He was always on the lookout for opportunities to expand his horizons.

By 1975, Tony’s Las Vegas entourage had increased dramatically, with the arrival of his brother John and an influx of bookies, loansharks, burglars, and other heavies from Chicago. He decided to switch his base of operations to the Dunes, another Strip hotel-casino financed with Teamster money. This time he didn’t open a shop; he used the card room of the casino as his office. Tony carried around a wad of money so he could accommodate those in need of loans. When he wasn’t conducting business, he enjoyed fleecing suckers at the poker table or trying his hand at sports betting.

Major Riddle and Morris Shenker owned the Dunes. Riddle was one of Spilotro’s favorite victims in the poker games. Tony and a couple of his cronies engaged in a “three-pluck-one” scam, where Riddle or some other naïve gambler sometimes lost thousands of dollars at a sitting. The Ant also had things his way when it came to sports wagering. Betting through illegal bookies, Tony made his picks, but didn’t tender any cash. If he won, he expected to be paid. If he lost, no money changed hands. The bookies had little choice but to take their lumps. As one retired FBI agent told me: “Who in the hell was going to refuse Tony’s action, or try to collect from him?”

Tony’s presence at the Dunes didn’t escape the attention of the Gaming Control Board. Their first effort to address the problem was by privately notifying Riddle and Shenker. The owners talked things over with Tony and he agreed to make himself scarce. The very next night, brother John Spilotro showed up in the card room. Answering phone pages as John Adams, he conducted business in Tony’s stead. In a few weeks, Tony himself returned and it was back to business as usual.

The following year, the gaming regulators made another, more formal, effort to get Spilotro out of the casino. Riddle and Shenker were summoned to testify at a private hearing as to why Tony was being allowed to operate out of their card room.

Appearing first, Riddle said that until recently he didn’t even know who Spilotro was; much less that he had Mafia connections. He claimed to have known Spilotro only as Tony and had never heard his last name. After learning Spilotro’s identity, he asked Tony if he was lending money and using the Dunes as an office. Spilotro admitted making loans, but said they were interest-free. Riddle accepted that explanation as the truth. He concluded that Spilotro was “simply a good-hearted person.” Riddle added, “I wouldn’t want to talk to anybody nicer than Tony.”

Next up was Morris Shenker. Not some run-of-the-mill novice when it came to legal proceedings, Shenker was a highly successful criminal defense attorney. He represented many of the nation’s top criminals before the Kefauver Committee in the 1950s and was Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa’s chief defense lawyer in the ´60s.

Like Riddle, Shenker claimed to have been ignorant of Spilotro’s identity until recently. Now that he’d been made aware of whom Tony was and his criminal associations, he vowed to take immediate action to remove the undesirable gangster from the Dunes.

But Tony wasn’t waiting around to be ousted. He’d already found greener pastures.

Moving On Up

The Las Vegas Country Club and Estates, an exclusive walled community located near the Strip with guard posts at the entrance, was considered the place to belong in Las Vegas. Founded by former Cleveland bootlegger Moe Dalitz, its members included bankers, lawyers, doctors, and casino bosses. Initially, Tony and his associates gained access to the club through the memberships of his friends, such as Lefty Rosenthal. Since only members could sign for food, drinks, and tennis and golf fees, this arrangement proved awkward. Tony decided the only thing to do was join the club himself. He tried, but the membership committee rejected his application in June 1976.

Spilotro was furious. He complained to Rosenthal and others, demanding reconsideration. Under pressure, the membership committee realized the error of its ways and admitted the Ant. He was soon holding court in the card room, conducting meetings in the dining room, and playing gin rummy with some of the town’s leading citizens. His wife Nancy learned to play tennis and became a regular on the courts. Even with all this going for him, it wasn’t long before Tony found an even better deal.

Next: The Spilotro Era – Part V

By Denny Griffin

Continued from: The Spilotro Era in Vegas - Part I

By Denny Griffin

In Part I we talked about Bugsy Siegel. Another person that played a major role in Sin City’s development was Moe Dalitz. While Bugsy Siegel gets credit for opening the first mob-owned casino, Dalitz introduced something possibly even more important: Teamster money.

The Early Years – Part II

Not long after Bugsy’s permanent departure from the Las Vegas scene, another key player arrived in town.

Morris “Moe” Dalitz was born in Boston in 1899. His father, Barney, operated a laundry and taught Moe the business as he was growing up. The family moved to Michigan where Barney opened Varsity Laundry in Ann Arbor, catering to University of Michigan students.

As time went by, Moe opened a string of his own laundries in Michigan before branching out to Cleveland in the 1930s. Once there, he expanded his earning potential by getting involved in the bootlegging business and becoming associated with the Mayfield Road Gang. By the time prohibition ended, Dalitz had opened several illegal gambling joints. His two careers — legitimate business owner and criminal bootlegger and casino operator — would combine to lead him to Las Vegas.

In the first instance, Moe’s laundry business resulted in his developing a close relationship with a very important man: Jimmy Hoffa. This happened in 1949, when the Detroit Teamsters local demanded a five-day work week for laundry drivers. Laundry owners, including Dalitz, strongly opposed the union’s position. Negotiations reached an impasse, with each side unwilling to budge.

Dalitz, the shrewd businessman, saw a way around the issue. He had the owner representatives bypass the local’s negotiator, Isaac Litwak, and reach out directly to its former business agent and current leader of the Detroit Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa. Agents of the laundry owners asked what it would take for Hoffa to intervene on behalf of the owners. Hoffa’s man said $25,000 would do the trick. The owners agreed. Neither side bothered to inform Litwak of the developments.

During a subsequent bargaining session, Litwak was confident he had the owners on the ropes. Late in that meeting the door opened and in walked Jimmy Hoffa. He told the group there would be no strike and he wanted the contract signed on the owners’ terms, with no five-day work-week provision. The stunned Litwak had no choice but to comply.

In the great scheme of things, this transaction wasn’t a particularly big deal. But it did open the door for something much bigger ten years later: multi-million-dollar loans from the Teamster Pension Fund to finance the mob-controlled casinos of Las Vegas.

Also in 1949, Moe Dalitz found a business opportunity in Vegas similar to Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo experience. Another Strip hotel and casino construction project had been abandoned and was available to anyone who could come up with the right money. Dalitz, casino-savvy from running his own illegal businesses, and three of his cronies from Cleveland raised the funds and purchased the Desert Inn. The Strip’s fourth resort opened on April 24, 1950.

The 1950s saw seven more casinos added to the Strip, all allegedly backed by mob money from the Midwest and East Coast. The Sands and Sahara opened in 1952, the Riviera and Dunes in 1955, the Hacienda in 1956, the Tropicana in 1957, and the Stardust in 1958. One existing property changed names when the Last Frontier became the New Frontier in 1955. During that same time period the population of the Valley grew from 45,000 to 124,000.

The '50s also saw an increase in the number of celebrity weddings held in Las Vegas. Among the more notable, Rita Hayworth and Dick Haymes were wed in 1953, Kirk Douglas and Ann Buydens in 1954, Joan Crawford and Alfred Steele in 1955, Carol Channing and Charles Lowe in 1956, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme in 1957, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and David Janssen and Ellie Graham exchanged vows in 1958.

Moe Dalitz and Jimmy Hoffa combined to bring the first installment of Teamster Pension Fund money into Las Vegas in 1959. But the $1 million loan didn’t help to build a hotel and casino. It financed the Dalitz-controlled Sunrise Hospital.

To help assure that the new medical facility would have some business, Hoffa worked out a deal between his union members, their employers, and Sunrise for the provision of medical treatment. The employers agreed to pay $6.50 per month for each union employee into a fund that paid the provider of the medical services; Sunrise Hospital. In turn, the hospital promised to set five beds aside specifically for union members and provide basic medical care.

After this successful beginning, more Teamster money found its way to Vegas in the 1960s and beyond. The millions of dollars in loans were used to build or expand casinos, shopping malls, and golf courses. This was at a time when most lending institutions wanted nothing to do with entrepreneurs from notorious Sin City.

In 1966, the Aladdin and Caesars Palace joined the growing number of Strip resorts. The Teamster-financed Circus Circus opened in 1968.

More big-name celebrity weddings took place in Vegas in the ´60s. Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker were married at the Dunes in 1962 and Betty White and Allen Ludden said their vows at the Sands in 1963. The Dunes hosted its second big marriage of the decade when Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim tied the knot in 1965. The next year, Xavier Cugat and Charo were hitched at Caesars Palace. Two mega-nuptials occurred in 1967, between Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin, and Ann Margret and Roger Smith at the Riviera. Wayne Newton and Elaine Okamura were wed at the Flamingo in 1968. By the end of the decade, the valley’s population had reached 273,000, more than doubling in ten years.

As the years passed, Moe Dalitz continued to use his friendship with Jimmy Hoffa to facilitate loans sought by Las Vegas businesses. In spite of his power, Dalitz kept a low profile, remaining an intensely private man. He became heavily involved in charity work and in 1976 was named Humanitarian of the Year by the American Cancer Research Center and Hospital. In 1982 he received the Torch of Liberty Award by the Anti-Defamation League. Moe Dalitz died in 1989 of natural causes.

As the ´60s came to a close, Las Vegas was booming. It was an “open town” for organized-crime families nationwide, many of which had already established their presence. But one of them held a position of dominance — Chicago.

By Denny Griffin

Las Vegas didn’t begin as a mob-controlled town; it grew into it. The start of its coming under the influence of organized crime is generally attributed to Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s arrival on the scene. Following is a brief look at how Vegas came into being and Bugsy’s impact on its direction.

The Early Years – Part I

In 1829, an 18-year-old Mexican scout for the Antonio Armijo Trading Caravan was tasked with finding a new trade route from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Los Angeles. In his search he came upon an oasis in the desert. With abundant wild grasses and an ample water supply, it was a perfect place for the traders to stop and rest during their arduous journey. His discovery was named Las Vegas — The Meadows, but knowledge of its existence remained primarily limited to the Mexicans and the indigenous Paiute population until explorer John Fremont put it on the map in 1844.

In 1855, Brigham Young ordered 30 missionaries to the Valley to build a fort and teach the Paiutes farming techniques. The Paiutes rejected the Mormon’s offerings and the fort was abandoned in 1858. The area remained sparsely settled until the arrival of the railroad.

In the summer of 1904, work on the first railroad grade into Las Vegas began. Thanks to the water supply, a town sprouted, consisting of saloons, stores, and boarding houses to accommodate the railroad workers. On May 15, 1905, the railroad auctioned off 1,200 lots in a 40-block area surrounding downtown, and Las Vegas was established as an unincorporated city. In 1909, it became the county seat for the new Clark County.

Railroaders were a hard drinking rough-and-tumble lot. The main problem the lawmen in those early days had to confront was dealing with the drunks and their drinking-related fights.

In 1910, Nevada passed an anti-gambling law so strict that it was illegal to even follow the western custom of flipping a coin for the price of a drink. Within weeks, however, underground gambling began to flourish.

On March 16, 1911, Las Vegas incorporated, covering an area of approximately twenty square miles. The city’s population was about 800. At the same time, Clark County had 3,321 residents.

By 1930, the population of Las Vegas had reached 5,165. Shortly thereafter, three events occurred that permanently altered the face of Las Vegas, and Clark County, and Nevada. As a side effect, they also lead to the initiation of Las Vegas Valley as a cash cow for organized crime families across the country.

First, on March 19, 1931, gambling was legalized in Nevada. A month later, six gaming licenses were issued in Las Vegas, the first going to Stocker’s Northern Club on Fremont Street.

Second, state divorce laws were liberalized. With easier residency requirements, “quickie” divorces could be attained in only six weeks. Short-term residents flocked to Nevada. In Las Vegas, many of them stayed at dude ranches, the forerunners of the sprawling Strip hotels of today.

And third, construction began on Hoover Dam, generating a population boom and boosting the Valley’s economy, which was in the grip of the Great Depression.

Small-town Las Vegas would soon be on its way to becoming the entertainment and gambling capital of the world. But the influx of people and money would later earn Vegas another name: Sin City.

Benjamin Siegel

Ten years later, the first Strip casino appeared when the El Rancho Vegas, opened on April 3, 1941. The Last Frontier followed on October 30, 1942. The next Strip property to arrive on the scene was the one that is acknowledged as the first of those backed substantially by mob money: Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo in 1946.

Benjamin Siegel was born in Brooklyn in 1905. While growing up he developed a reputation for having a vicious temper, which earned him the nickname of “Bugsy.” As a teenager in New York, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky and, with a group of other young tough guys, operated the Bug and Meyer Mob. Eventually, they teamed up with future New York City crime boss Charlie “Lucky” Luciano. In spite of alleged involvement in crimes ranging from bootlegging to murder, Siegel was able to avoid being convicted of any serious charges.

Bugsy had the looks of a Hollywood leading man and made frequent trips from New York to Los Angeles. He enjoyed the company of famous entertainers, many of whom liked the idea of socializing with the increasingly powerful gangster. His infatuation with Hollywood led him to move west to help establish the mob- controlled Trans-America wire service to compete with the Continental Press Service, which provided bookmakers with the results of horse races from across the country.

In that regard, Siegel made an appearance in Las Vegas in 1942. His enterprise was legal in Nevada, where all potential clients held county licenses. He signed up a number of subscribers to the service, each paying a hefty fee. It’s estimated that Siegel’s income from the Las Vegas bookies was about $25,000 per month. During this brief visit, Siegel came to appreciate the tremendous earning potential of the Las Vegas casinos.

In early 1946 Siegel saw an opportunity to establish himself in the Las Vegas gambling business. A Hollywood nightclub owner named Billy Wilkerson had attempted to build a casino in Vegas called the Flamingo. The effort faltered and the partially completed resort was sitting idle. Bugsy packed his clothes and money and headed back to Vegas to take over the Flamingo project. He was confident that if his personal finances weren’t enough to finish the job, his hoodlum friends could be convinced to invest in his dream: building the first truly posh hotel and casino in the Las Vegas desert.

Bugsy hired the Del Webb Construction Company of Phoenix to complete the Flamingo. According to the book The Green Felt Jungle, the cost had initially been estimated at $1.5 million, but it ballooned to $6 million. The many reasons cited for the huge cost overrun included Siegel’s insistence that the Flamingo be built like a fortress, constructed of steel and concrete where less expensive materials would have sufficed. He also wanted the best in furnishings, importing wood and marble at exorbitant costs. Each guest room even had its own sewer line, adding $1 million to the bill.

So soon after the end of World War II, not all of the supplies Siegel ordered Webb to use were readily available; such circumstances proved to be only minor annoyances to Bugsy, who simply turned to the black market for his needs. He got whatever he wanted, but had to pay outrageous prices. To make matters worse, the illegal suppliers sometimes delivered a load of expensive merchandise during the day, and then returned at night to steal it back. Finally, they showed up at the site the next morning to sell Siegel the same items all over again.

The black marketeers weren’t deterred from their larcenous actions by Bugsy’s fearsome reputation, and Las Vegas police officer Hiram Powell was equally unimpressed with the gangster. The bronco buster from Texas arrived in Vegas in 1941 to compete in a rodeo and never left. He was hired as a cop in 1942 and recalled his first encounter with Siegel in a 2002 interview.

“It was a winter morning in the mid-1940s. I pulled Siegel over for a traffic violation at East Charleston and Fifth Street [now Las Vegas Boulevard]. When he handed me his license there was a hundred dollar bill folded up with it. That was a lot of money at the time, but I let the bill drop to the ground. The last I saw of it, it was blowing down Charleston. I gave Siegel his ticket and let him go. Back then he had a reputation as a tough guy, but as far as I was concerned he was just another punk.”

Bugsy may have been just another thug to Powell, but the cop soon learned he was a well-connected one.

“About an hour after I stopped Siegel, I got a radio message to return to the station. The chief asked me what had happened between Siegel and me. I told him the story and then he fired me,” Powell recalled. The officer was reinstated a day later, but Siegel was never one of his favorite people.

Bugsy’s political clout, however, wasn’t able to help him when it came to his financial woes at the Flamingo. Quickly running out of his own estimated $1 million, he made numerous trips back to the Midwest and East Coast in search of additional funding. Over time, he was able to get his gangland associates to invest $3 million, but that still left him a couple million in the hole. Seeing the Flamingo project as a bottomless pit, Bugsy’s hoodlum friends cut off their largesse. Some even began to wonder whether Siegel was really just an incompetent businessman or if something more sinister was behind the burgeoning cost of the Flamingo. Was it possible that Bugsy had sticky fingers and was stealing from his friends? Coming under that type of suspicion from his investment partners didn’t bode well for the would-be gambling tycoon, neither financially nor physically.

In June of that year, an incident took place that convinced Siegel’s New York pals that his ego was growing as fast as the Flamingo’s debt. James Ragan, the owner of Continental Press Service, was gunned down in Chicago in an attempted hit. Surprisingly, the man survived the attack and was recovering in a hospital six weeks later when he suddenly died. An autopsy revealed that Ragan had enough mercury in his body to kill him twice over. In spite of an around-the-clock police guard, the Chicago Outfit had apparently found a way to spike the dead man’s soft drinks with the poison. The Chicago people quickly took over Continental Press, eliminating the need for the mob-owned Trans-America. Still, Bugsy needed his income from the wire service and figured his colleagues liked the extra cash, too. He also needed more money for the Flamingo. He flew to New York to discuss the situation with the board of directors of the Combination.

In a stunning presentation, Siegel told some of the most dangerous men in America that if they wanted Trans-America to stay in business, they’d have to give him $2 million, which happened to be the amount he owed Del Webb. That was the deal, take it or leave it. With that he walked out, leaving a room full of gangsters looking at each other in open-mouthed amazement.

Back in Las Vegas, Siegel was like a man possessed in trying to get the Flamingo ready for opening. He ordered everyone on twelve-hour shifts and seven-day work weeks. With the Vegas valley’s population at around a meager 40,000, additional craftsmen were flown in from Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City to supplement the local labor pool. Construction continued to be plagued by design flaws and poor workmanship.

Trouble was also brewing in Los Angeles, where the bookies were looking for relief from being forced to pay fees to both Chicago’s Continental Press Service and the still-operating Trans-America. They didn’t like it, but knew it was dangerous to cease doing business with either one. Siegel told them to go to hell. As the dissatisfaction grew, his attitude placed the local people running Trans-America in an increasingly tough spot.

Though unfinished, the Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946. The casino, lounge, theater, and restaurant were ready to go, and that was enough for Bugsy. Dressed in a white tie and swallowtail coat, his Beverly Hills girlfriend Virginia Hill by his side, the handsome gangster was ready for his big night. Unfortunately, it proved to be a disaster, a flop that was not well-received back east.

The day started out bad when planes Siegel had hired to bring in specially invited guests from Los Angeles were grounded due to poor flying weather in California. Even so, some entertainers and celebrities did make it to the Flamingo that night. They included Jimmy Durante, performing the leadoff act, followed later by the Xavier Cugat Band. Actors George Sanders and George Raft also appeared.

Siegel’s run of bad luck continued in the casino: It lost money. As word of the losses made their way to Bugsy during the evening, he became irate. He reportedly took his anger out on some of the guests, becoming verbally abusive and throwing out at least one family.

Two weeks later, as the losing streak continued, Bugsy closed the Flamingo’s doors. He decided to wait for the hotel to be finished to reopen, hopefully with better results.

As Siegel cooled his heels waiting for his next chance at gambling stardom, he received disturbing news from New York. Lucky Luciano, who had been exiled to Italy as part of a deal he made with the government to get out of prison after a racketeering conviction, had convened a meeting of the Combination in Havana and Bugsy wasn’t on the list of invitees. In Siegel’s world, a snub like that could bode ill for the person being excluded.

Sensing that he might be in trouble, Bugsy flew to Havana on his own to see Luciano. Meeting in the headman’s hotel suite, the talk eventually turned to the Flamingo. Siegel sang its praises, but Lucky was unimpressed with his underling’s descriptive phrases of glitz and glamour. He was more interested in where his partner’s $3 million investment stood. Siegel pleaded for more time, a year, to get the Flamingo open again and turn it into the revenue producer he was sure it could be.

Luciano dismissed Siegel with the admonishment that he should go back to Vegas and behave himself. The boss also ordered him to give up the wire service and let the Chicago Mob have the operation to itself. With that, the famous Siegel temper kicked into high gear. In no uncertain terms, Bugsy told Lucky what he could do with his orders, and then stormed out of the meeting.

Few if any men talked to Lucky Luciano the way Siegel had and lived very long to tell about it. Bugsy would be no exception.

The Flamingo reopened on March 27, 1947. For the first three weeks it continued to operate in the red, and then things began to turn around. In May it was $300,000 in the black. Bugsy had been apprehensive after his return from Havana, but the positive financial reports calmed him down. His vision was finally being realized. The Flamingo was on its way to becoming the gold mine he’d predicted. He was sure Lucky and the others would be pleased they had listened to him. In fact, the Flamingo’s success was a case of too little, too late for Siegel.

On the night of June 20, a now-confident Siegel was relaxing in the living room of Virginia Hill’s mansion in Beverly Hills. Conveniently for her, she was away on vacation in Paris, but his trusted friend Al Smiley was with him. Suddenly, rifle shots rang out from outside the living-room window. Two slugs struck Siegel in the face. One of them ejected his left eye, which was found on the floor some 15 feet away from his body. Benjamin Siegel had been murdered at the age of 41. Bugsy was dead, but Las Vegas was just coming to life.

Next: The Early Years – Part II

By Denny Griffin

The history of organized crime in Chicago is rife with the names of some of the most infamous gangsters ever to make a dishonest dollar in this country. They include the likes of “Big Jim” Colosimo, Johnny Torrio, Sam Giancana, Frank Nitti, and the legendary Al Capone.

For our purposes we’re going to focus on two lesser-known men, men who were young up-and-comers in the Chicago Mob during the days of Capone. These were guys who rose to power in the ´50s and remained there through much of the ´80s. They were in the hierarchy when a young enforcer named Tony Spilotro became a made man in the Outfit. And during the fifteen years Tony was in Las Vegas, they were his superiors.

Tony Accardo

Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo was born in Chicago’s Little Sicily on April 28, 1906. At the age of five he enrolled in grade school, but by the time Accardo was 14 he’d become disenchanted with the education system. So had his parents, who, like many others of that era, filed a delayed birth-record affidavit, stating that their son had actually been born in 1904. The additional two years allowed Tony to drop out of school and begin working.

Accardo had several minor brushes with the law in his youth — among them a 1922 arrest for a motor-vehicle violation and a 1923 charge in conjunction with an incident at a pool hall where organized-crime figures were known to hang out — but he never spent a single night in jail. Around this time the teenage Accardo joined the Circus Café Gang, named for its headquarters, the Circus Café on North Avenue. Among his fellow gang members was James Vincenzo De Mora, also known as Vincent Gibardi. De Mora would later make his mark as Machine Gun Jack McGurn. Under that name he became one of Al Capone’s most trusted hit men and was the reputed planner of the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

By 1926, the Capone organization was expanding rapidly and Big Al needed more soldiers for his army. McGurn, having experienced Accardo’s criminal abilities first hand as a member of the Circus Café Gang, recommended his friend to Capone as a possible recruit. Tony had already participated in nearly every racket and was a prime candidate for advancement. So it was that Accardo graduated from the street gangs of Chicago to Scar Face Al’s powerful Outfit. He was brought before Capone at the Metropole Hotel on Michigan Avenue and, grasping the hand of his sponsor, Machine Gun Jack, swore the oath of Omerta. Having taken the mob’s vow of silence, the 20-year-old Accardo became a made man in the Chicago Outfit.

Tony was one of Capone’s bodyguards on September 20, 1926, when eleven cars occupied by members of Bugs Moran’s rival North Side Gang attacked Capone’s Cicero headquarters, the Hawthorne Inn. Thousands of machine-gun rounds poured into the building. As soon as the bullets started to fly, Accardo pulled Al to the floor and lay on top of him to shield his boss from the onslaught. At the conclusion of the assault a couple of bystanders and several minor gangsters had been wounded, but miraculously, no one was killed.

Tony’s actions that day earned him a position as one of Capone’s regular protectors, and he soon began taking on more important assignments for the Outfit. He allegedly earned his nickname by smashing the skulls of two men with a baseball bat; when Jack McGurn told Capone about the beating, the boss was impressed and said, “This boy is a real Joe Batters.” The name stuck, and from that point on Tony was known as Joe Batters to his criminal colleagues.

Accardo also worked closely with Capone’s other top assassins; McGurn, Albert Anselmi, and John Scalise. It’s believed the four went to New York City in 1928 to kill Capone’s friend-turned-enemy, Frankie Yale, who was gunned down in Brooklyn. It marked the first time a Thompson submachine gun was used in a gang-related hit in the Big Apple.

Accardo continued to do the heavy work into the '30s. When the Chicago Crime Commission released its first “Public Enemies” list in 1931, Tony came in at number seven.

After Capone went to prison in 1931 for income-tax evasion, Joe Batters moved on to do the bidding of Al’s successor, Frank Nitti. In 1933, the new boss appointed Accardo as capo (captain) of a street crew, in command of a dozen or so soldiers. The promotion made Tony one of the top twelve members of the Chicago Mob.

In the early1940s, Accardo’s career took another giant step forward when many of his superiors were implicated in what was known as the Hollywood Extortion Case. As the men above them went to jail, Tony and others moved up the ladder. Eventually, two gangsters were in contention for the top spot: Tony Accardo and Dago Lawrence Mangano. Before the issue could be settled by a vote, the unfortunate Mangano was murdered. Unidentified assailants in a passing car fired shotguns and .45 pistols at him, riddling his body with more than 200 shotgun pellets and five 45-caliber bullets. With his competition gone, Accardo became the number-one man in the Chicago Outfit in 1945.

In 1946, Accardo’s people approached James Ragan, the owner of the Continental Press wire service that provided racing results to bookies, and offered to buy him out. It was an offer Ragan felt he could refuse, and he turned them down. To people with Accardo’s mindset, that was bad enough. But Ragan compounded his sin by bringing the Outfit’s proposal to the attention of law enforcement. Shortly thereafter he was gunned down on State Street in Chicago, and then poisoned while recovering in the hospital. Ragan’s body had barely assumed room temperature before the Outfit had control of Continental Press.

In 1950, the crime commission officially recognized Accardo as the boss of Chicago’s crime syndicate. However, his reign was cut short in 1957 when an IRS investigation forced him to step down and turn control of the Outfit over to Sam Giancana. At Giancana’s request, Tony agreed to stay on in an advisory capacity. Most law enforcement personnel believe that Accardo was actually the brains behind the Outfit for the next several years, keeping a low profile behind a series of “bosses.” One such figurehead was another career criminal, Joseph Aiuppa, who ascended to the throne of the Chicago mob in 1971.

Joe Aiuppa

Joseph John Aiuppa was born on December 1, 1907, in Melrose Park, Illinois. According to a 1958 FBI report, an examination of Aiuppa’s Selective Service questionnaire submitted in 1940 showed that he only attended school until the third grade. Aiuppa’s record from the Federal Penitentiary in Terra Haute, Indiana, from which he was released on March 3, 1958, after serving a year and a day for an unspecified offense, stated that he left school in 1918, at 11 years of age.

After working for the Alming Greenhouse in 1922 and as a driver for the Midwest Cartage Company in 1925, Aiuppa purchased the Turf Lounge in Cicero, Illinois, in 1930. That same year he also became a partner in the Taylor Company, which manufactured gambling equipment.

The same FBI report indicates that Aiuppa was connected with the John Dillinger and Alvin Karpis gangs in the early 1930s. In 1935, he joined the Capone Outfit, then being run by Frank Nitti, as a muscleman and gunner. He went on to take control of the Outfit’s criminal activities in Cicero and the western suburbs of Chicago. In 1958, Aiuppa was recognized as the boss of the “strip,” a row of illegal gambling and strip joints located in Cicero.

In the mid-1950s, when the Senate’s McClellan Committee investigated organized-crime’s infiltration of labor unions, Joe Aiuppa was summoned. When he appeared to testify, the gangster exercised his Fifth Amendment rights 56 times.

The FBI document concludes with this warning: SUBJECT IS KNOWN TO CARRY GUNS AND HAS ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED MURDER IN THE PAST AND SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS.

In 1962, Joe Aiuppa earned the moniker “Doves” when he was arrested upon returning from a hunting trip in Kansas. Some 500 dead birds, all doves, were found in his possession, far exceeding the 24-bird limit.

Although Doves was vicious and loyal, he wasn’t considered especially bright or articulate. He rose through the ranks to become one of the top three men in the Outfit, but didn’t advance further for several years. His opportunity to move to the top came in 1971, when the current boss, Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio, was convicted of bank fraud. Backed by Tony Accardo, Joe Aiuppa was picked to fill the resulting vacancy.

So, in 1971, the two most powerful men in the Chicago Outfit were Joe Aiuppa and the behind-the-scenes “real boss,” Tony Accardo. Between them, the pair had only about 12 years of formal education, but nearly 90 years of criminal experience.

By Denny Griffin

While FBI agents and prosecutors from several offices participated in the investigations that brought down the mobsters and ended organized-crime’s hidden control over the Las Vegas casinos, personnel assigned to Sin City itself played a major role, albeit with one rather embarrassing moment.

The agents were confident that casino money was leaving Vegas illegally and ending up in Chicago, but they needed to prove it. The feds placed the Stardust and certain employees under physical surveillance. After months of investigation, they identified a pattern for one method of the skim involving Allen Glick’s Stardust and Fremont casinos. Their big break came in May 1981.

“One of the people we were watching was a guy named Bobby Stella,” former agent Emmett Michaels remembers. “One Tuesday afternoon my partner and I saw Stella leave the casino carrying a brown paper bag. We followed him to the parking lot of a hardware store on Maryland Parkway. This particular business had several locations in Las Vegas. A man identified as Phil Ponto, who was also employed by the Stardust, met Stella there. We found out later that Ponto was a ‘made man,’ affiliated with the Chicago Outfit. The two talked for a few minutes, then Stella passed the bag to Ponto and drove away. We stayed with Ponto and the bag.”

Ponto left the hardware store and drove to his home, located off Paradise Road near the Las Vegas Hilton. He went into his house, but emerged a few minutes later to retrieve the bag from his car. The surveillance continued, but there was no activity of importance the rest of the week. Things changed on Sunday, though.

“Ponto left his house around 7:30 that morning and placed the brown bag in the trunk of his car. For some reason he then moved the car across the street, and then went back inside,” Michaels continued. “He came back out a few minutes later and drove to church. After mass he drove around town for two hours with no apparent destination or purpose. He drove in and out of shopping malls and parking lots, but made no stops. Eventually, he pulled into another one of the hardware store locations; this one was on Tropicana. There he made contact with another man we weren’t familiar with. The new guy was wearing a suit and driving a rental car. They talked for a few minutes, and then Ponto handed the bag over to the new guy. We dropped Ponto and followed the stranger as he headed toward California on Interstate 15.”

With the agents watching, the guy in the rental car pulled into the second rest area outside of Las Vegas. There, he emptied bundles of money from the paper bag and placed them in special pockets sewn into the inside of his suit coat. When all the money had been transferred, the courier continued on to the Los Angeles airport where he caught a flight to Chicago. Agents from southern Nevada contacted the Chicago FBI office, asking agents there to pick up the surveillance of the subject when his flight arrived. After reaching Chicago, the man paid a visit to Outfit boss Joe Aiuppa, presumably to deliver the money. The courier was subsequently identified as Joseph Talerico, a Teamster official.

The agents had validated their theory of the skim, but they were a long way from having proof that would stand up in a court of law. Additional investigation indicated that money was also being skimmed from the Glick-controlled Fremont. The G-men believed the cash was taken from there on a monthly basis and delivered to Chicago. They developed a plan that called for the lawmen to get marked money into the skim pipeline. That meant agents would have to visit the Fremont the evening before a suspected shipment and do some gambling at the tables. Emmett Michaels, Charlie Parsons, and Michael Glass were tasked with getting the marked money into the system. In order to get a sufficient number of $100 bills into the drop boxes, they had to lose.

“I always had trouble losing when I was playing with government money,” Emmett Michaels recalled with a grin. “I played blackjack and often had some incredible runs of good luck. Sometimes I’d be so desperate to lose so that I’d have to buy more chips, that I’d play very recklessly. I’d throw even the most basic strategy out the window and call for a hit on a hand of nineteen. The dealer and the other players would look at me like I was crazy. But when I was on one of those streaks, I’d draw a damn deuce.”

Sometimes that kind of luck drew attention that wasn’t necessarily wanted. “There were times when I’d have stacks of chips piled up in front of me and the pit boss would come over and invite me to get some of the perks reserved for high rollers. It was usually a different story when I was spending a night out somewhere else and playing with my own money.”

In spite of his undesired prowess at the table, Michaels and his colleagues were able to drop enough money to accomplish what they wanted to do. Now that they knew their plan would work, the next step was to choose a time when the courier would be picked up and nabbed with the proof of the skim in his possession.


The Cookie Caper

In order to conduct electronic surveillance and searches and to make arrests, a judge had to approve and sign warrants. Some of the lawmen involved suspected that a certain judge might not be keeping the FBI’s operations a secret. They found it hard to believe, for example, that after bugging a table in a Stardust restaurant where the casino manager and assistant manager ate their meals every day, the only thing the men seemed to talk about was golf and women. But the government was required to follow the law and obtain the appropriate warrants and authorizations regardless of their suspicions.

“Harry,” a bail bondsman who came to Las Vegas in 1958, thinks he knows another method by which the bad guys found out about whose phones were being tapped. “I had a lot of juice with the phone company then. I know for a fact that a phone company employee regularly provided a list of numbers that were going to be tapped. I know because I received a copy of those lists myself. There were a lot of people who were very glad to get that kind of information.”

In addition to the phone company employee, Harry alleges there was an even better source for leaks. “There was a concern at the phone company that a phone might be tapped without having full legal authorization. So the company hired a lawyer to review all the paperwork for each tap. It turns out that the lawyer they retained worked out of Oscar Goodman’s office. Did you ever hear of anything so outrageous?”

Whether leaks resulted as Harry contends, were the work of an unscrupulous judge, or a combination of both, the bottom line is that the targets frequently knew ahead of time what the lawmen were planning.

Stan Hunterton, the former Strike Force attorney, was involved in preparing and submitting warrant applications to the court and helping plan some of the law enforcement activities, including when arrest warrants would be served.

“Joseph Talerico was always the courier for the skim money from the Argent casinos,” Hunterton recalled. “The routine was for him to come to Vegas and get the money. His contact here was Phil Ponto. This Ponto was what we called a sleeper. That’s someone with no criminal record, but Ponto was actually a ‘made man’ out of Chicago. One of the agents thought he recognized Ponto’s name from a book written by mobster-turned-informant Jimmy Fratiano. It turned out the agent was right, only in the book the name had been misspelled as Ponti.

“On January 3, 1982, not long after the indictments in the Tropicana case, the FBI was ready to arrest Talerico and Ponto when they exchanged the skim money. The day started off with a variation on the part of Ponto; he was carrying a box instead of a paper bag. I guess everybody assumed they’d decided to put the money in a box that day and didn’t think too much of it. But when the arrests were made, there was no money. The box contained cookies and wine.

“It was obvious that the bad guys had become aware of what was coming down. They had set us up, no doubt about it. I can smile about it all these years later, but I can assure you there was nothing funny about it at the time. An awful lot of time and effort had been spent getting to that point, and then it all went down the toilet. Needless to say, we were the butt of a lot of jokes in what became known as the cookie caper.”

Hunterton hauled Talerico and Ponto before a grand jury in 1983. Their first effort to avoid talking was to exercise their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Hunterton countered that by granting both men immunity. Even with no legal reason to remain silent, the pair still refused to testify. They were each sent to jail for contempt, but their lips remained sealed. They never did answer the government’s questions.

Strawman case agent Lynn Ferrin remembers the skimming investigations very well. “They were exciting times,” he said.

“When we were watching Ponto and Talerico, we made high-quality films of their meetings. On one occasion we brought in three lip readers to try to figure out what their conversations had been. One of the experts came very close to what we believed had been said; we would have loved to be able to use his interpretation in an affidavit. But the other two had differing opinions. With that lack of agreement, we ended up disregarding all of their versions. I even rented an apartment next to Ponto’s residence for a while during the surveillance. I spoke with him occasionally. He was very quiet … a real sleeper.”

Regarding the cookie caper, “It was a real bad day for us and me personally. If I’d been living in feudal Japan I’d have been required to fall on my sword. We’d been doing these Sunday surveillances on those guys for several months and everything had always gone like clockwork. But on that day the crooks were so confident and comfortable; we’d never seen anything like that before. We didn’t know for sure who, how, or why, but someone had obviously ratted us out to the mob. We were highly confident that the leak wasn’t from any of our people. Many of us believed that the federal judge who signed the order authorizing the electronic surveillance at the Stardust was the culprit. That was only speculation, but after that it seemed like the bad guys were aware of what we were doing. We had to call Washington and tell them what happened and that we couldn’t say for certain why it had gone wrong.

“Prior to that day I had been in favor of simply stopping Ponto one of those mornings and grabbing the bag from him. He certainly couldn’t have complained to the police and it would have given us the probable cause we were looking for. But headquarters and DOJ [Department of Justice] were afraid something would go wrong and never approved the snatch. If they had, it would have caused a lot of ripples in the various crime families. They may have even taken action against some of their own if they suspected them of being involved in stealing the skim.”

Another incident that Ferrin described as “sensitive” involved aerial surveillance. “Our plane developed some problems and was forced to land on the golf course at the Las Vegas Country Club. It turned out to not be a very discreet surveillance.” This scene was depicted in the movie Casino.

But other covert operations went very well. “Our guys did a tremendous job. Agents posing as maintenance men bugged a table in a restaurant at the Stardust in front of a room full of guests and casino employees. It was a good placement.”

After the cookie caper, the FBI changed tactics from covert to overt and went after the Stardust’s new owners, the Trans Sterling Corporation, openly. “We had enough information to start going over their records,” Ferrin said. “The Carl Thomas method of the skim primarily involved stealing from the count room. We found that another method of theft was also going on at the Stardust. This one involved the cashier’s cage.

“We looked at thousands of fill slips from the Stardust for the years that we knew the skim was going on. The fill slips were used when chips were removed from the cage to replenish the supplies at the gaming tables when they ran low on chips. The slips were required to have the signatures of four different casino employees. The money involved was about $20,000 per slip, and was presumed to reflect [casino] losses at the tables. We eventually discovered a pattern of forged signatures on the fill slips. That discovery led to the next step. We took handwriting samples from over two hundred Stardust employees and sent them to the FBI lab in Washington. Analysis revealed that the casino manager, Lou Salerno, was responsible for most of the forgeries.

“We got some good convictions in this phase. More important, though, through our investigation we were able to help the Nevada Gaming Control Board seize the Stardust. They revoked the licenses of the Trans Sterling people and fined them $1 million. The Stardust was eventually purchased by the Boyd Group, ending over a decade of mob control.”

That wasn’t the entire story for Lynn Ferrin, though. “The cage manager was a guy named Larry Carpenter. During the course of the investigation, he came to hate my guts. We lived in the same neighborhood and some mornings I’d come out to go to work and find that somebody had spit all over my car. I’d have to clean the car off before heading for the office. I suspected that Carpenter was responsible.

“Carpenter was gay and had full-blown AIDS. I thought maybe he was trying to infect me by having me come in contact with his body fluid and absorb it through my skin. Anyway, I stayed up all night to see if I could find out who was sliming my car. Around 5 a.m. I caught Carpenter coming around the corner on his bike. I could tell by the look on his face that he was the one. It never happened again after that morning. Carpenter later committed suicide, hanging himself when he went to jail.”

But there was more. “Lou DiMartini was a floorman at the Stardust. He claimed that during the investigation I caused him to suffer irreparable harm by asking his employer questions about him. He filed a $1 million civil suit against the government and me individually. It took seven years and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was decided in the government’s and my favor.”

How does Ferrin sum up the results of the Strawman investigations?

“I think that our investigation basically broke the back of the mob’s efforts to control the casinos in Las Vegas.”

That last statement seems to say it all.

By Denny Griffin

By Denny Griffin

From 1967 through 1982, Frank Rosenthal was a main player in the mob-controlled casinos of Las Vegas. He was the real power behind the Chicago Outfit’s front man Allen Glick, calling the shots from the Outfit’s headquarters at the Stardust Hotel & Casino. Rosenthal’s role in Sin City was dramatized in the 1995 movie Casino, in which actor Robert DeNiro played a character based on him. DeNiro’s co-star, Joe Pesci, portrayed Rosenthal’s buddy-turned-enemy, Chicago Outfit enforcer Tony Spilotro.

Although Lefty died of natural causes at his Florida home on October 13, his life had nearly been claimed by violence on at least two occasions during his Vegas heyday. He knew about one of those instances for sure, and may or may not have been aware of the other.

I’ll talk about those incidents shortly. But I’ll begin with a little background on Mr. Rosenthal.

Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal was born in Chicago in 1929, the son of a produce wholesaler. However, his father’s business didn’t appeal to young Frank, who, as he grew up, became more interested in what was going on at racetracks and ballparks than in the price of oranges. His innate talent for sports wagering caught the attention of professionals, and at the age of 19 Frank was offered a job as a clerk with Bill Kaplan of the Angel-Kaplan Sports Service in Chicago.

Lefty developed his oddsmaking skills with the help of Kaplan and some illegal bookmakers, and he did so quickly. He was a natural when it came to formulating betting lines on sporting events. As the years passed, Rosenthal gained a reputation as one of the premier handicappers in the country, and a top earner for the Chicago Outfit’s illegal gambling operations. Lefty was on top of his game, but fame and fortune had their price.

In 1960, Rosenthal’s name appeared on a series of lists of known gamblers produced by the Chicago Crime Commission, and he decided it was time to get out of town. The following year Frank moved to Miami, hoping to keep a lower profile.

But his reputation and known affiliation with organized-crime had preceded him to Florida. It wasn’t long before the numbers guru came to the attention of the Senate’s McClellan Committee on gambling and organized crime.

In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to look into illegal gambling activities. Lefty was called to testify before Senator McClellan’s committee. During his appearance, the bookmaker was less than candid, invoking the Fifth Amendment 37 times. A few months later, Rosenthal was among a large number of bookies and players arrested as part of an FBI crackdown on illegal gambling. The Miami police then got in on the act and were soon arresting the 32-year-old on a regular basis. The same cops who had initially turned a blind eye to his bookmaking activities were now putting on some big-time heat.

Things got worse for Rosenthal in 1962, when he was indicted for attempting to bribe a college basketball player. Although he maintained his innocence, he eventually pled no contest to the charges.

Despite his altercations with the law, Lefty persevered, and was still in Miami when his old buddy, Tony Spilotro, arrived in 1964. However, the FBI was keeping an eye on Rosenthal and the presence of Spilotro, a suspect in multiple murders in Chicago, only increased the gambler’s unwanted visibility and made his public life more difficult.

By 1966, Lefty had his fill of Miami and decided to move to a location where people in his line of work were treated with a little more respect. He settled on the booming gaming city in the desert, Las Vegas. Not long after his arrival in1967, he bought into the Rose Bowl Sports Book, later relocating on to the Strip and the mob-controlled Stardust. Lefty was moving up fast and his future looked bright. But in 1968, something happened that had a major impact on his life, and eventually the lives of several others. He fell in love.

Geri McGee moved from California to Las Vegas in the late 1950s. An attractive woman, she worked as a topless showgirl at the Tropicana and Dunes and as a cocktail waitress and hustler around the casinos. When Lefty met her it was love at first sight, at least on his part. He was in a hurry to tie the knot, but Geri had reservations about settling down. Her concerns faded when Lefty placed a hefty stash of cash and jewelry in a safe deposit box for her to keep if the marriage didn’t work out. The two were wed the following year.

Initially, everything went well for the newlyweds. Geri liked to spend money and her husband made plenty of it. But in 1970, Lefty was indicted again for bookmaking. This was the kind of thing that could jeopardize his eligibility to be licensed as a casino manager. His links to organized-crime figures posed a similar threat, since the Nevada Gaming Control Board was likely to deny licensing upon learning of such relationships.

Consequently, in 1971, as Lefty ascended to a manager’s position at the Stardust and struggled to keep his nose clean, it came as an unwelcome shock when his lifelong pal, the increasingly notorious Chicago gangster Tony Spilotro, moved into town.

Spilotro’s function in Vegas was to serve as Rosenthal’s muscle should anyone threaten the mob’s casino interests, including the lucrative cash-skimming operations that provided millions of dollars to the crime bosses. However, Tony was an ambitious guy and wasn’t satisfied to just hang around until Lefty needed his help. In short order he became involved in street crimes ranging from loansharking, robbery, burglary, and arson for hire, to murder.

As Tony’s power grew, he brought in other heavies to give him a hand. One of those was Frank Cullotta, an accomplished thief, arsonist and killer, from Chicago. Cullotta assembled a crew of crooks and murderers that became known as the Hole in the Wall Gang. Tony and his boys ruled the Las Vegas underworld.

As Tony’s influence expanded, so did his ego. He wanted even more power and sought Rosenthal’s support; but the bookie refused. That was a sure way to get on Spilotro’s bad side. And a rift developed between the two men. The situation became even more complicated when Tony began having an affair with Lefty’s wife, Geri. As time passed, Tony came to despise Lefty.

And Rosenthal was having other problems as well. He was locked in a battle with the Nevada Gaming Control Board over obtaining a gaming license. The Board was aware of his associations with organized crime figures—including Spilotro—and didn’t want to grant him a license. Lefty tried to bypass the licensing requirements by using various job titles, such as the Director of Food & Beverage and Entertainment Director. Those moves bought him some time, but would eventually be unsuccessful and end his career as one of the most powerful casino men in Las Vegas.

While this was going on, the relationship between Tony and Lefty deteriorated to a critical point. Tony told Cullotta that if not for Rosenthal’s standing with the mob bosses he’d “whack the Jew bastard.” However, as Lefty’s problems with the gaming regulators increased, his value to the Outfit decreased. Tony became more serious about getting rid of Lefty and began preparations.

Frank Cullotta recalls the conversation in which Tony informed him that he might want Rosenthal hit:

“I’ve got a job I might need to have done,” Tony said. “I want you to prepare for it. Make sure Larry [gang member Larry Neumann] is ready to go and get one other guy. Who else can you get?”

“What’s the job?”

“I might want to get rid of the Jew [Rosenthal].”

“For something like that, I can have Wayne [gang associate and killer Wayne Matecki] come in from Chicago.”

“I’m not sure right now I want to do this, so don’t do anything until I tell you. I’m going to bring in a couple of other guys, one from California and the other from Arizona. They’re going to dig a big hole in the desert. They’ll cover it with plywood and dirt. You’ll know where the hole is, because I’ll take you there and show you. When I’m ready to get rid of the Jew, I’ll tell you. Then you scoop him up from the street. Don’t kill him on the street, Frankie. Kill him when you get to the grave we’re going to dig. Then dump him in and cover him up. That will be the end of that.”

For reasons unknown to Cullotta, Tony never gave the final order. Lefty knew Spilotro detested him and was capable of killing him. But it is doubtful that he knew his erstwhile friend had actually set a plan in motion.

However, Lefty had a near death experience that he was painfully aware of on October 4, 1982, when he left Tony Roma’s restaurant on East Sahara. He got into his Cadillac and turned the key in the ignition. In the past, this action had always resulted in the Caddy’s engine coming to life and settling into a smooth purr. Things were a bit different this time, though. A charge of C-4 explosive had been placed under the trunk next to the gas tank and wired to the ignition. When Lefty turned the key the bomb ignited. Had he been in any other car, the gambler would no doubt have been killed instantly. But the Caddy was built with a steel plate under the driver’s seat as standard equipment. The steel barrier diverted the blast toward the passenger side of the vehicle and gave Lefty a chance to jump out of the car before the interior became fully engulfed. The gas tank exploded seconds later, sending the car’s roof 60 feet into the air. The lucky Lefty escaped the inferno with only some singed clothes and minor injuries. He was alive, but someone had sent a strong message.

Who was responsible for the attempt on Lefty’s life? The theories vary. Those who believe Tony Spilotro was behind the incident admit that the Tony wasn’t known for using explosives. But they argue that he had motive and could have brought in an outside expert to handle the bombing. Others think the Chicago bosses, with pressure from their Kansas City colleagues, ordered the hit because they felt Lefty might turn on them and begin cooperating with the authorities. Those who support this idea point out that car bombings were common in assassinations by mob families throughout the Midwest.

Others attribute the bombing to Geri Rosenthal’s biker-gang and drug friends in California. Their rationale is that Geri—who had fled to California after cleaning out the safety deposit boxes loaded with cash and jewelry—was rapidly going through the loot she’d left Las Vegas with. Her new associates no doubt believed she stood to gain a windfall from Lefty’s estate should he suffer a premature demise. In that case, the free-spending Geri would be able to support their bad habits for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it made sense that these unsavory characters would attempt to knock Lefty off.

Not long after the bombing, the gambler departed Las Vegas for California, and eventually Florida. Like so many of the killings and attempted killings in the realm of the mobsters, no one was ever charged in the attack.

The late Lefty Rosenthal has been described by many who dealt with him as having been extremely egotistical with an abrasive personality. He was not a very nice guy, according to them. With his passing, another chapter of Vegas history comes to a close.

Much has been written and there have been several documentaries about various organized-crime families taking cash — “skimming” — from Las Vegas casinos. The skim money was removed from the casino prior to it officially being entered into the books as revenue. Taxes weren’t paid on this unreported income, a fact on which the Internal Revenue Service frowned. The casinos involved in these illegal operations became the equivalent of piggy banks for the Midwest crime bosses.

Prior to delving into the skim while writing The Battle for Las Vegas, I considered it as being relatively dry and boring financial crimes. I didn’t realize the amount of violence and intimidation involved to launch and maintain the scams. And I had no idea of the immense investigative effort it took to bring the perpetrators before the bar of justice. However, it wasn’t long before I understood that if it weren’t for the mob’s hidden ownership of and control over the casinos, and the need to protect the status quo, there may never have been a Tony Spilotro and his gang in Las Vegas. So, although Tony wasn’t one of the inside men in the casinos, the skim operations were part and parcel of the Spilotro era.

My research focused on the skims run in the casinos owned by the Argent Corporation and the Tropicana. These facilities were the subject of two major investigations, called Strawman 1 and 2. Many of the same players were involved with skimming from both the Argent properties and the Trop, but the courts ruled that these were separate conspiracies. There were separate indictments, trials, and convictions. Some of the participants entered into plea deals and testified against their colleagues. Others gave testimony as unindicted co-conspirators. Several top mobsters from the Midwest went to prison.

A continuation of the Strawman investigations was called Strawman-Trans Sterling. This operation zeroed in on the Trans Sterling Corporation, another mob-controlled company that purchased Argent’s casino holdings, and resulted in more gangsters going to prison.

From a law enforcement standpoint, these investigations and subsequent convictions marked the end of organized crime’s influence over the Las Vegas casinos.

I believe you will find the story of the Vegas skim to be as interesting as I did. However, due to the volume of information it’s necessary that I break my presentation into three segments. I’ll begin by explaining how the skim was structured and why it was necessary for multiple crime families to work together to loot the casinos. I’ll also introduce the main criminal players and explaining the involvement of the Teamster Central States Pension Fund. In the subsequent articles I’ll address the specific method of skimming the Trop and the FBI’s investigative efforts, both nationally and by the Las Vegas field office.


The Families

Four Midwest organized-crime families were involved in the hidden ownership and skimming of the Argent-controlled casinos and the Tropicana: Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. They each had ownership and control of, and/or participated in the illegal removal of cash from, the involved gaming establishments. Although all four shared in the money taken from the Tropicana, the courts ruled that it was a Kansas City operation and that the other three families weren’t involved in the covert ownership of that casino.

Allen Glick’s Argent Corporation was a different story than the Tropicana. Glick had a clean criminal record and could withstand the background check conducted by Nevada gaming regulators. So being the owner of record of multiple casinos wouldn’t be a problem. But he needed a large amount of money in order to purchase the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina. And at a time when not many reputable financial institutions were willing to invest in Vegas, the best source of that funding was the Teamster Central States Pension Fund (CSPF). Three of the four families — Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland — held influence over one or more of the CSPF trustees or union officials. Since any one trustee could veto the loans, cooperation among the families was necessary to assure the trustees and officials were all on board and that Glick got the money he needed. In return for their assistance in obtaining the funding, the families had effective control of Argent, with Glick serving as their front man. Shortly after the skim began a dispute developed between Kansa City and Milwaukee. Chicago intervened and resolved the matter, then joined the conspiracy, taking a 25% cut of the action.

For the mobsters, it began as a marriage made in heaven. For gaming authorities and law enforcement, it was a nightmare. The lawmen came to realize that like a malignant tumor, the influence of organized crime in the Las Vegas casinos had to be cut out and destroyed. However, once the malignancy had taken root, removing it was easier said than done.


The Main Mob Players

The Chicago Outfit was the dominant family operating in Las Vegas. The two most powerful mobsters in Chicago at that time were Joe Aiuppa and Tony Accardo, the same men who had sent Tony Spilotro to Vegas. In addition, other members involved in the family’s Las Vegas business dealings were underboss John Cerone, West Side boss Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo, Angelo LaPietra, and Allen Dorfman.

Kansas City, under the leadership of Nick Civella and his brother Carl, contributed underboss Carl “Tuffy” DeLuna, Anthony Chiavola, Sr., and Joe Agosto to the conspiracies. Although Chiavola resided in Chicago, he was a nephew of the Civella brothers and was more closely associated with their group.

Nick Civella was born Guiseppe Civello in Kansas City in 1927. At the age of 10 he was brought before juvenile authorities for “incorrigibility.” By the time he was 20, Nick had dropped out of school and had a lengthy arrest record for crimes such as car theft, gambling, and robbery. In 1957 he attended the infamous “gangland convention” in Apalachin, New York.

Due to his criminal history, Nick Civella was among the first people to be placed in Nevada’s “black book,” barring him from entering Nevada’s casinos. Undeterred by his exclusion, Civella frequently visited Las Vegas wearing wigs and fake beards to fool state gaming officials. During these forays, he usually stayed at the Tropicana or Dunes.

In Milwaukee, boss Frank “Frankie Bal” Balistrieri was the first mobster to be contacted by Allen Glick regarding the Teamster loans for Argent. Balistrieri’s mob had control of the loan sharking, bookmaking, and vending-machine businesses in their city. Balistrieri himself had been convicted of income-tax evasion in 1967 and served two years in federal prison. During Frank’s absence, Peter Balistrieri, his brother and underboss, ran the show.

Milton Rockman represented Cleveland. He served as a bagman for the delivery of the purloined money, and as a liaison person for Kansas City’s Carl DeLuna.

These talented criminals and their minions put together a plan that took millions of dollars from Las Vegas and put the money into their own pockets.


Nick and Roy

In addition to his clout in Kansas City and with other mobsters around the country, Nick Civella had something else working for him: He was able to influence the decisions of the Teamster Central States Pension Fund through his control of Roy Williams, a Teamster official and its eventual president.

Williams, a decorated World War II combat veteran, returned to Kansas City after the war and resumed his job as a truck driver. He also became heavily involved in the Teamsters and rose through the leadership ranks with the backing of another rising star, Jimmy Hoffa.

Hoffa picked Williams to take over a troubled local in Wichita, and later Kansas City’s Local 41. It was then that he met Nick Civella and they became close personal friends. In 1952, Williams attended a secret meeting of Midwest mob leaders in Chicago, where Williams agreed to run the Kansas City Teamsters and in turn cooperate with his organized-crime friends. Williams discussed all major union problems with Civella before making a decision. If the two men couldn’t agree on a subject, Hoffa ordered Williams to “do what Nick wants.”

Hoffa was pleased with the way Williams worked with Civella and followed instructions. He rewarded his underling by appointing him as a trustee of the Central States Pension Fund. It was a powerful position, and Nick Civella certainly approved of his lackey occupying it.

When Frank Balistrieri needed help in assuring Argent got the Teamster money it needed, he knew Nick Civella would be able to deliver.


Argent

Allen R. Glick was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1942. He served in the military as a helicopter pilot during the war in Vietnam and later turned up in the San Diego area as a land developer. In early 1974, Glick contacted Frank Balistrieri in Milwaukee, seeking assistance in obtaining loans from the Central States Pension Fund to finance Argent’s purchase of several Las Vegas casinos. Balistrieri brought Kansas City and Cleveland into the deal, with Chicago joining a short time later, in order to assure that the CSPF trustees whom they controlled would vote the right way. The loan was approved. Between the initial loan of $62 million and subsequent loans, Argent received approximately $146 million in Teamster money.

The financing came with strings attached, of course. After Glick purchased the casinos, he was required to install Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal in a management position at Argent. From that post Rosenthal ran casino operations and facilitated the skim. The Stardust and Fremont were the casinos from which the thefts took place.

Carl DeLuna (Kansas City), an efficient overseer, was assigned to monitor the Vegas action and make sure each family received its fair share of the proceeds. In that role, he was one of the most trusted men in American organized crime. He also maintained regular contact with the other groups through Angelo LaPietra (Chicago) and Milton Rockman (Cleveland). To assure everything was done on the up and up, at least as far as the gangsters were concerned, DeLuna kept records — detailed written records.

The skimmed cash was removed from casino count rooms by couriers with full access to those sensitive areas. These men weren’t challenged, or even acknowledged, by other employees as they entered, made their withdrawals, and departed. The currency they took was never logged in and there was no official record of it. For all practical purposes, it was as though the money never existed. The loot was then delivered to LaPietra in Chicago. He kept a portion for the Outfit and passed the balance along to Anthony Chiavola, Sr. and Milton Rockman for delivery to their respective families.

The scheme was relatively simple and went smoothly, at least at the start. But after a while it became apparent that Allen Glick didn’t completely realize that he was only a powerless figurehead. He actually believed he could make major decisions regarding casino operations. He tried, and when he and Rosenthal clashed, Glick attempted to fire him. Lefty responded with a threat, prompting the naïve tycoon to complain to Frank Balistrieri. Bad move.

In March 1975, Glick was summoned to Kansas City to meet with Nick Civella. There, the boss explained the facts of life to him. The two men met in a hotel room where Civella announced that Glick owed the Kansas City family $1.2 million for its assistance in getting the CSPF loan approved. If Glick didn’t know it before, he quickly became aware that the mobsters considered the pension fund to be their private bank.

Glick later recalled what Civella told him. “Cling to every word I say … if it would be my choice you wouldn’t leave this room alive. You owe us $1.2 million. I want that paid. In addition, we own part of your corporation and you are not to interfere with it. We will let Mr. Rosenthal continue with the casinos and you are not to interfere.”

The following year, Rosenthal started causing problems. His battles with Nevada gaming regulators were not only problematic, they were high-profile. The bosses had a good thing going in Vegas and wanted to stay below the radar screen. The unwanted publicity made some of the higher-ups nervous.

But as the months passed, Lefty’s difficulties and the related media coverage only intensified. The bosses held conversations to discuss whether Rosenthal should be replaced and, if so, should the removal be on a permanent basis. Although some favored that resolution, Lefty was allowed to stay on and continue his struggle with the licensing officials.

By March 1978, Allen Glick was getting on everyone’s nerves. He was particularly unpopular with Nick Civella. The Kansas City chief decided that Glick needed to go, but was willing to let him get out while still breathing. A buyout proposal in the amount of $10 million was delivered to Glick through Frank Rosenthal. Glick turned down the offer, another ill-advised decision.

On April 25, Carl DeLuna flew to Las Vegas to give Glick a message from Nick Civella. The Civella family frequently used its attorney’s office in Kansas City — without the lawyer himself present — to hold sensitive meetings. They knew there was little chance that the locale would be bugged and they could talk freely. Following that practice, DeLuna, Glick, and Rosenthal got together in Oscar Goodman’s office, sans Goodman. Allen Glick later testified about that meeting.

“I entered Mr. Goodman’s office and behind Mr. Goodman’s desk with his feet up was Mr. DeLuna. Mr. DeLuna, in a gruff voice, using graphic terms, told me to sit down. With that he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket … and he looked down at the paper for a few seconds. Then he informed me he was sent to deliver one final message from his partners. And then he began reading the paper. He said he and his partners were finally sick of having to deal with me and having me around and that I could no longer be tolerated. He informed me it was their desire to have me sell Argent Corporation immediately and I was to announce that sale as soon as I left Mr. Goodman’s office that day. He said he realized that the threats I received perhaps may not have been taken by me as serious as they were given to me. And he said that since perhaps I find my life expendable, he was certain I wouldn’t find my children’s lives expendable. With that he looked down on his paper and gave me the names and ages of each of my sons.”

Less than two months after that meeting, Glick publicly announced his intention to sell Argent. In December 1979, the corporation was sold to the Trans Sterling Corporation, another company with mob ties. Although Argent was no longer the licensee, it did remain an entity, thanks to the mortgage it held on the casinos. Kansas City continued to share in the skimmed proceeds without interference from the new owners. This arrangement continued until around 1983, when indictments were issued against the Argent conspirators. Allen Glick was out of the gambling business, but he and his sons were still alive.

Next: Skimming the Trop and the FBI goes on the offensive.