Las Vegas Greetings

From the Book "When the Mob Ran Vegas" By Steve Fischer

The Great Stardust Skim

This is such a wonderful American success story. In 1976 the president of the Stardust Hotel was 34-year-old Allan Glick. Seemingly out of nowhere, this nice clean-cut young man and head of the Argent Corporation secured a Teamsters' loan for about $146 million that enabled him to take over the Stardust Hotel and Casino. (The Argent name was an abbreviation of Allan R. Glick Enterprises.)The timing on this loan was very important. By 1976, many of the Las Vegas casino "cash cows" the Mob depended on were beginning to dry up. Between the federal government and the state of Nevada, it was becoming more and more difficult for a Mobster to make a decent living. The Chicago Outfit still had control over the Stardust, Fremont, and Hacienda, but it became necessary to increase the size of the skim to make up for other lost business.

Let's take a moment to discuss the meaning of the word skim. It isn't stealing in the usual sense. It isn't taking money that belongs to someone else. Skimming is hiding money from Uncle Sam. Every time a dollar would come into the casino, it had to be reported to the government. So at the end of the year, when the Stardust would do its 1040-EZ or whichever form they used, they would have to pay income tax on every penny the casino took in. How much more profitable would it be if the US government and Nevada state revenue people just didn't know how much money the Stardust and the other hotels had actually made? ("Wow! What a good idea! That way, we could get to keep a lot more of the money, right boss?"). In the old days in Las Vegas this was easy to do. A casino owner could wander into the "soft count" room where the bills were counted, take a few handfuls of the big ones, put them in his pocket and then go have a cup of coffee and a Danish. Who was going to stop him? He owned the place. This was his money. He wasn't stealing. He just wanted to take a few thousand bucks as "walking around money." What Uncle Sam doesn't know ain't gonna' hurt him, right? Then the hotel owner could find a nice corner on a hot-looking craps table, call Tony D., the pit boss there at craps pit 3, have Tony D. bring him a marker for "10 large," and get $10,000 in chips. He'd play a few minutes, lose a couple of thousand, scoop up the remaining 8 G's in chips, take them over to the cashier and cash out. When his signed marker arrived in the accounting department, his girlfriend, Lola, would take the $10,000 marker and put it in her pocket. ("Honest, she's not my girlfriend, sweetheart, I hardly know the woman.") And that was that. No marker means no money owed the casino, right? It's his money anyway, right? Who is he stealing from – himself? Believe it or not, this very simple method of taking a few million dollars out of the Las Vegas hotels worked – year after year after year. Then the Nevada Tax and Gaming Commission boys set down some rules.

Rule Number 1 – An owner is never allowed in a counting room.
Rule Number 2 – An owner is never allowed to play at his own hotel.
Rule Number 3 – All money that comes into a casino – 100 percent of the money – has to be reported as income.

The US government trained its eyes on the casino business through the Organized Crime Commission, the Kefauver Committee, and, later, the Church Committee. Despite all the feds' money spent on all the investigations of the Las Vegas hotels and their owners, of all sorts of crimes, the only thing they could get the owners on was good old tax evasion.

Skimming money means taking money from the pot before Uncle Sam has a chance to count it and tell you how much tax you owe on it. If the money can't be accounted for, it can't be taxed – plain and simple.
There was a problem going on with the Recrion Corporation. Recrion owned, among other things, the Stardust Hotel. There was an early, and ongoing investigation going on about skimmed money from the Stardust finding its way to Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Chicago. Moshe Rockman of Cleveland, Frank Balistieri of Milwaukee, and Joey Auippa of the Chicago Outfit were making a lot of money from the Recrion properties, and the stock in Recrion was the give-away.

The massive profits that Recrion was making was allowing insiders to profit from stock manipulation. Wild stock swings were not that unusual, and when the SEC began investigating, they found that corporate profits were going to buy stock, which was given to officers of the company.

Right up until June 19, 1975, Sam "Momo" Giancana had run Chicago. However, Momo wasn't the best of bosses of the Chicago Outfit. He was highly visible, having both a very flamboyant personality and a much publicized affair with singer Phyllis McGuire.

Then there was his friendship with Frank Sinatra. And with Judy Campbell, and with the Rat Pack. He was just too visible for the old school dons. And on top of everything else, their money stream, Las Vegas, was delivering less and less money. Enough was enough.

Late one night, in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park, Illinois, mansion, Sam made himself a before-bedtime snack of Italian sausage and peppers. He should have known better. That kind of food, especially right before bed, can kill you. On the way to his bedroom, Sam was shot six times in the face. And Joey Auippa became capo of the Chicago Outfit.

No such things as a "honeymoon period" for Joey Auippa either. The feds and the Nevada State Gaming Commission, who were both developing real power in Nevada, were beginning to make daily visits and phone calls to Auippa. It seems all they wanted to talk about was the Stardust. The question of real ownership of the Stardust, which had been hidden for many years, was beginning to bubble to the surface.

At the same time, Allan Glick, who had just turned 32, was beginning to make quite a few bucks at the Hacienda. He knew the Hacienda was a wonderful hotel and all, but it wasn't going to ever be a big-time casino. Talk about a fortuitous set of circumstances. Here were the owners of the Stardust being told to get out or lose their license, and here was Allan Glick, a nice, clean-cut young man who wanted desperately to get into the big time.

So Allan Glick spread the word all over Las Vegas that he wanted to buy the Stardust. His big problem was that he didn't have the money to buy it. But he let it be known, "If anyone wants to lend me the $100 million to buy it, I wouldn't say no."

One day, Glick got a phone call at his Hacienda office from Del Coleman, the largest stockholder in the Recrion Corporation. Coleman, besides his Recrion affiliation, was also the unofficial representative of the Teamsters Union and the Chicago Outfit in Las Vegas. That meant he watched over their business affairs. Del Coleman said, "Allan, we got somebody you should meet," and Allan was introduced to the boss of the Milwaukee Mob, Frank Balistieri.

Balistieri said he could help Glick get a loan. A friend of his was an official at the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. Then Glick started getting calls from some of the other Mob families, all wanting to be helpful to Glick in getting the Stardust loan. One call came from Kansas City. Glick was told the caller knew another Central States Teamsters official who could help arrange the loan. Then more calls came into Allan Glick's office from very well-connected and very friendly men from Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Chicago. And believe it or not, just like in the movies, the money started coming in.

Before long, our hero, Allan Glick, had enough money to buy the Recrion Corporation along with all of its assets including the giant Stardust Hotel. And all for next to no money out of his own pocket! Nearly $140 million was raised to install this nice young man as owner of the Recrion Corp. What a wonderful country we live in.

Al Sachs, who was president of the Stardust during the Recrion days, was the last to be replaced.

Allan Glick, president of Argent Corporation, just added Recrion Corporation and its assets to his holdings. The name Recrion disappeared and the Argent Corp was the owner of three hotels. He packed his bags and moved from the Hacienda to the president's suite at the Stardust. On his first day at his new job, Glick hired bookmaker-dealmaker-oddsmaker Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal to be his assistant at a salary of "250 large."

That same day, Lefty replaced Bobby Strella, who was a pretty good casino boss at the Stardust, with a fella whose previous job experience was owner-operator of the gift shop at Circus Circus, which he purchased for peanuts. The gift shop at Circus Circus was given as a favor to one of Momo Giancana's friends from Chicago at a "friends and family" price of $70,000. It was probably worth four times that much, but it was being sold to a Friend of Ours, capice?

When Tony Spilotro was at Circus Circus, he called himself Tony Stewart, but when he moved to the Stardust he went back to his original name. Spilotro was a hit man, a street-enforcer, and Mob killer who worked for the Chicago Outfit. He had been sent to Las Vegas a few years earlier by Sam Giancana to learn the city and to watch out for Chicago's interests there. The movie Casino starring Joe Pesci as the Tony Spilotro character and Robert De Niro as Lefty Rosenthal was one of the better Las Vegas Mob movies, in my opinion.

OK, Recrion was out as owners of the Stardust. They were bought out, not kicked out, and they were happy with their $30 million or so of profit. Sure, a few of them had to go to prison, but overall, it was a good ownership transition. However, there was a problem with Rosenthal's position as Stardust general manager. Lefty had a "past." He was a known associate of the Mob and had a conviction on his police record for fixing a basketball game some years earlier. Rosenthal's conviction, however, was conveniently removed from the record before he arrived in Las Vegas. But the guys who made up the Nevada Gaming Commission knew gambling and gamblers, and Lefty Rosenthal had a widely known reputation. They planned to keep a close eye on him.

On the second day of Rosenthal's new job at the Stardust, the gaming authorities called Allan Glick and advised him that Lefty was never going to be given the "key employee" designation – ever. By the mid-1970s the Nevada Gaming Commission, commonly referred to as the NGC, said that every employee who worked in a key position within a casino that had a gambling license was going to be called a key employee. As a key employee, they, too, had to have a gambling license.

Allan Glick had to tell this news to Rosenthal. Glick was perfectly aware that Lefty was fully running the Stardust, even though he'd only been on the job for two days. Glick found Lefty and told him the news. What's in a title, right? Lefty gave up his position as general manager/casino manager and became the Stardust Hotel's poker room coordinator. As a lowly poker room coordinator, he wouldn't get that stupid key employee designation, and he didn't need a license.

He was still making his $250,000 and he still oversaw every single detail at the Stardust. Just to make it look even more presentable to the gaming guys, Rosenthal took over one of the poker tables as his permanent office. No one else sat there. It was in the back of the poker room with a phone on the table, and he worked there right in the open. The Nevada Gaming Commission then told him that he couldn't be the poker room coordinator, either. It seems the NGC had just made Las Vegas poker room coordinators key employees as well.

Not to be outdone, Lefty became the assistant entertainment director of the hotel for a while, and when those bureaucrats at the NGC said "no" to that, he became the assistant marketing manager. When that was stopped, he began broadcasting a nightly show from the Stardust interviewing celebrities on a Las Vegas television channel. This ploy of musical jobs really did work for quite a few years.

Lefty Rosenthal was running the Stardust Hotel, Tony Spilotro was taking care of the casino and any other problems that might arise, and Allan Glick was off playing golf down at La Costa on the California coast. Everyone seemed to be in place. Rosenthal had understood from day one what was expected of him. Chicago was deadly serious about making the Stardust and their other Las Vegas properties more profitable.

Two murders take place during this story, and the first one happens right about here. Marty Buccieri, was a casino boss at Caesars Palace. Marty had been instrumental at the beginning of Allan Glick's money search by introducing Allan to some of his friends in Chicago.

One day Buccieri showed up at the Stardust looking for Allan Glick. Marty was told that Allan probably was down in the coffee shop, or maybe still in San Diego, or "you might want to try the health club." Buccieri found Glick in the steam room and told him that he owed him money – a finder's fee. He said something like: "I put you together with my boss, and look at you now. You own this joint. It was me who got you the $100 million and I want my piece. And I want it by next week?"

Glick found Lefty Rosenthal, which wasn't all that hard to do. Lefty had taken over Glick's office in the executive suite. Glick told him about the meeting he just had in the Stardust health club with Marty and all the noise he was making. A week later, Buccieri was found sitting in the front seat of his car in the Caesars Palace parking lot. He had just left work, and someone was waiting in the back seat of his car, and popped him twice in the head with a 22-caliber pistol. A small-time Las Vegas hood named Horton was arrested for the murder. All Horton would ever say was that he shot Buccieri because he "wised off at me."

There were so many quarters and dollar tokens coming into the hard count room every night, it was physically impossible to count them with any accuracy. However, they could be weighed.

The casinos would purchase super-sensitive scales that could tell with nearly perfect accuracy how many quarters were being deposited at the end of a shift.

Keeping numbers simple: Say the Stardust weighed its quarters only once a day, at midnight. On this particular day, slot players had dropped 4,000 quarters into the various slot machines on the floor of the Stardust.

The slot machines would be emptied of their 4,000 quarters, the quarters would be put into some canvas bags, placed in those steel cages you see rolling around the casino, attended by visibly armed Stardust security guards. They roll those carts full of coins into the hard count room. (The soft count room is for counting bills.)

OK, 4,000 quarters is $1,000 and weighs exactly 10 pounds. So when the 10 pounds of quarters are put into the machine, the screen lights up $1,000. And the fellow who's watching over there, the guy with the clipboard in his hand, the one who's writing down $1,000, works for the Nevada Gaming Commission.

He has one job. He watches those screens, which show how much money all those quarters are worth. If the screen says $1,500 on the next weigh, he writes the $1,500 down just below the $1,000, and the last two weighs that the super-sensitive scale showed meant that the Stardust had just shown that it had $2,500 that it had to account for.

It's here where the scheme begins –

Argent owned three hotels: the Stardust, Fremont, and the Hacienda. Each day the coins from the Fremont would be put into coin bags and taken by armored car to the Stardust. Coin bags from the Hacienda would also arrive at the Stardust by armored car. The bags would be opened and poured through chutes directly into hoppers located atop big scales. Argent hired a scale mechanic who recalibrated these scales perfectly so when 4,000 quarters ($1,000) were placed in the hopper, it only registered as $900. It was simple enough – $1,000 input and $900 output. ("All right, if it's working so well on the quarters, let's recalibrate those machines over there that weigh the dollar tokens.")

The $900 in silver coins and dollar tokens was handled exactly by the book. Each roll was inspected and initialed by a Stardust employee as to accuracy. The tokens were recirculated onto the floor for resale and replay or were placed in the Stardust's bank account. But what do you do with the dollar coins and tokens? A few silver dollars can be passed at the grocery store to pay your bill, but not in great quantity. But try to spend $1 tokens from the Stardust that have the Stardust logo on them. There's not a lot of places anywhere except the Stardust that will take them from you. So what the heck are you going to do with all those tokens?

Back in 1975, in every casino in Las Vegas with the exception of the Stardust, if you wanted change from the "change girls," they would sell it to you. Then they'd take your $20 bill, along with all the other bills, to the cashier's cage "employees only" window. They'd hand over the bills and get more rolls of coins in return. This was the standard way of dispensing coins in a casino.

The Stardust, however, told their change girls that instead of going to the cashier's cage, they were to go to a few locked coin cabinets placed against the walls around the casino. With a key to the cabinet, they'd take the bills and $1 tokens, put them in the drop box inside the cabinet, take the correct number of rolls, and get back to work. The change girls knew damn well that the "honor system" required them to take the correct number of rolls each time. They also knew the cameras were watching them. To try to swipe a roll of coins was absurd – and they all knew it.

What they didn't know was that this cabinet situation was the backbone of a multi-million-dollar skim, the largest casino skim ever uncovered in Las Vegas. And it involved only slot machines. Dozens of times a day, each change girl would open one of the coin cabinets with her key, deposit her money into the slot and take the right amount of wrapped coins. What they were taking was the 10 percent residue from the hard count room. Those coins that were not weighed by the ultra-sensitive scales, the $1 coins, were being turned back into foldable cash through this elegant little system of washing tons and tons of quarters and dollars. And there were literally tons of them. It was not unusual for one of these illegal coin boxes on the floor to have $10,000 in bills in it each evening when it was emptied.

Additionally, an "extra" change booth was set up on the Stardust floor. For quite a few years it was never noticed by the State – like a toll booth set up on a stretch of two-lane road in the dead of night. It looked and operated just like all the other change booths: get in line and change your bills into coins, get in line and change your coins into bills.

Except this change booth wasn't registered with any governmental authority. One hundred percent of the money that came in went directly to the coffers of Joey Auippa and the Chicago Outfit.

These coin cabinets around the casino and the extra change booth worked for nearly five years. It finally came out in the 1979 and 1980 trials that the quarter and dollar skim was so successful at the Argent properties that the Chicago Mob was receiving $15 million per year for each of five years.

As an aside to this story: There was a very sharp slot department manager working at the Fremont Hotel downtown. His name was Jay VanDermark. He was extremely valuable because he allegedly set up the entire skim operation there. All the little things necessary to take $300,000 per week out of the Argent properties were allegedly designed and implemented by VanDermark.

One of the first things Lefty Rosenthal did after he was brought in was to move VanDermark from the Fremont to the flagship of Argent Corporation, the giant Stardust.

VanDermark came in, managed the entire slot department, and watched over the day-to-day operation of the skim. As a special "thank you," Jay was given an all-expense paid trip to Mazatlan in Mexico. He was murdered while on the trip, the second murder in the story. All the loose ends were now tied up.

And this elegant little plan worked for the next four years.

If you liked this story, you'll love the other 20 stories in When the Mob Ran Vegas. Each story features vintage photos of the women, the men, the movie stars and the Mobsters.  To Order the book, please visit the online order form by clicking here

Few American cities are more mythic than Las Vegas, and no issue has been more central to the creation of those myths than organized crime. Thanks to entertaining if historically dubious films—The Godfather trilogy, Bugsy, and Casino stand out—the public developed an image of what the mob meant to Las Vegas. Thanks to its publicity machine, Las Vegas helped mold that image.
 
Organized crime is as old as crime itself. Today, as in the past, gangs are one of the most visible forms of organized crime. The mob associated with Las Vegas grew out of the "Great Migration" through Ellis Island between 1880 and 1924. Southern and eastern Europeans—Italians and Slavic Jews—moved mostly into eastern cities, but also inland to Midwestern cities and occasionally to the West.
 
These immigrants and their next generation faced the same problem previous and future immigrants faced. Discrimination often deprived them of respectable, well-paying jobs. So, they could choose between low-paying jobs that few wanted and high-paying jobs that few wanted. Accordingly, some turned to illegal activities:  gambling, white slavery (prostitution), protection, and, during Prohibition (1920-1933), bootlegging.
 
These mobsters were mostly Italian and Jewish. For example, Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Benjamin Siegel worked together although much remains unknown about that working relationship, in New York City and later on the Las Vegas Strip. Did Italians work for Jews? Or were Jews front men for Italians who kept their real ownership hidden because they could not be licensed? This much is clear:  usually, Italians provided the muscle in organized crime while Jews were administrators and accountants.
 
Siegel was an unusual example of Jewish muscle, committing murders and bringing Hollywood under his sway by taking over important movie unions in the late 1930s. Legend has it that Siegel invented Las Vegas, or at least its resort hotels. In fact, he wasn't even Nevada's first mobster. In the 1920s, Bill Graham and Jim McKay, allies of Chicago gangland leader Al Capone, ran Reno's main casino. Later that decade, Capone's friend Frank Detra moved to Las Vegas and eventually operated one of the first casinos on Highway 91, better known as Las Vegas Boulevard or the Strip. Other Chicago mobsters would become the last organized crime operators in Las Vegas—at a hotel next to the site of Detra's old Pair-O-Dice, where the Frontier is today.
 
Siegel's arrival in Las Vegas in the early 1940s wasn't based on a whimsical desire to build a resort to consort with his Hollywood friends. Rather, Lansky, whom it would be fair to call the chief financial officer of organized crime, and his boyhood friend, Siegel, agreed Las Vegas was ripe for the mob. First, Siegel and another old friend, Moe Sedway, took over race wire dissemination services, which provided race books with horse racing results.
 
Only after that proved successful did they target gambling. They took over the El Cortez and apparently set up skimming operations elsewhere downtown before setting their sights on the Strip. Again, the facts are murky. Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and owner of Southern California's ritzy Ciro's restaurant, started construction of the Flamingo. Siegel was one of his investors and partners early on. He eventually took over the project, partly because Wilkerson's drinking and gambling problems ate into building funds, partly because Siegel's mob connections made it easier for him to obtain construction supplies.
 
But Siegel's mismanagement had far-reaching consequences. He knew little about how to run a casino—or any other business, for that matter. The original construction estimate of $1 million ballooned to $6 million, reducing the Flamingo's chances of paying off its debt to its mob financiers. After Siegel's murder on June 20, 1947, new, mob-connected managers took over and made the Flamingo profitable. This group combined physical and business toughness: longtime Phoenix bookmaker and veteran casino operator Gus Greenbaum, Sedway, Minneapolis gambling veteran Davie Berman, and Ben Goffstein, who was involved in often violent newspaper circulation wars. Some had a history of violence, but all were experienced businessmen.
 
Thus began a couple of trends. Casino executives with ties to organized crime usually won respect for their financial acumen. If their hands were dirty, they got that way from skimming and laundering money made and spent on possibly violent criminal activities, or they moved between the economic and enforcement sides of organized crime as needed. Another trend was that mob-connected operators tried to avoid repeating Siegel's errors. They managed their businesses well and sought, with varying success, to avoid the publicity he attracted.
 
Over the next two decades, almost every hotel-casino in Las Vegas had some connection to Lansky and his New York/Miami branch of organized crime. Their builders often had run illegal casinos in various locations—from Providence, Rhode Island, to Portland, Oregon; from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Dallas, Texas. They apparently underreported their earnings and sent money to Lansky and other eastern investors.
 
The activities of these operators bred other myths and important realities. Contrary to the belief that their illegality extended throughout the operation, almost all of them ran honest games: They appreciated the opportunity to operate legally and wanted to avoid screwing that up, and the odds were so strongly in favor of the house that they had no need to cheat. They emphasized gambling, the most profitable part of the hotel-casino.
 
While their facilities were less luxurious than today's mega resorts, Strip hotels did not scrimp. They booked big-name entertainment and paid well, having known these stars from illegal gambling clubs. They were innovative, hosting major golf tournaments and prize fights to attract tourists and money. And they understood business generally, often investing outside the Strip: The classic example, Desert Inn boss Moe Dalitz, formed a development company that built housing tracts, country clubs, and shopping centers.
 
Yet they faced several problems including limited financing. Bankers refused to lend money to casinos, questioning the morality of the business and whether the loans would be repaid. Casinos could rely only on two sources. The Teamsters Central States Pension Fund was under the control of Allen Dorfman, the adopted son of an Al Capone lieutenant with ties to various organized crime figures. The Bank of Las Vegas, operated by E. Parry Thomas, represented a group of Utah bankers. Thomas reasoned that Las Vegas casino executives would respond in kind if treated like legitimate businessmen. He was right, but faced sneers that he was a "mob banker."
 
Another problem was their image. Books and articles invariably oversimplified the mob's role in Las Vegas to make everyone involved look like cut-throat killers. They were the villains in a morality play that they hadn't written and couldn't change. As Dalitz said when Senator Estes Kefauver's committee on organized crime criticized him for having been a bootlegger, "If you hadn't have drunk it, I wouldn't have bootlegged it."
 
By the mid-1960s, organized crime figures were growing old—many had come of age during Prohibition in the 1920s—and they were tired of fighting the authorities. State officials wanted to attract more legitimate investors. Federal officials were cracking down on them. Howard Hughes's buying spree ended alleged mob ownership of several resorts, but with the same employees in the casinos and the counting rooms, the skimming continued.
 
Nevada governor Paul Laxalt along with other officials and businessmen such as Thomas and Bill Harrah hoped to bring the state new respectability with the Corporate Gaming Act of 1969. The measure enabled the state to license key investors and executives rather than every stockholder, and thus publicly traded corporations to own casinos. Laxalt's predecessor, Governor Grant Sawyer, expected the mob to find ways around the Corporate Gaming Act, and events proved him right.
 
Allen R. Glick formed Argent Corporation, for his initials (Allen R. Glick ENTerprises or the French word for money). He obtained a $62.7 million loan from the Teamsters to buy the Stardust and Fremont and later claimed not to know that he answered to the Chicago, Kansas City, and Milwaukee mobs. If he didn't know, he soon found out when mob bosses installed Frank Rosenthal as their top executive at the two hotels. Rosenthal and his friends apparently devised a successful skimming operation that continued even after state gaming regulators forced them out and new owners took over. Finally, in 1983, Nevada officials revoked the licenses of top executives Al Sachs and Herb Tobman (they also preceded Glick at the Stardust) and brought in Boyd Gaming to run the Stardust and Fremont. Boyd eventually bought the two hotels, effectively ending mob control.
 
But other mob operations flourished—and ended similarly. Kansas City interests ran the Tropicana behind the back of supposed owners Mitzi Stauffer Briggs, a chemical heiress, and Ramada Inns by installing Joe Agosto as producer of the Folies Bergere production show. FBI wiretaps revealed that Agosto and prominent casino executive Carl Thomas, long considered free of mob taint, were in charge of skimming from the casino. Detroit's Lebanese mob and St. Louis interests represented by attorney Sorkis Webbe controlled the Aladdin until its forced sale to entertainer Wayne Newton. Longtime Teamsters attorney Morris Shenker ran the Dunes. All suffered under the federal and state microscope—and local critics such as Ned Day, a respected print and broadcast journalist whose reporting revealed many mob connections.
 
Not until the 1970s and 1980s did the mob extend its power and profits beyond the Strip. Anthony Spilotro, nicknamed Tony the Ant, came to Las Vegas in 1971 to run a gift shop at Circus Circus. State regulators soon listed him in the Black Book, thanks to allegations that he had been involved in perhaps twenty murders. Thus, Spilotro concentrated on the streets, forming the "Hole in the Wall" burglary gang, which earned its name by blowing a hole in the side of Bertha's jewelry store during a robbery. Federal prosecutors obtained several convictions, and induced one of Spilotro's hit men, Frank Cullotta, to testify and enter witness protection. Spilotro faced numerous indictments by 1986, when he and his brother Michael traveled to Chicago in hopes of taking over the Chicago mob after the conviction of several of the old dons. Instead, their campaign failed, they disappeared, and they turned up dead nine days later in an Indiana cornfield, near a farm owned by one of the convicted Chicago leaders.
 
While friends and allies of Rosenthal and Spilotro remain in Las Vegas, mob rule on the Strip and the streets was effectively over. Obviously, wherever crime is organized, organized crime exists, including ethnically oriented gangs involving Latinos and Russians. Allegations have persisted that topless and nude dancing clubs have replaced casinos as mob hangouts and money-laundering enterprises.
 
Today, many longtime Las Vegans hanker for the days when the mob ruled. They talk nostalgically about cheap food, often ignoring inflation and the diverse offerings now available in modern resorts. They lament that the streets today are less safe without mentioning that street gangs are a national phenomenon and legal decisions have affected how the police go about their business. The mob no longer controls Las Vegas, but no one was calling Las Vegas "the all-American city" when mobsters had power. Times have changed in Las Vegas—as they have everywhere.
 By:  Michael Green

Moe Sedway (1894 - 1952) was the faithful lieutenant of organized crime czar Meyer Lansky. Sedway had his own police record dating as far back as the early 1920s in New York. He began making trips to Las Vegas on Lansky's behalf in the early 1930s to franchise the syndicate's Trans-America race wire service. By 1945, along with Gus Greenbaum, Sedway ran the El Cortez Hotel with great success. Sedway was also instrumental in the financing and construction of the Flamingo Hotel when William R. Wilkerson ran into financial difficulties. Sedway saw the Flamingo as unique opportunity for their group to expand operations in Las Vegas. Minutes after Bugsy Siegel's death, Sedway and Greenbaum took possession of the Flamingo. No one questioned or disputed their authority. Under Sedway's and Greenbaum's partnership, the Flamingo became a non-exclusive facility with prices affordable to almost anyone. They made the enterprise extremely successful. In the first year alone, Sedway and Greenbaum turned a $4 million profit. He accurately predicted that the post-war demand for "entertainment" would be enormous. According to his calculations hordes of gamblers from every state in the union would soon be flooding to Las Vegas. His name was merged with Gus Greenbaum's to inspire the name for the character "Moe Greene" in The Godfather.

Meyer Lansky (born Meyer Suchowljanski) (July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983; known as the "Mob's Accountant") was a Jewish-American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the "National Crime Syndicate" in the United States.  Lansky developed a gambling empire which stretched from Saratoga, New York to Miami to Council Bluffs Iowa and Las Vegas; it is also said that he oversaw gambling concessions in Cuba. Although a member of the Jewish Mafia, Lansky undoubtedly had strong influence with the Italian Mafia and played a large role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld (although the full extent of this role has been the subject of some debate).  By 1936, Lansky had established gambling operations in Florida, New Orleans, and Cuba. In that same year, his partner Luciano was sent to prison. As Alfred McCoy records:  "During the 1930s, Meyer Lansky 'discovered' the Caribbean for Northeastern United States syndicate bosses and invested their illegal profits in an assortment of lucrative gambling ventures.... He was also reportedly responsible for organized crime's decision to declare Miami a 'free city' (i.e., not subject to the usual rules of territorial monopoly)."  Lansky later convinced the Mafia to place Bugsy Siegel in charge of Las Vegas, and became a major investor in Siegel's Flamingo Hotel.  After Al Capone's 1931 conviction for tax evasion and prostitution, Lansky saw that he too was vulnerable to a similar prosecution. To protect himself, he transferred the illegal earnings from his growing casino empire to a Swiss numbered bank account, whose anonymity was assured by the 1934 Swiss Banking Act. Lansky eventually even bought an offshore bank in Switzerland, which he used to launder money through a network of shell and holding companies.  During the 1940s, Lansky associate Bugsy Siegel persuaded the crime bosses to invest in a lavish new casino hotel project in Las Vegas, the Flamingo. After long delays and large cost overruns, the Flamingo Hotel was still not open for business. To discuss the Flamingo problem, the mafia investors attended a secret meeting in Havana, Cuba in 1946. While the other bosses wanted to kill Siegel, Lansky begged them to give his friend a second chance. Despite this reprieve, Siegel continued to lose mafia money on the Flamingo Hotel. A second family meeting was then called. However, by the time this meeting took place, the casino turned a small profit. Lansky again, with Luciano's support, convinced the family to give Siegel some more time.  The Flamingo was soon losing money again. At a third meeting, the family decided that Siegel was finished. He had humiliated the organized crime bosses and never had a chance. It is widely believed that Lansky himself was compelled to give the final okay on eliminating Siegel due to his long relationship with Siegel and his stature in the family.  On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot and killed in Beverly Hills, California. Twenty minutes after the Siegel hit, Lansky's associates, including Gus Greenbaum and Moe Sedway, walked into the Flamingo Hotel and took control of the property. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Lansky retained a substantial financial interest in the Flamingo for the next twenty years. Lansky said in several interviews later in his life that if it had been up to him, Ben Siegel would be alive today.  This also marked a power transfer in Vegas from the New York to the Chicago crime families. Although his role was considerably more restrained than in previous years, Lansky is believed to have both advised and aided Chicago boss Tony Accardo in initially establishing his hold.

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was an American gangster who was involved with Italian-American organized crime. Siegel was a major driving force behind large-scale development of Las Vegas.  Siegel yearned to be legitimate. The legitimacy and respectability he craved were beyond his reach. But by spring 1946, it became stronger - in William R. Wilkerson's Flamingo.  Las Vegas gave Siegel his second opportunity to reinvent himself. Siegel had traveled to Southern Nevada in 1934 with Meyer Lansky's lieutenant Moe Sedway, on Lansky's orders to explore expanding operations. Lansky had turned the desert over to Siegel. But Siegel, wanting nothing to do with it, turned it over to Moe Sedway and fled for Hollywood.  Lansky pressured Siegel to represent them in Wilkerson's desert project. Someone had to watchdog their interests. Siegel, who knew Wilkerson and lived near him in Beverly Hills, was the obvious choice as a liaison, but Siegel was infuriated. He wanted no part in any operation that took him back to Nevada permanently. It meant forsaking Beverly Hills and playboy life and enduring the heat of Nevada. At Lansky's insistence, however, Siegel consented.  Siegel accepts
Throughout the spring of 1946, Siegel proved useful. He obtained black market building materials. The postwar shortages that had dogged construction were no longer a problem. At first Siegel seemed content to do things Wilkerson's way. His desire to learn about the project took precedence over his sportsman lifestyle. It subdued his aggression. Under Wilkerson, Siegel played the pupil, learning the mechanics of building an enterprise. The role did not come easily. Perhaps outdistanced and afraid of being upstaged by his mentor, Siegel began to feel intimidated and paranoid. He grew resentful of Wilkerson's talent and vision. As time went on, the gangster's admiration disintegrated into insane jealousy. Siegel reverted to his familiar role; the big-shot. He began making decisions without Wilkerson's authority. Informing work crews that Wilkerson had put him in charge, Siegel ordered changes which conflicted with the blueprints.  The problem came to a head when Siegel demanded more involvement in the project. To keep the project moving, Wilkerson agreed that Siegel would supervise the hotel while Wilkerson retained control of everything else.  In May 1946, Siegel decided the agreement had to be altered to give him control of the Flamingo. Siegel offered to buy out Wilkerson's creative participation with corporate stock - an additional 5 percent ownership in the operation. On June 20, 1946, Siegel formed the Nevada Project Corporation of California, naming himself president. He was also the largest principal stockholder in the operation, which defined everyone else merely as shareholders. From this point the Flamingo became syndicate-run.
Siegel began a spending spree, staggering even today. He demanded the finest building that money could buy at a time of wartime shortages. Each bathroom of the 93-room hotel had its own sewer system (cost: $1,150,000); more toilets were ordered than needed (cost: $50,000); because of the plumbing alterations, the boiler room, now too small, had to be enlarged (cost: $113,000); and Siegel ordered a larger kitchen (cost: $29,000). Adding to the budgetary over-runs were problems with dishonest contractors and disgruntled unpaid builders. By day, trucks delivered black market goods. By night the same materials were pilfered and resold to Siegel a few days later. As costs soared, Siegel's checks began bouncing. By October 1946, the costs had soared above $4 million. In spring 1947, the Flamingo would clock in at over $6 million.  The first indication of trouble came in early November 1946. The syndicate issued an ultimatum: provide accounting or forfeit funding. But producing a balance sheet was the last thing Siegel wanted to do. After the syndicate's refusal of help, Siegel waged a campaign of private fund raising. He sold nonexistent stock. Siegel was in a hurry to finish. He doubled his work force, believing the project could be completed in half the time. But it was costs, not building, that began rising faster. Siegel paid overtime and double-time. In some cases, bonuses tied to project deadlines were offered in hope of increasing productivity. By the end of November work was nearly finished.  Under pressure to have the hotel make some money, Siegel moved the opening from Wilkerson's original date of March 1, 1947 to the day after Christmas, 1946. Although the hotel was incomplete he was hoping to generate enough from the casino to complete the project and repay investors. Siegel announced the hotel would be ready the day after Christmas. Its opening would be held that same evening, December 26, 1946. Siegel generated confusion regarding the opening date. Acting on a whim, he decided a weekend would be more likely to entice celebrities away from home. Invitations were sent out for Saturday, December 28. Siegel changed his mind again. Invitees were notified by phone that the opening had been changed back to the 26th.
While locals jammed the opening, few celebrities materialized. A handful did motor in from Los Angeles despite appalling weather. Some of the celebrities present were June Haver, Vivian Blaine, George Raft, Sonny Tufts, Brian Donlevy and Charles Coburn. They were welcomed by construction noise and a lobby draped with decorators' drop cloths. The desert's first air conditioning collapsed regularly. While gambling tables were operating, the luxury rooms that would have served as the lure for them to stay and gamble longer were not ready. After two weeks the Flamingo's gaming tables were $275,000 in the red and the entire operation shut down in late January 1947.By begging the mob bosses to give his friend a second chance, Lansky got an extension for Bugsy. After being granted a second chance, Bugsy cracked down and did everything possible to turn the Flamingo into a success. However, by the time profits began making a turn for the better the mob bosses above Bugsy were tired of waiting around.
Bugsy Siegel's memorial in the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, near the wedding chapelOn the night of June 20, 1947, as Siegel sat with his associate Allen Smiley in Virginia Hill's Beverly Hills home reading the Los Angeles Times, an unknown assailant fired at him through the window with a .30-caliber military M1 carbine, hitting him many times, including twice in the head. No one was charged with the murder, and the crime remains officially unsolved.

Anthony Cornero Stralla AKA "the Admiral" and "Tony the Hat" (August 18, 1899-July 31, 1955) was an organized crime figure in Southern California from the 1920s through the 1950s. During his varied criminal career, he bootlegged liquor into Los Angeles, ran gambling ships in international waters, and operated casinos in Las Vegas.
Born in Lequio Tanaro, a small village in Cuneo Province in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy, Cornero and his family immigrated to the United States after his father lost the farm in a card game and a fire destroyed their harvest. Cornero's father died a few years later and his mother married Luigi Stralla, a former suitor from Italy. After their arrival in San Francisco, Cornero used the aliases Tony Cornero and Tony Stralla as he signed on to merchant ships bound for the Far East.  At age 16, Cornero was arrested for robbery. He pled guilty and was sentenced to ten months in reform school. He would accumulate a lengthy criminal record during the next ten years, including two counts of bootlegging and three counts of attempted murder. By the early 1920s, Cornero was driving a taxi cab for a living.
In 1923, with Prohibition in effect, Cornero became a rumrunner. His clientele included many high-class customers and night clubs.  Using a shrimping business as a cover, Cornero starting smuggling Canadian whiskey into Southern California with his small fleet of freighters. One of Cornero's ships, the SS Lily, could transport up to 4,000 cases of bootleg liquor in a single trip. Cornero would unload the liquor beyond the three-mile limit into his speedboats, which would bring it to the Southern California beaches. His fleet easily evaded the understaffed and ill-equipped U.S. Coast Guard. By the time Cornero turned 25, he had become a millionaire.  However, in 1926 the law caught up with Cornero. Returning from Guaymas, Mexico, with an estimated 1,000 cases of rum, he was intercepted and arrested. Sentenced to two years imprisonment, he jokingly told reporters he'd only purchased the illegal cargo "to keep 120 million people from being poisoned to death". While being transported by rail to prison, Cornero escaped from his guards and jumped off the train. Cornero boarded a ship for Vancouver, British Columbia and fled the U.S. Eventually reaching Europe, he spent several years there in hiding. In 1929, he returned to Los Angeles and turned himself in.  In 1931, shortly after his release from prison, Cornero established the Ken Tar Insulation Company. However, federal authorities soon discovered it was a cover for a large scale bootlegging operation and raided it. Cornero then moved his operations to a location in Culver City, California. Soon he was producing up to 5,000 gallons of alcohol a day. Federal authorities raided the Culver City site, but found no evidence of bootlegging; Cornero was probably warned ahead of time.
With the repeal of Prohibition, Cornero moved into gaming. He and his brothers Louis and Frank moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and took an option on a 30-acre (120,000 m2) piece of land outside the Las Vegas city limits. He soon opened “The Green Meadows”, also known as The Meadows, one of the earliest major casinos in the Las Vegas area. As The Meadows started making big money, Cornero began investing in other Las Vegas casinos.  However, Cornero's success soon brought unwanted attention. New York gang leaders Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello demanded a percentage of Cornero's gaming profits. Cornero refused to comply and a gang war briefly took place. After the New York mobsters torched The Meadows, Carnero gave up. He sold his Las Vegas interests and moved back to Los Angeles.
In 1938, Cornero decided to open a shipboard gaming operation off the Southern California coast. Sailing in international waters, Cornero would be able to run his gambling dens without interference from U.S. authorities.  Cornero purchased two large ships and converted them into luxury casinos at a cost of $300,000. He named the ships the SS Rex and the SS Tango. Cornero's premier cruise ship was the SS Rex, which could accommodate over 2,000 gamblers. It carried a crew of 350, including waiters and waitresses, gourmet chefs, a full orchestra, and gunmen. Its first class dining room served French cuisine exclusively.  The two ships were anchored outside the 'three mile limit' off Santa Monica and Long Beach. The wealthy of Los Angeles would take water taxis out to the ships to enjoy the gambling, shows, and restaurants.  In October 1939, the Los Angeles Zoo was facing a financial crisis. Always the good citizen, Cornero offered the zoo a day's proceeds from the SS Rex. Considering that his ships were earning $300,000 a cruise, this was no idle gesture. Although zoo officials seriously considered the offer, pressure from state politicians forced them to decline it.   The end of the fleet  the success of Cornero's floating casinos brought outrage from California officials. State Attorney General Earl Warren ordered a series of raids against his gambling ships.  On May 4, 1946, after Warren became governor of California, he issued a public statement declaring his intentions to shut down gambling ships outside California waters; he said he intended, "to call the Navy and Coast Guard if necessary." During his address, Warren specifically denounced the newly-built gambling ship owned by "Admiral" Tony Cornero. Warren stated "It's an outrage that lumber should be used for such a gambling ship, when veterans can't get lumber with which to build their homes."  Despite battles with authorities over the legality of their entering international waters, the State of California found a way to circumvent the 'three mile limit'. The state refigured the starting point of the 'three mile limit' off the coastline and determined the ships were indeed in California waters. Without wasting any time, police boarded several U.S. Coast Guard craft and sailed out to Cornero's ships to close them down and arrest Cornero. However, when the police reached the ships, Cornero would not let them board. Reportedly, Cornero turned the ship's fire hoses on the police when they attempted to board and declared they were committing "piracy on the high seas".A standoff ensued for three days before Cornero finally gave up.  Cornero eventually closed his floating casinos. He later tried to reopen land-based illegal casinos in Los Angeles; however, he was thwarted by mobster Mickey Cohen. Instead, Cornero returned to Las Vegas.
In Las Vegas, Cornero contacted his friend Orlando Silvagni, owner of the Apache Hotel. Cornero made a deal with Silvagni to lease the hotel casino and rename it the "SS Rex" (after his former floating casino in California). The Las Vegas City Council, aware of Cornero's history with the Green Meadows casino and his floating casinos, voted 'no' on approving his gambling license. However, one councilman changed his vote, the motion passed, and Cornero got his license. However, in a later vote, the Council revoked Cornero's gambling license, and he then closed the SS Rex.  Cornero and his wife left Las Vegas and moved back to Beverly Hills, California. Cornero made plans to invest in Baja California in Mexico. On February 9, 1948, two Mexican men came to Cornero's home in Beverly Hills. When Cornero answered the door, one man gave Cornero a carton and said "Here, Cornero - this is for you" and shot him four times in the stomach. Gravely wounded, Cornero underwent surgery that night and managed to survive the shooting.
As soon as Cornero recovered from his wounds, he returned again to Vegas to build another hotel and casino, the Stardust Resort & Casino. He bought a 40-acre (160,000 m2) piece of land on the Las Vegas Strip. He filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to sell stock in the hotel corporation. When the stock was issued, Cornero bought 65,000 shares for 10 cents apiece, giving him majority control of the corporation at 51% of all stock. Cornero then sold the remaining shares. Finally, he applied to the Nevada Gaming Commission for his gaming license and was turned down. The Commission rejected Cornero because of an old bootlegging conviction and trouble that he was having with the SEC. This rejection meant Cornero had invested his money in a half-built casino that he was not allowed to operate.  Not to be stopped, Cornero came up with a new plan. He asked his friend Milton B. "Farmer" Page, another Las Vegas casino owner. if he would like to take over the project. Page agreed on the condition that he be able to run it. In 1955, Cornero made the first of a number of presentations for loans to Moe Dalitz, owner of the Desert Inn hotel and casino, and Dalitz' partner, New York mobster Meyer Lansky. Dalitz ended up lending Cornero $1.25 million. The second and third loans came soon later and Cornero used the unfinished Stardust Hotel as loan collateral. Loans with United Hotels were then nearly $4.3 million. As construction finished on the Stardust, Cornero ran out of money again. On July 31, 1955, Canero told an investors' meeting, "We need another $800,000 to stock the casino with cash and pay the liquor and food suppliers."  Unfortunately, Tony Cornero died later that same day, never to see the Stardust finished. In 1958, the Stardust Resort and Casino finally opened and became the largest hotel in the world. The Stardust was a huge success that would last for 48 years. Cornero is cr  ed with the lucrative concept of putting slot machines in the hotel lobby to lure guests as they passed by.
When Cornero died on July 31, 1955, he was playing craps in the Desert Inn Casino in Las Vegas. All of a sudden, he just dropped to the floor and died. The official report stated that Cornero died of a heart attack.  However, rumors soon arose that someone had poisoned Cornero's drink. His body was removed from the casino floor before anyone contacted the coroner or the Clark County Sheriff's Department. Cornero's glass was taken and washed; sheriff's deputies never had the chance to examine it. No autopsy was performed and a coroner's jury in Los Angeles determined that he died of natural causes.  Cornero's mob role in Las Vegas was taken over by Jake "The Barber" Factor. Cornero was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

Frank Lawrence "Lefty" Rosenthal (June 12, 1929 – October 13, 2008) was an American sports handicapper and a former Las Vegas casino executive. He also hosted a television talk show in Las Vegas during the late 1970s.  The 1995 Martin Scorsese film Casino, based on the book by Nicholas Pileggi, was inspired by Rosenthal's career in Las Vegas. Rosenthal (re-named "Sam 'Ace' Rothstein") was played by Robert De Niro, and his Mafia associate Anthony Spilotro (re-named "Nicky Santoro") was played by Joe Pesci. 
Rosenthal was born in Chicago, Illinois of Swedish heritage and adopted by Jewish-American parents, growing up in the city's West Side. As a youth, Rosenthal learned sports betting in the bleachers of Wrigley Field, and would often skip classes to attend Chicago sporting events. By 1961 Rosenthal had acquired a national reputation as a sports bettor and handicapper, and was frequently seen in the company of prominent Chicago Outfit members Jackie Cerone and Fiore Buccieri while living in Miami. At this time Rosenthal was issued with a subpoena to appear before Senator McClellan's subcommittee on Gambling and Organised Crime, accused of match fixing. He invoked the Fifth Amendment 37 times and was never charged. Due to this he was barred from racing establishments in Florida. Despite his frequent arrests for illegal gambling and bookmaking, Rosenthal was convicted only once, pleading no contest in 1963, for allegedly bribing New York University point guard Ray Paprocky to shave points for a college basketball game in North Carolina. To escape police attention Rosenthal moved to Las Vegas in the late 1960s.
A pioneer of sports gambling, Rosenthal secretly ran the Stardust, Fremont, Marina and Hacienda casinos when they were controlled by the Chicago Outfit. He was the first to operate a sports book from within a casino (previously, the inefficient norm had been to do the opposite), making the Stardust one of the world's leading centers for sports gambling. Another Rosenthal innovation was to allow female blackjack dealers; in just one year, this doubled the Stardust's income.  In 1976, when authorities discovered that Rosenthal was secretly running casinos without the Nevada gaming license, they held a hearing to determine his legal ability to obtain one. Rosenthal was denied a license because of his unsavory reputation as an organised crime associate, particularly because of his boyhood friendship with Chicago hitman Anthony Spilotro.  Rosenthal married Geraldine McGee, and while she had a daughter, Robin L. Marmor, prior to their marriage (fathered by Lenny Marmor), Frank and Geri had two children together, Steven and Stephanie. The marriage ultimately ended in divorce, with Rosenthal attributing the failure primarily to McGee's inability to escape her alcohol and drug addictions. After leaving Rosenthal and stealing a significant portion of his savings, Geri died at a motel in Los Angeles on November 9, 1982, at age 46, of an apparent drug overdose. Her death was ruled accidental, from a combination of Valium, cocaine, and Alcohol.  Rosenthal survived an assassination attempt, in October 1982, after his car was rigged with explosives. He survived because his car was a 1981 Cadillac Eldorado which had a metal plate under the driver's seat (GM installed it to correct a balancing problem) which absorbed most of the force of the explosion. The person or persons behind the attempt have never been positively identified. Possible suspects include Spilotro, Milwaukee Mafia boss Frank Balistrieri, and outlaw bikers who were associates of Geri Rosenthal.  Rosenthal subsequently was forced out of Las Vegas in 1988 when he was placed in "the Black Book," making him persona non grata (unable to work, or even enter) all Nevada casinos because of his alleged ties with organized crime. He retired to Laguna Niguel, California, then to Boca Raton, Florida, and then Miami Beach, where he ran a sports betting outfits and XXX websites and worked as a consultant for several offshore sports betting companies.
He died of a heart attack in his Miami Beach, Florida home on October 13, 2008 at the age of 79.

Morris Barney "Moe" Dalitz (December 25, 1899 – August 31, 1989) was a Jewish American bootlegger, racketeer, casino owner and philanthropist who was one of the major figures who helped shape Las Vegas, Nevada in the 20th century. He was often referred to as Mr. Las Vegas for his tireless work to mold Las Vegas into a modern city. Born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Michigan, Dalitz worked in his family's laundry business early on, but began his career in bootlegging when Prohibition began in 1919, and capitalized on his access to the laundry trucks in the family business. He ran a leading criminal organization of Jewish American gangsters called the Cleveland Syndicate known for their violence and criminal ways, with partners Louis "Lou Roddy" Rothkopf, Leo "Charles Polizzi" Berkowitz, Morris Kleinman and Sam Tucker all of whom operated primarily between Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan during the Prohibition era. Additionally he developed a partnership with the Maceo syndicate which ran Galveston and supplied liquor from Canada and Mexico. Moe Dalitz formed strong ties within Cleveland's Eastside, Little Italy community. He later merged his group with top underworld leaders from the Murray Hill and Mayfield Road area, such as brothers Fred "Freddy King" and John "Johnny King" Angersola, Alfred "The Owl" Polizzi and brothers Anthony and Frank Milano of the "Mayfield Road Mob" to form the leading underworld organization in Cleveland. While converting his profits into legitimate businesses, he also owned several illegal casinos in Cleveland.
His investments in Las Vegas began in the late 1940s with the Desert Inn when the original builder of the resort, Wilbur Clark, ran out of money, and Dalitz took over the construction. When it opened in 1950, Clark remained the public face and frontman of the resort, while Dalitz quietly remained in the background as the real owner. He also ran the Stardust Resort & Casino for a time after the death of Tony Cornero. Dalitz owned the Desert Inn until 1967, when he sold it to businessman Howard Hughes. Since he had been under constant pressure from law enforcement for many years, selling the resort was seen as an opportunity to get the authorities off his back. Dalitz had ties to both Jimmy Hoffa and Lew Wasserman of MCA, both of whom were subject to extensive criminal and anti-trust investigations in the 1960s. Hoffa had testified to his longtime relationship with Dalitz through union representation of his dry cleaners. Wasserman had first worked at a Cleveland club owned by Dalitz and his associates.
Moe Dalitz was also a longtime friend of Meyer Lansky, one of the main architects of modern organized crime. To the FBI, Dalitz played a vital role inside Lansky's powerful organization which also included men like Louis Chesler, The Cellini brothers, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo, Harry "Nig Rosen" Stromberg, John Pullman, Sam Cohen, Eddie Levinson and actor, George Raft. In 1982, Dalitz received the "Torch of Liberty" award from the Anti-Defamation League.
In the 1970s Dalitz filed a massive defamation suit against Penthouse magazine over an article written by Lowell Bergman about Rancho La Costa, a resort funded by the Teamsters. The last casino that Dalitz owned was the Sundance Hotel Casino, later renamed the Fitzgerald. Dalitz built the Las Vegas Country Club, Sunrise Hospital, and many other important Las Vegas institutions. He was a frequent donor to the Las Vegas Public Library system along with other community organizations in Las Vegas. He counted among his frequent visitors in his later years such well known personalities as Barbara Walters, Harry Reid, Suzanne Somers, Wayne Newton, Buddy Hackett, and Frank Sinatra. Dalitz was proud of helping performers like Frank Sinatra get their first big breaks in show business. Dalitz continued to be active in the Las Vegas community, but except for trips to visit friends in the Las Vegas area or occasional trips in his Rolls Royce to Mt Charleston, he stayed in his Regency Towers penthouse apartment. When he died in 1989 many organizations received substantial donations he left in his will.

John "Handsome Johnny" Roselli (July 4, 1905 - August 9, 1976) (sometimes spelled Rosselli), also known as "John F. Stewart"  (July 4, 1905 to sometime between July 28 and August 9, 1976) was an influential mobster for the Chicago Outfit who helped them control Hollywood and the Las Vegas Strip. Roselli was also involved with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot to kill Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. Some conspiracy theorists believe he was also involved with John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination in 1963.  Born Filippo Sacco (sometimes spelled Phillippo) in Esperia, Italy ( in the Province of Frosinone) on July 4, 1905, Roselli had been best known by his mob nickname of "Handsome Johnny." He immigrated with his mother, Mariantonia Pascale Sacco and one Caterina Palazzo, from Italy to the USA in 1911, settling in Somerville, Massachusetts near Boston. At the time, his father, Vincenzo Sacco, was already residing in the United States. Fleeing to Chicago in 1922 after committing a murder, Sacco changed his name to "John Roselli" (in honor of Italian Renaissance sculptor Cosimo Rosselli) and became a member of the Chicago Outfit.
The exact date and reason for Roselli moving to Los Angeles is unknown. Some sources say that Al Capone or Frank Nitti sent him west to oversee the Outfit's business interests such as the racing wire and movie extortion scheme. However, Roselli moved to Los Angeles in 1924, before either Capone or Nitti became boss of the Chicago Outfit. He pleaded guilty to bootlegging beer in 1924 (then going by the name "James Roselli"). Roselli began his California criminal career working with Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. Roselli became close friends with film producer Bryan Foy, who brought Roselli into the movie business as a producer with Foy's small production company, Eagle Lion Studios, where Roselli is cr  ed on a number of early gangster movies as a producer. In the 1940s Roselli was involved in the Outfit's multi-million dollar extortion campaign against the motion picture industry.
In 1942, Roselli was indicted on federal labor racketeering charges along with George Brown, former president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union, and Willie Bioff, labor racketeer and former pimp. On December 4, 1942 Roselli, a professed U.S. patriot, enlisted into the United States Army. He served as a private until he was arrested March 19, 1943.
John Roselli (right) checks over a writ of habeas corpus with his lawyer, Frank DeSimone after Rosselli surrendered to U.S. Marshals in 1948.In 1943, after a year long trial on the racketeering charges, Roselli and several Chicago mobsters were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, in 1947 they were paroled after serving only about three-and-a-half years. It was widely assumed that the Outfit's political fixer, Murray "The Camel" Humphreys, used his influence with President Harry Truman's Attorney General, Tom C. Clark, to spring Roselli and the other Outfit bosses from prison. After his release, Roselli returned to Hollywood in hopes of becoming a movie producer with Bryan Foy.The extensive influence The Outfit had over Hollywood is best illustrated in 1948 when boss Tony Accardo told Roselli to force powerful Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn into signing then-unknown actress Marilyn Monroe to a lucrative multi-year contract. The usually combative Cohn quickly complied without opposition, mainly because Cohn had obtained control of Columbia through mob funds and influence provided by both Accardo and Roselli.
In the early 1950s, Roselli gradually shifted his focus away from Hollywood and toward the fast-growing and highly profitable gambling mecca, Las Vegas, Nevada. By 1954, Roselli had become the Chicago and Los Angeles mob's chief representative in Las Vegas. His job was to ensure that the Chicago and Los Angeles mob bosses each received their fair share of the burgeoning casino revenues through, "skimming." However, according to the Los Angeles office of the FBI, Roselli was employed as a movie producer at Monogram Studios.
After the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro closed down all the mob casinos in Cuba and drove out the mobsters. Given that experience, Roselli, Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana, and Tampa boss Santo Trafficante would be receptive to overtures on killing Castro. In 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, who later would become a top aide to billionaire Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach Roselli. Maheu passed himself off as the representative of international corporations that wanted Castro killed because of their lost gambling operations. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he referred to as "Sam Gold" and "Joe." "Sam Gold" was Giancana and "Joe" was Santo Trafficante, Jr., the Tampa, Florida boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in pre-revolution Cuba. The agency gave the mobsters six poison pills to murder Castro. For several months, anti-Castro Cubans tied to the Mafia tried unsuccessfully to put the pills in Castro's food. In 1961, after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, these assassination attempts, which included hit teams of snipers, trained on Roselli's secret CIA base in the Florida Keys, continued with a vengeance, now with CIA legend William "Wild Bill" King Harvey, taking charge of Roselli's efforts. Many researchers claim that because of the Kennedy's obsession with getting Castro, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, though angry about the CIA's use of one of his prime Mafia targets, chose to continue these efforts until the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. The assassination attempts by Roselli were publicized in 1971 by Jack Anderson, a Washington Post reporter, and acknowledged by the CIA in 2007 when it declassified the Family jewels documents.
In 1963, singer Frank Sinatra sponsored Roselli for membership in the exclusive Los Angeles Friar's Club. Soon after his acceptance, Roselli discovered an elaborate card-cheating operation run by one of his Las Vegas friends, Maury Friedman, and asked for his cut. The cheating was finally discovered July 1967 by FBI agents tailing Roselli Scores of wealthy men (including millionaire Harry Karl, the husband of actress Debbie Reynolds, and actor Zeppo Marx) were bilked out of millions of dollars. Grant B. Cooper represented some of the defendants in the case, including Roselli. Roselli was eventually convicted and fined $55,000. During the trial, secret grand jury transcripts were discovered on the defense attorney's table. Cooper eventually plead guilty to contempt for possessing the documents.
In 1968, Roselli was tried and convicted of maintaining an illegal residence in the United States (he'd never acquired lawful US residence or citizenship) and was ordered deported to Italy by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. However, Italy refused to accept Roselli, so he remained in the United States.
On June 24 and September 22 1975 Roselli testified before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCIA) led by Idaho Senator Frank Church about the CIA plan to kill Castro, Operation Mongoose. Shortly before Roselli testified, an unknown gunman shot and killed the disgraced Giancana in the basement of his Oak Park, Illinois home. This happened just days before Giancana was to testify before the committee. Giancana's murder supposedly prompted Roselli (whose own power base disappeared with Giancana's death) to permanently leave Los Angeles and Las Vegas for Miami, Florida.
On April 23, 1976, Roselli was called before the committee to testify about a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Three months after his first round of testimony on the Kennedy assassination, the Committee wanted to recall Roselli. However, at this point, he had been missing since July 28. On August 3, Senator Howard Baker, a member of the new SSCIA, requested the FBI investigate Roselli's disappearance.
On August 9, Roselli's decomposing body was found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfounding Bay near Miami, Florida. Roselli had been strangled and shot, and his legs were sawn off. Some believed that boss Trafficante ordered Roselli's death. According to this theory, Trafficante believed that Roselli had revealed too much about the Kennedy assassination and Castro murder plots during his Senate testimony, violating the strict Mafia code of omertà (silence).
Former hitman James Files has claimed that he, Roselli and Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti fired the fatal shots killing Kennedy at Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. However, there is no proof to support this claim. New York mob boss Bill Bonanno claimed in his autobiography that while he was imprisoned with Roselli, he spoke to him about the Kennedy assassination. Roselli allegedly told Bonanno that he had fired a shot from a storm drain located on Elm Street in Dallas. Former CIA pilot "Tosh" Plumlee claims to have flown Roselli from Tampa to Dallas, arriving on the morning of November 22, 1963, on a mission to abort the assassination of President Kennedy.

Antonino "Joe Batters" Accardo (April 28, 1906 – May 22, 1992), also known as "Big Tuna", rose from small-time hoodlum to the position of day-to-day boss of the Chicago Outfit criminal organization ca 1943, to ultimately become the final Outfit authority in 1972, until his death. Accardo moved The Outfit into new operations and territories, greatly increasing its power and wealth during his tenure as boss.  Born Antonino Leonardo Accardo (also known as Anthony Joseph Accardo) was born on Chicago's Near West Side, the son of Francesco Accardo, a shoemaker, and Maria Tillota Accardo. One year prior to his birth, the Accardos had emigrated to America from Castelvetrano, Sicily, in the Province of Trapani. At age 14, Accardo was expelled from school and started loitering around neighborhood pool halls. He soon joined the Circus Cafe Gang, one of many street gangs in the poor neighborhoods of Chicago. These gangs served as talent pools (similar to the concept of farm teams) for the city's adult criminal organizations. In 1926, Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, one of the toughest hitmen of Outfit boss Alphonse Capone ("Big Al," "Scarface Al"), recruited Accardo into his crew in the Outfit.  It was during Prohibition that Accardo received the "Joe Batters" nickname from Capone himself due to his skill at hitting a couple of Outfit traitors with a baseball bat at a dinner Capone held just to kill the two men. Capone was quoted as saying, "Boy, this kid's a real Joe Batters"' The Chicago newspapers eventually dubbed Accardo, "The Big Tuna," after a fishing exp  ion where Accardo caught a giant tuna. In later years, Accardo boasted over federal wiretaps he participated in the infamous 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre in which, allegedly, Capone gunmen murdered seven members of the rival North Side Gang. Accardo also claimed that he was one of the gunmen who murdered Brooklyn, New York gang boss Frankie Yale, again by Capone's orders to settle a dispute. However, most experts today believe Accardo had only peripheral connections with the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and none whatsoever with the Yale murder. However, on October 11, 1926, Accardo may have participated in the assassination of, then, Northside, Chicago, gang leader Hymie Weiss, near the Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. He leaves behind heir's including younger second generation nephew Michael Anthony Accardo who presumes to be the only relative left to carry on the family name.  In 1931, Capone was convicted of tax evasion and sent to prison for an 11-year sentence, and Frank Nitti ("Frank 'The Enforcer' Nitto") became the new Outfit boss, after serving his own 18-month sentence for tax evasion. By this time, Accardo had established a solid record making money for the organization, so Nitti let him establish his own crew. Accardo soon developed a variety of profitable rackets, including gambling, loansharking, bookmaking, extortion, and the distribution of untaxed alcohol and cigarettes. As with all caporegimes, Accardo received 5% of the crew's earnings as a so-called, "street tax." Accardo in turn paid a tax to the family boss. If a crew member were to refuse to pay a street tax (or paid less than half of the amount owed), it could mean a death sentence from The Outfit. The Accardo crew would include such future Outfit heavyweights as Gus "Gussie" Alex and Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa.
In 1934, Accardo met Clarice Pordzany, a Polish-American chorus girl. They later married and had four children. In fact, Accardo had two grandsons, one of whom was Eric Kumerow, who was drafted by the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League. Unlike the majority of his colleagues, Accardo had a strong marriage and was never known to have been unfaithful to his wife. Clarice Accardo died on November 15, 2002, at age 91, of natural causes. For most of his married life, Accardo lived in River Forest, Illinois, until he started getting heat from the IRS about his apparent high lifestyle. So, he bought a ranch home on the 1400 block of North Ashland Avenue, in River Forest, and installed a vault. Accardo's official job was that of a beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.  In the 1940s, Accardo continued to gain power in the Outfit. As the 1940s progressed, it became evident that a number of Outfit bosses and members were going to have to face serious consequences for their parts in the extortion of the Hollywood movie industry's unions. However, because Nitti was claustrophobic, he was fearful of serving a second prison term, the first for tax evasion. So, Nitti committed suicide in 1943. Paul "The Waiter" Ricca, who had been the de facto boss since Capone's imprisonment, became the boss in name as well as in fact and named Accardo as underboss. Ricca and Accardo would run the Outfit either officially or as the powers behind the throne for the next 30 years, until Ricca's death in 1972. When Ricca subsequently received a 10-year prison sentence for his part in the Hollywood scandal, Accardo became acting boss. Three years later, as a parole condition, Ricca was barred from contact with mobsters. Accardo then became boss of the Outfit. In practice, he shared power with Ricca, who remained in the background as a senior consultant.
Under Accardo's leadership in the late 1940s, the Outfit moved into slot machines and vending machines, counterfeiting cigarette and liquor tax stamps and expanded narcotics smuggling. Accardo placed slot machines in gas stations, restaurants and bars throughout the Outfit's territory. Outside of Chicago, The Outfit expanded rapidly. In Las Vegas, The Outfit took influence over gaming away from the five crime families of New York City. Accardo made sure that all the legal Las Vegas casinos used his slot machines. In Kansas and Oklahoma, Accardo took advantage of the official ban on alcohol sales to introduce bootlegged alcohol. The Outfit eventually dominated organized crime in most of the Western United States. To reduce the Outfit's exposure to legal prosecution, Accardo phased out some traditional organized crime activities, such as labor racketeering and extortion. He also converted the Outfit's brothel business into call girl services. The result of these changes was a golden era of profitability and influence for the Outfit.
>By keeping a low profile and letting flashier figures such as Sam Giancana attract attention, Accardo and Ricca were able to run the Outfit much longer than Capone. Ricca once said, Accardo, "... had more brains for breakfast than Capone had all day."
Also in the late 1950s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had to finally admit that organized crime in America is real, because of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's embarrassment over the local law enforcement's uncovering of the 1957 Apalachin Meeting. Thus, the FBI began to employ all types of surveillance against mobsters. Though, because of the surveillance, one particular Chicago-based FBI agent and his family were having difficulty with the Outfit. All the members of the agent's family were getting ominous and frightening anonymous phone calls about the agent's safety at work. So, in a clandestine meeting with the Outfit, Agent William F. Roemer initiated a gentleman's truce with Tony Accardo that each party wouldn't touch the other man's family. Accardo kept his word as to the agreement as long as he was in power, as did the Chicago-based FBI unit.
After 1957, Accardo turned over the official position as boss to long-time, money-making associate Giancana, because of "heat" from the IRS. Accardo then became the Outfit's consigliere, stepping away from the day-to-day running of the organization, but he still retained considerable power and demanded ultimate respect and won it from his men. Giancana still had to obtain the sanction of Accardo and Ricca on major business, including all assassinations.,br>However, this working relationship eventually broke down. Unlike Accardo, the widowed Giancana lived an ostentatious lifestyle, frequenting posh nightclubs and dating high-profile singer Phyllis McGuire. Giancana also refused to distribute some of the lavish profits from Outfit casinos in Iran and Central America to the rank-and-file members. Many in The Outfit also felt that Giancana was attracting too much attention from the FBI, who was forever "tailing" his car throughout the greater-Chicago area.
Around 1966, after spending a year in jail on federal Contempt of Court charges, Accardo and Ricca replaced Giancana with street-crew boss Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa. In June 1975, after spending most of his Outfit-exile years in Mexico and unceremoniously being booted from that country, Giancana was assassinated in the basement apartment of his home, in Oak Park, Illinois, while cooking Italian sausages and escarole.
Some conspiracy theorists, however, are divided as to whether this "hit" was sanctioned by the Outfit bosses or possibly by the U.S. government, which had subpoenaed Giancana just before he was murdered to testify on his knowledge of certain alleged government conspiracies. Ricca died in 1972, leaving Accardo as the ultimate authority in the outfit.
In 1978, while Accardo vacationed in California, burglars brazenly entered his River Forest home. Within a month, five of the suspected thieves were found strangled and with their throats cut. Prosecutors at the time believed Accardo, furious that his lair had been violated, had ordered the killings.
In 2002, this theory was confirmed on the witness stand by Outfit turncoat Nicholas Calabrese, who had participated in all of the subsequent murders. The surviving assassins were all convicted in the famous, "Family Secrets Trial," and sentenced to long prison terms.
In later years, Accardo spent much of his time in Palm Springs, California, flying to Chicago to preside over Outfit "sit-downs" and mediate disputes. By this time, Accardo's personal holdings included legal investments in commercial office buildings, retail centers, lumber farms, paper factories, hotels, car dealerships, trucking companies, newspaper companies, restaurants and travel agencies. Accardo spent his last years in Barrington Hills, Illinois living with his daughter and son-in-law. In May 1992, Anthony Accardo died of congestive heart failure at age 86. He leaves behind heir's including younger 2nd generation nephew Michael Anthony Accardo who presumes to be the only relative left to carry on the family name. Accardo was buried in Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. Despite an arrest record dating back to 1922, Accardo allegedly spent only one night in jail or avoided the inside of a cell entirely (depending on the source).

Salvatore "Momo" Giancana (born Salvatore Giangana) (June 15, 1908 – June 19, 1975) was an Italian-American mobster and boss of the Chicago Outfit 1957–66. Among his other nicknames were, "Mooney," "Sam the Cigar," "Sam Flood" and "Sam Gold."  Born as Salvatore Giangana to Italian immigrants in Little Italy, Chicago, also known as "The Patch". His father, Antonino (later simplified to Antonio) Giangana, operated a pushcart and later briefly owned an Italian ice shop, which was later firebombed by gangland rivals of his son.
Sam Giancana joined the Forty-Two Gang, a juvenile street crew answering to political boss Joseph Esposito. He soon developed a reputation for being an excellent getaway driver, a high earner and vicious killer. After Esposito's murder, in which Giancana was allegedly involved, the 42 Gang was transformed into a de facto extension of the Chicago Outfit. Giancana's leadership qualities, the fact that he was an excellent "wheel man" with a get-away car and his knack for making money on the street gained him the notice of Mafia higher-ups like Frank Nitti ("The Enforcer") and Paul Ricca (also known as "Felice 'The Waiter' DeLucia").  Sam married Angelina DeTolve, the daughter of immigrants from the Italian Region of Basilicata, on September 23, 1933. They had three daughters. Angelina died in 1954 and left Sam to raise his daughters. Sam never remarried after the death of his wife and was known as a good family man, despite frequent infidelities, and held his wife in high regard and respect during their marriage and after her death. All of the Giancana daughters have married at least once. At least one daughter, Antoinette, has taken the "Giancana" name again.
In 1945, after serving a sentence at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana (during which time he told his children he was away "at college"), Giancana made a name for himself by convincing Outfit boss Tony Accardo (also known as "Joe Batters," and "The Big Tuna") to stage a take-over of Chicago's African-American "policy" (lottery) pay-out system for The Outfit. Giancana's crew is believed to have been responsible for convincing Eddie Jones to leave his racket and leave the country. Giancana's crew was also responsible for the 1957 murder of Teddy Roe. Both men were leading South Side African-American bookmakers. However, Roe had refused to pay the Outfit street tax which the Italians had demanded and had fatally shot a member of Giancana's crew.
Though the South Side "policy"-game takeover by the Outfit was not complete until another Outfit member, Jackie Cerone ("Jackie the Lackey"), scared "Big Jim" Martin to Mexico with two bullets to the head that didn't kill him, when the lottery money started rolling in for The Outfit after this gambling war, the amount that this game had produced for The Outfit was in the millions of dollars a year and brought Giancana further notice. It is believed to have been a major factor in his being "anointed" as the Mafia's new boss when Accardo stepped aside from being the front boss to becoming "consigliere," in 1957. However, it was generally understood that Accardo and another veteran of the Capone era, Paul Ricca, still held the real power. Giancana had to consult them on all major business transactions and assassinations.
Giancana was present at the Mafia's 1957 Apalachin Meeting at the Upstate New York estate of Joseph Barbara.
It is widely reputed, and partially corroborated by the Church Committee Hearings, that Giancana and other mobsters had been recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Kennedy administration to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who had taken power in January 1959. Giancana was himself reported to have said that the CIA and the Mafia were "different sides of the same coin."
The association between Giancana and JFK is indicated in the "Exner File," written by Judith Campbell Exner. Exner was reputed to be mistress to both Giancana and JFK, and some who?   allege she may have delivered communications between the two regarding Fidel Castro.
However, Giancana's daughter, Antoinette, has stated her belief that her father was running a scam in order to pocket millions of dollars in CIA funding.
According to the recently-declassified CIA "Family Jewels" documents, Giancana and Tampa/Miami Syndicate leader Santo Trafficante, Jr. were contacted in September 1960, about the possibility of an assassination attempt by a go-between from the CIA, Robert Maheu, after Maheu had contacted Johnny Roselli, a Mafia member in Las Vegas and Giancana's number-two man. Maheu had presented himself as a representative of numerous international business firms in Cuba that were being expropriated by Castro. He offered $150,000 for the "removal" of Castro through this operation (the documents suggest that neither Roselli, Giancana, nor Trafficante accepted any sort of payments for the job). According to the files, it was Giancana who suggested using a series of poison pills that could be used to doctor Castro's food and drink. These pills were given by the CIA to Giancana's nominee, Juan Orta, whom Giancana presented as being a corrupt official in the new Cuban government and who had access to Castro. After a series of six attempts to introduce the poison into Castro's food, Orta abruptly demanded to be let out of the mission, handing over the job to another, unnamed participant. Later, a second attempt was mounted through Giancana and Trafficante using Dr. Anthony Verona, the leader of the Cuban Exile Junta, who had, according to Trafficante, become "disaffected with the apparent ineffectual progress of the Junta". Verona requested $10,000 in expenses and $1,000 worth of communications equipment. However, it is unclear how far the second attempt went, as the entire program was canceled shortly thereafter due to the launching of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961.
At the same time, Giancana, according to the "Family Jewels," approached Maheu to bug the room of his then-mistress Phyllis McGuire, whom he suspected of having an affair with comedian Dan Rowan. Although documents suggest Maheu acquiesced, the bug was not planted due to the arrest of the agent tasked with planting the device. According to the documents, Robert Kennedy moved to block the prosecution of the agent and of Maheu, who was soon linked to the bugging attempt, at the CIA's request. Giancana and McGuire, who had a long lasting affair, were originally introduced by Frank Sinatra. During part of the affair, according to Sam's daughter Antoinette, McGuire had a concurrent affair with President Kennedy
Giancana's behavior was too high profile for Outfit tastes and attracted far too much federal scrutiny. He also refused to cut his underlings in on his lavish profits from offshore casinos in Iran and Central America. Both of these factors resulted in much bitterness among the Outfit's rank-and-file.
As a result, Giancana was deposed as day-to-day boss by the still in control Accardo and replaced by Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa. After about seven years of exile inside a lavish villa in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Giancana was arrested by Mexican authorities and deported to the United States.
Shortly after returning to Chicago, Giancana was shot in the back of the head on June 19, 1975, while frying sausage and peppers in the basement kitchen of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. After falling to the ground, his body was turned over and shot a further six times in the face and neck. It was believed by investigators that his murderer was a close friend whom he had let into the house (it is believed that he was cooking the food for someone else, since due to heart problems, Giancana could not eat such spicy foods). Giancana was scheduled to appear before a Senate committee investigating supposed CIA and Mafia collusion in plots to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, in only a few weeks.
Some have alleged that the CIA was responsible for the shooting as Giancana had a somewhat troubled history with the agency. However, former CIA Director William Colby has been quoted as saying, "We had nothing to do with it."
It's believed Tampa Don Santo Trafficante, Jr. may have ordered the hit on Giancana because he was afraid Giancana would testify about Mafia and CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. If so, Trafficante probably got permission to kill Giancana from Chicago bosses Tony Accardo and Joseph Aiuppa. Johnny Roselli, whose body was found stuffed in an oil drum floating off Miami, was definitely killed on Trafficante's orders.
Most investigators believe that Joey Aiuppa, Giancana's onetime friend and successor as Chicago Outfit boss, was responsible for ordering the hit on the disgraced former boss.
Giancana had reportedly continued in his refusal to share the profits from his offshore gambling operations and was also scheming about how to regain his former post as boss. According to former Mafia associate Michael J. Corbitt, Aiuppa seized control of Giancana's casinos in the aftermath of the murder, strategically sharing them with his caporegimes.
Longtime friend and associate Dominic "Butch" Blasi was with Giancana the night he was murdered, and was questioned by police as a suspect. Leading FBI experts and Giancana's daughter, Antoinette, do not consider him Giancana's killer. Other Mafia suspects are Harry Aleman, Charles "Chuckie" English, Charles Nicoletti and Anthony Spilotro.
Giancana was interred next to his wife, Angelina, in a family mausoleum at Mount Carmel Cemetery, in Hillside, Illinois

Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro (May 19, 1938 – June 14, 1986) was an Italian-American mobster and enforcer for the Chicago Outfit in Las Vegas during the 1970s and 1980s. His job was to protect and oversee the Outfit's illegal casino profits (the "skim"). Spilotro replaced Outfit member Marshall Caifano in Las Vegas.  Born Anthony John Spilotro (pronounced spil-oh-tro, according to William Roemer when he asked John Spilotro how Pasquale, Sr. pronounced it), he was nicknamed "Tony the Ant," by the press, after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent William F. Roemer, Jr. referred to Spilotro as "that little pissant." Since the press couldn't use "pissant," they shortened it to the "Ant." He was also called Tough Tony. (This is not accurate pissant origin is as much peasant as anything, the ant was his nick name as he was a short fellow.) The fourth of six children, Spilotro was born and raised in Chicago. He went to Burbank Elementary School, and entered Steinmetz High School in 1953. His parents, Pasquale Spilotro, Sr. (who emigrated from Triggiano, in the Italian province of Bari, from the southeastern region of Puglia, and arrived at Ellis Island in 1914) and Antoinette Spilotro, ran Patsy's Restaurant. When Pasquale, Sr. arrived in America, however, he had no money, education, or particular skill. Unlike most Italian immigrants who settled in "The Patch," (located around Taylor Street and Halsted Street, a mile from The Loop), the Spilotros lived at 2152 North Melvina Avenue. Mobsters such as Salvatore "Sam" Giancana, Jackie "The Lackey" Cerone, Gus Alex and Francesco Nitti ("Frank The Enforcer") regularly dined at Patsy's, which was on the west side at Grand Avenue and Ogden Avenue, using its parking lot for mob meetings. In 1954, Patsy, Sr. suffered a fatal aneurysm and died at the age of fifty-five.
Along with his brothers John, Vincent, Victor, and Michael, Tony became involved in criminal activity early in life. Another of Tony's brothers, Pasquale Spilotro, Jr., went on to college and became a highly respected oral surgeon in the Chicago area. Tony dropped out of Chicago's Steinmetz High School in his sophomore year and quickly became known for a succession of petty crimes such as shoplifting and purse snatching, with his first arrest occurring on January 11, 1955. He attempted to steal a shirt from a River Forest store and was charged with larceny. He was fined $10 and placed on probation.
Bookmaker Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal was first linked to Spilotro in 1962, when Spilotro pleaded guilty to attempted bribery of a New York University basketball player in a game against West Virginia University. The FBI and New York State authorities also suspected that Spilotro tried to bribe a University of Oregon football player,but were never able to find evidence to make a case in that instance.
Spilotro became a marked man to local law enforcement. He was arrested numerous times for mopery, a vague and a spurious criminal charge defined as "walking down the street with no clear destination or purpose." Spilotro befriended Vincent Inserro, who introduced him to Chicago Outfit higher ups, such as Joseph Aiuppa ("Joey Doves"), James Torello ("Jimmy the Turk"), Joseph Lombardo ("Joey the Clown") and William Daddano, Sr. ("Willie Potatoes"), all of whom were successfully climbing the ranks of the Chicago mob. Spilotro joined the crew led by Sam DeStefano ("Mad Sam") and was also mentored by Felix Alderisio ("Milwaukee Phil") and Charles Nicoletti ("Chuckie"). Spilotro became a "Made Man" in 1963, after squeezing a man's head in an industrial vise to get a confession, and was assigned to a large bookmaking operation. For a while, Spilotro was a bail bondsman for reputed mob associate Irwin "Red" Weiner.
The FBI first "flipped" Charles "Chuckie" Crimaldi, a former associate of Sam DeStefano. Crimaldi had been a "juice collector" for DeStefano during the 1950s and 1960s. Crimaldi gave evidence against Spilotro and DeStefano in the murder of real estate agent-loan shark Leo Foreman on November 19, 1963. DeStefano and Spilotro were both acquitted. Crimaldi also provided information on his part in luring William "Action" Jackson to his death. Jackson was another loan shark and enforcer who worked for DeStefano and had been indicted on a hijacking charge. DeStefano suspected Jackson of cutting a deal with the FBI in exchange for a lighter sentence, after Jackson was allegedly who?   spotted with agents in a Milwaukee restaurant owned by Louis Fazio, a DeStefano associate. FBI agent Roemer denied Jackson had cut any deal with the agency.
Later, Sal Romano, a member of the Hole in the Wall Gang that specialized in disabling alarm systems, became a government informant. Romano worked counter-surveillance during the July 4 1981 burglary at Bertha's jewelry store in Las Vegas. Unbeknown to Spilotro, his brother John, partner Herbie Blitzstein, and the Hole in the Wall Gang burglars, Romano had turned informant several months earlier; federal agents and police were waiting for the burglars when the heist at Bertha's went down.
Spilotro's boyhood friend, Frank Cullotta, admitted that for many years he'd done "muscle work" on Spilotro's behalf, including setting up the 1962 "M&M Murders" of James Miraglia and Billy McCarthy. Spilotro had been ordered by outfit bosses to track down and kill the two men after they robbed and murdered three people in a suburban Chicago neighborhood where several members of the Chicago Outfit lived, territory that was considered off limits to criminal activity.
After his own arrest in the attempted Bertha's burglary, Cullotta subsequently became a federal witness, or a "snitch" to save himself, after he thought Spilotro was out to kill him. In November 1981, Cullotta was arrested for a previous burglary, in which a woman's home was broken into and her furniture stolen. The furniture was later found in Cullotta's home, which led to his indictment on possession of stolen property. Cullotta also admitted Spilotro ordered him in 1979 to murder Las Vegas mob associate, Sherwin "Jerry" Lisner.
Las Vegas authorities discovered that Spilotro had ordered Hole in the Wall Gang member Lawrence Neumann ("Crazy Larry"), 53, of McHenry, Illinois, to murder Cullotta and fellow burglar, Wayne Matecki, 30, of Norridge, Illinois.
Cullotta, who has publicly admitted to being a killer himself, supplied information about the M&M murders. Neumann tried to post bail for Cullotta so he could murder both Cullotta and Matecki, but the police had Cullotta's bail revoked to protect him. Cullotta received eight years on the stolen property charges. In September 1983, Spilotro was indicted in Las Vegas, Nevada on murder and racketeering charges based on Cullotta's testimony, but the charges didn't hold up.
Meanwhile, Spilotro was tried before Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas J. Maloney, in Chicago, for the Miraglia and McCarthy killings, while Cullotta's foiled executioner Neumann was sentenced to life in prison in 1983. Judge Maloney did not accept Cullotta's statements as evidence or as proof "beyond a reasonable doubt." The judge, in turn, acquitted Spilotro. (In 1992, Judge Maloney was convicted through Operation Greylord of accepting bribes in several unrelated cases, including murder cases.)
Cullotta testified before the President's Commission on Organized Crime, the Florida Governor's Commission on Organized Crime and appeared at a sentencing hearing for the Chicago mobster Joseph Lombardo. Cullotta later served as a technical advisor for the movie Casino, and also played a small role as Curly, one of Remo Gaggi's hitmen.
In 1971, Spilotro succeeded Marshall Caifano as the Mob's representative in Las Vegas. Spilotro reunited with his boyhood friend Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who ran several Outfit-backed casinos, including the Stardust. Spilotro's legal counsel in Vegas was provided by Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas's current mayor.
Spilotro and Rosenthal worked together to embezzle profits from the casinos (i.e., "the skim"), which were then sent back to The Outfit and other Midwestern Mafia families, such as Kansas City, St. Louis and Milwaukee. On his own, Spilotro (under the alias Tony Stuart) took over the gift shop at the Circus-Circus Hotel, a "family" hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The hotel offered first-class entertainment for children, while their parents gambled in the casino. In 1971, the hotel was owned by Jay Sarno, who had purchased the property with a $43 million loan from the The Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. In 1974, Circus-Circus was sold; for Spilotro's $70,000 investment, he received $700,000. In 1972, Spilotro was indicted in Chicago for the murder of Leo Foreman, a real estate agent/loan shark, who had made the mistake of throwing Sam DeStefano out of his office, in May 1963. Foreman was eventually lured to Sam's home to play cards. There, Foreman was tortured by repeatedly being stabbed with an ice pick and had pieces of his flesh cut out, before being shot and killed.
In 1976, Spilotro opened The Gold Rush, Ltd. with Chicago bookmaker Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein and brother Michael Spilotro. The Gold Rush, located one block from the Las Vegas Strip, was a combination jewelry store and electronics factory. Here Spilotro, brother John and Blitzstein gained expertise in fencing stolen goods.
Where Rosenthal was responsible for the actual management of the casinos, Spilotro's primary task was to control casino employees and other personnel involved in the skim/embezzlement scheme. Spilotro's role as enforcer, however, was severely curtailed after he was blacklisted by the Nevada Gaming Commission, in December 1979 (then chaired by current United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), a ruling that legally prevented Spilotro from being physically present in any Nevada casino. He was blacklisted as a direct result of court testimony of Aladena "Jimmy The Weasel" Fratianno, following his arrest, in 1977.
Spilotro, in 1976, formed a burglary ring with his brother Michael and Blitzstein, utilizing about eight associates as burglars. The crew became known as the Hole in the Wall Gang because of its penchant for gaining entry by drilling through the exterior walls and ceilings of the buildings they burglarized. The Hole in the Wall Gang operated out of The Gold Rush, Ltd. Other gang members included Samuel Cusumano, Joseph Cusumano, Ernesto "Ernie" Davino, 34, Las Vegas, "Crazy Larry" Neumann, Matecki, Salvatore "Sonny" Romano, Leonardo "Leo" Guardino, 47, Las Vegas, Frank Cullotta, 43, Las Vegas, and former Las Vegas detective, Joseph Blasko, 45, Las Vegas, who acted as a lookout and who later worked as a bartender at the Crazy Horse Too, a gentleman's club, and died of a heart attack in 2002.
Following the botched burglary at Bertha's Household Products on July 4, 1981, Cullotta, Blasko, Guardino, Davino, Neumann, and Matecki were arrested and each charged with burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary, attempted grand larceny and possession of burglary tools. They were locked into the Las Vegas police department's holding cell in downtown Las Vegas. The only members of Spilotro's gang not arrested for the July 4 burglary was Blitzstein, Michael, Romano and Cusumano.
By this time, Spilotro's relationship with Rosenthal had collapsed, as Tony had had an affair with Rosenthal's wife, Geraldine McGee Rosenthal. Meanwhile, Cullotta had turned state's witness, testifying against Spilotro. But the testimony was insufficient and Tony was acquitted.
In January 1986, a meeting was held at the Czech Lodge in North Riverside. Most of the upper echelon was there, including Tony Accardo. He had decided to appoint Joseph Ferriola as boss. Ferriola told the group that Accardo would stay on as consigliere and would have final say, as well as Gus Alex staying head of the connection guys. He then went onto the first problem: Spilotro. How things have gone down since he took over Vegas. Rocco Infelice said, "Hit him." Everyone else at the meeting was in agreement. Joe Ferriola closed the meeting with, "OK, that's it, I got nothin' else."
It is suspected that Spilotro and his brother Michael were called by Samuel Carlisi to a meeting at a hunting lodge owned by Spilotro's former mob boss, Joey Aiuppa. Original reports stated the Spilotros were savagely beaten and buried alive in a cornfield in Enos, Indiana. They were identified by their brother Pasquale, Jr. through dental x-ray records. However, in 2007, mob assassin Nicholas Calabrese testified at the "Operation Family Secrets" trial in Chicago that the brothers were killed in a Bensenville, Illinois, basement where the Spilotros believed that Michael would be inducted into The Outfit. According to court testimony, when Tony entered the basement and realized what was about to occur, he asked if he could "say a prayer".
An autopsy performed on the recovered bodies allegedly found sand in the brothers' lungs, leading FBI examiners to speculate that they had been buried alive. Later testimony proved they were killed in a basement and their bodies later dumped in a grave. No arrests were made until April 25, 2005, when 14 members of the Chicago Outfit (including reputed boss James Marcello) were indicted for 18 murders, including the Spilotros'. As a result of that investigation, the murders of the Spilotro brothers are now thought to have taken place in DuPage County, Illinois — in Joseph Aiuppa's hunting lodge, where they were beaten and strangled before being buried in a cornfield alongside Highway 41 in northwest Indiana. At the time of Spilotro's murder, Aiuppa was in prison, but Spilotro must have thought the building was still in use as a hunting lodge.
The suspected murderers included caporegime Albert Tocco from Chicago Heights, Illinois, who was sentenced to 200 years after his wife Betty testified against him in 1989. She claimed that the day after the Spilotro murders, she was called to pick up Tocco 1mi (1.6 km) from where the brothers' bodies would later be found. She said that Tocco was dressed in dirty blue work clothes. Betty Tocco further implicated Nicholas "Nicky" Guzzino, Dominic "Tootsie" Palermo and Albert "Chickie" Rovero in the Spilotro brothers' murders. Tocco died at the age of 77 in an Indiana prison on September 21, 2005.
Another suspect in the murders was Frank "The German" Schweihs, a convicted extortionist and alleged Chicago assassin, who was suspected of involvement in several murders including the Spilotros, Allen Dorfman (of the Teamster's Pension Fund), and a former girlfriend. Schweihs was arrested by the FBI on December 22, 2005. At the time, Schweihs was a fugitive living in a Berea, Kentucky apartment complex. Schweihs had slipped away before prosecutors were able to arrest him and 13 others, including reputed Chicago mob boss James Marcello.
On May 18, 2007, the star witness in the government's case against 14 Chicago mob figures, Nicholas Calabrese, pleaded guilty to taking part in a conspiracy that included 18 murders, including hits on Anthony Spilotro and Spilotro's brother, Michael, in 1986.
Under heavy security, Calabrese admitted that he took part in planning or carrying out 14 of the murders, including the Spilotro killings. Calabrese became the key witness against his brother, Frank Calabrese, Sr., and other major mob figures charged in the government's Operation Family Secrets investigation. The investigation was aimed at clearing up old, unsolved gangland killings and bringing down Chicago's organized crime family.
Nicholas Calabrese agreed to testify in what became known as the Family Secrets Trial after the FBI showed him DNA evidence to link him to the murder of fellow hit-man John Fecarotta, who was also allegedly involved in the Spilotro slayings. Frank Calabrese, Sr.'s trial in Chicago's Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse began on June 19, 2007, and ended on September 10, 2007, with the conviction of Frank Calabrese, Sr. and four other men associated with the Chicago mob: Marcello, Joseph Lombardo, Paul "the Indian" Schiro, and a former Chicago police officer, Anthony "Twan" Doyle. dead link 
On September 27, 2007, Marcello was found guilty by a federal jury in the murders of both Spilotro brothers. On February 5, 2009, he was sentenced to life in prison for the murders.
Spilotro was replaced in Las Vegas by the late Donald "The Wizard of Odds" Angelini. Spilotro is survived by his wife Nancy, his son Vincent and his remaining brothers.
By the time of his death in 1986, the FBI suspected Spilotro responsible of at least 22 murders. Spilotro was indicted in 1983 for his role in the murders of Bill McCarthy and James Miraglia, popularized in the press as the "M&M Murders." McCarthy and Miraglia were two young robbers who had robbed and shot two businessmen and a woman in the mobster-populated neighborhood of Elmwood Park, near Chicago. They were also in debt to Spilotro's old boss, Sam DeStefano. Their bodies were discovered on May 15, 1962, in the trunk of a car dumped on the Southwest Side of Chicago. Both had been beaten badly and had their throats slit. From McCarthy's injuries, it seems his head was placed in a vise, popping out his eye, presumably to persuade him to disclose the whereabouts of Miraglia. The murder of Bill McCarthy (re-named "Tony Dogs") is included in Martin Scorsese's 1995 film Casino.
Spilotro may have been involved in the attempted car bombing murder of Lefty Rosenthal on October 4, 1982. He was also incriminated in the murder of his onetime mentor "Mad" Sam DeStefano on April 15, 1973, while DeStefano, his brother Mario and Spilotro were all facing trial for the murder of Leo Foreman, a local collector for the mob, who had been tortured to death in Sam DeStefano's basement. Spilotro is further suspected who?   of murdering real estate heiress Tamara Rand; Teamsters Union executive Allen Dorfman; and Danny Siefert, the manager of the International Fiber Glass Company. Siefert was to be a principal witness in the fraud case but was shot in front of his wife and four-year-old son in September 1974. The fiberglass company was later burned to the ground by arsonists, whereupon they claimed the insurance money.
According to former Willow Springs, Illinois, police chief Michael Corbitt, rumors on the street implicated Spilotro in the murder of former Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana citation needed  . The FBI believes Spilotro was also involved in the torture murder of loan shark enforcer William "Action" Jackson citation needed  , who worked for DeStefano in the 1950s and 1960s. The Chicago Outfit thought Jackson had become an FBI informant in 1961. Spilotro allegedly took Jackson to a meat packing plant, where he hung him by a meat hook inside the rectum and then crippled Jackson by smashing his knees with a hammer and poking his genitals with an electric cattle prod. Jackson was left near death for three days before finally succumbing to his injuries.
Martin Scorsese's 1995 film Casino is based on the lives of Spilotro and Frank Rosenthal. The character Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci, is based on Spilotro. Pesci's character of Nicky Santoro and his brother Dominic (Philip Suriano), based on Tony's brother Michael Spilotro, are shown being beaten and buried alive by Frank Marino (Frank Vincent), who collaborated in the murders because he wanted "no more" of their dirty work. Other members of Nicky's previous crew (Clem Caserta, Jed Mills) and Chicago Outfit hitmen (Michael Toney, Steve Vignari), also participate in the beatings. On the 1980's NBC series Crime Story, the character of mobster Ray Luca is based on Anthony Spilotro.

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