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What's your best Vegas Mob storey - that you were a part of?

Discussion in 'Misc. Vegas Chat' started by DonnyC, Mar 19, 2014.

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  1. DonnyC

    DonnyC VIP Whale

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    What are some Vegas mob stories you were involved with?

    The mob in Vegas was before my time.
     
  2. dfalk

    dfalk VIP Whale

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    I use to know Sam Rothstein. He had connections to the Chicago mafia and was sent to Vegas to run Tangiers casino. He was pretty cool but he has this little dickhead friend named Nicky, you didn't wanna mess with that guy.
     
  3. BTSyndrome

    BTSyndrome Low-Roller

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    He was so famous they made a movie about him.... Classic :evillaugh

    11 hours, Baby!!!!!!
     
  4. oudi14

    oudi14 Newbie

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    I doubt many on this board actually went to Vegas during the mob days. I don't know exactly when that ended, but my first trip there was in '94, long after. I did meet an old dealer once, who had worked in Vegas during that era, and he said that the mob took much better care of the casino employees than the big corporations do today.
     
  5. dmr

    dmr Registered Abuser

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    I actually have fond memories of the Stardust when it was run by Lefty and his gang of thugs.

    The one memory I have is on the way driving to LV for my first trip, my late aunt was telling me that Las Vegas, at the time, was the safest city there was as far as such things as purse snatching and muggings and such. She said the reason was that if something like that happened, it was not the city cops who handled it, but "Guido and the boys" from the casino staff.
     
  6. Breeze147

    Breeze147 Button Man

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    Yo, Tony went to Vegas and banged Christopher's girlfriend and they went out to Red Rock and got smashed on peyote. He used to break Chrissie's balls about it over at Satriale's.

    I don't know no more, and I ain't sayin' anyways, so fuggetaboutit!
     
  7. Joe Strummer

    Joe Strummer VIP Whale

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    Well.....see.......we was at da crap tables one night.
    The Flamingo was hoppin', man.
    This one guy was losin'...losin'...losin'.....his
    nose was wide open, see --
    Well, he's had enough and pulls out his heater -
    starts wavin' it around --
    So, in comes Davey Berman to the pit.
    He tells the guy -
    "Hey !...I know your just "out of college":evillaugh
    but put that gat away.....we don't do that here,see.
    This is a legit joint."
    So,
    Davey and a few associates walks him to da door -
    I see Davey give him a few bucks and tells him -
    "Here's something to go eat....but don't come back here, again."
    *
    Everybody loved dat Davey Berman -
    he was a swell Joe !
     
  8. airball1996

    airball1996 High-Roller

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    I've heard stories from a downtown bartender who started work when he was 18 and things were still run by the good-ol-boys. He told me the owner of his establishment would up the prices on certain spirits after a certain time to keep away the black pimps in the area. I thought that was interesting, but didn't surprise me.
     
  9. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    Mob related, but not Vegas. My friend would take me to a bar in town that everybody knew was mob. We'd walk in and the owner tended bar. He'd see my friend, come right over, set up two glasses of ice and put the bottle on the bar. We never paid a thing. As far as I know, my friend was not in the mob, but I was in my early 20s, so very naive.

    Unlike the scene from the movie Casino, this car bomb worked and the bar owner was killed in 1978. It was parked in an underground parking structure and the bomb also damaged 20 other cars parked there.

    For you older Milwaukee folk, it was Palmy's Bar downtown.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2014
  10. wormhole

    wormhole VIP Whale

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    Although I am old enough to have gambled in Vegas towards the end if the mob days, I never made it out there until '94. There are times when I thought it would have been interesting to have seen Vegas back then.
     
  11. sweetcanadian

    sweetcanadian High-Roller

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    I have had run in with other gangs that are as powerful as the mob never been to vegas so no mob. Why are they no longer running the show? I went to a biker dance once and it was the best, you didn't have to worry about a thing because they ran the show legit and they did it all, door, bar etc.
     
  12. win4me

    win4me VIP Whale

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    I'd tell you, but then I'd hafta kill you :wink2:
     
  13. woodsie

    woodsie VIP Whale

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    Corporations have been in charge in Vegas since 80s as well as I can tell. I believe Howard Hughes kicked off that trend in the late 60s early 70s.

    It's simply the fact that Vegas outgrew the mob. The multi-billion dollar joints that have been going up since The Mirage are beyond the capability of organized crime. You need mainstream Wallstreet money to build these kinds of places.

    That's my understanding, I could be wrong.
     
  14. Joe Strummer

    Joe Strummer VIP Whale

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    BTW -
    My post was a true story
    from Susan Berman's book " Lady Vegas".
     
  15. eisen7979

    eisen7979 Low-Roller

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    LOL, some good responses here. I can only imagine Vegas back then.
     
  16. ajonate

    ajonate Low-Roller

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    Yes, the mob was limited to how much they could invest in resorts. The largest investment I'm aware of was the $60 million invested in the Fremont, Stardust, and other properties. That loan was from the Central States Pension Fund, arranged by Jimmy Hoffa. That was really stretching the limit of the mob's borrowing ability. After all, it's not like they could go to a bank or issue an IPO on Wall Street, since they weren't supposed to exist. Funding multi-billion dollar resorts was beyond their means.

    Howard Hughes had an interest in acquiring Las Vegas resorts. As owner of the Desert Inn, he lobbied the gaming commission to crack down on casino operators will a criminal past, ostensibly to maintain a good image of Las Vegas to the public. But what Hughes really wanted was to create a buyers market for resorts. With the gaming commission threatening to revoke licenses of mob figures, their resorts became distressed property and Hughes was there to buy them up at fire sale prices.

    But the mob is still in Las Vegas. They aren't in the casino/hotel businesses any longer, but they dominate the strip club industry. That became obvious during the investigation after the closing of Crazy Horse Too.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Too
     
  17. bubbakitty

    bubbakitty Doing retirement again and happily so....

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    Used to go to Benny Binion's in the early-mid 80's and had no problems. But you could feel it in the air; loose gambling rules for just about any amount could be witnessed with no more than a security guard standing and PAYING ATTENTION to the onlookers. Played craps and one guy was getting a bit out of hand and started to curse the box for his luck but not loudly enough for those beyond the table to hear.

    Eventually (and suddenly) two guys (not security guards) stood on either side of him and the box nodded and he looked both ways and said something like "uh-ho".....and one of the guys grinned and said "hello leonard, good to see you". The guy was suddenly ashen-white and left without coloring or collecting his chips. They sort of "escorted" him back toward the cigar stand / elevator area.....no one really wanted to dare to watch so we just went on with the game.

    This was back when it was 1 $ craps with 5x odds or 5 $ with some untold odds (a low roller even back then) and was a lot of fun with the comps coming from a little pad for the coffee shop or whatever. Back when they announced "Jackpot, 135 $ (or somesuch sum), machine #1236" whenever a hand-pay was made.

    I sometimes think of "leonard" when playing craps or bj and someone gets more offensive than the job requires the employee to accept. But haven't seen anything like it since and not sure it really fits the intent of the post.
     
  18. wizard950

    wizard950 High-Roller

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    Back in the mid 50s Howard Hughes purchased 25,000± acres at some ridiculously low price in what is now known as Summerlin. Although he was strange at the end of his life, he was not a stupid businessman.

    Now back to the mob. When my Navy buddies and I used to frequent Vegas back in the mid 60s we would always visit the Dunes. The Dunes was one of the most mobbed up places in town. On one of our trips we met a guy in a bar there and just started talking about this and that and hit it off pretty good. I'll call him Tony only because I don't remember his name anymore, but I do remember he always wore a nice suit. On future visits we would see him from time to time walking around the floor at the Dunes, he would always stop and ask "You guys comfortable? They keeping you happy? If you need anything ask one of the dealers for me."
     
  19. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    Useless trivia: Summerlin was HH grandmother's name.
     
  20. yoyoseven

    yoyoseven Grizzled Vereran

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    http://classicwisconsin.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/excerpt-myths-and-mysteries-of-wisconsin/
     
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