Dennis Griffin's The Battle for Las Vegas (The Law vs. The Mob)

The inside story of the law's battle to remove the influence and corruption of organized crime from Sin City's streets and casinos.

In the 1970s and thru the mid-1980s, the Chicago Outfit was the dominant organized crime family in Las Vegas, with business interests in several casinos. During those years the Outfit and its colleagues in Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were using Sin City as a cash cow. Commonly referred to as the "skim," unreported revenue from Outfit-controlled casinos was making its way out of Vegas by the bag full and ending up in the coffers of the crime bosses in those four locations.

The skim involved large amounts of money. The operation had to be properly set up and well managed to ensure a smooth cash flow. To accomplish that goal, the gangsters brought in a front man with no criminal record to purchase several casinos. Allen R. Glick, doing business as the Argent Corporation (Allen R. Glick Enterprises) purchased the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina. They next installed Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal as their inside man, and the real boss of the casino operations. Rosenthal was a Chicago native and considered to be a genius when it came to oddsmaking and sports betting. Under Lefty's supervision the casino count rooms were accessible to mob couriers.

But even with the competent Rosenthal in charge, there remained room for problems. What if an outsider tried to muscle in on the operation? Or just as bad, suppose one of their own decided to skim the skim? To guard against such possibilities the Chicago bosses decided to send someone to Vegas to give Rosenthal a hand should trouble arise. The successful applicant had to be a person with the kind of reputation that would deter interlopers from horning in, and make internal theft too risky to try. But the mob's outside man had to be capable of action as well as threats. In other words, he had to be a man who would do whatever it took to protect the Outfit's interests. So, in 1971, 33-year-old Tony Spilotro, considered by many to be the "ultimate enforcer," was sent to the burgeoning gambling and entertainment oasis in the desert. Spilotro, sometimes called "tough Tony," or "the Ant," was a made man of the Outfit and a childhood friend of Rosenthal. He was known as a man who could be counted on to get the job done.

Being an ambitious sort, Tony quickly recognized that there were other criminal opportunities in his new hometown besides skimming from the casinos. Street crimes ranging from loan sharking to burglary, robbery, and fencing stolen property were all in play. It wasn't very long before Tony had his hands into every one of these areas. As the scope of his criminal endeavors grew, Tony brought in other heavies from Chicago to fill out his gang. The five-foot-six-inch gangster was soon being called the "King of the Strip."

Federal and local law enforcement recognized the need to rid the casinos of the hidden ownership and control of the mob, and shut down Spilotro's street rackets. They declared war on organized crime and the battle was on. It was a hard fight, with plenty of tough guys on both sides. But it was a confrontation the law knew it had to win.

The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law Vs. the Mob relates the story of that conflict, told in large part by the agents and detectives who lived it.

Tweet

The Battle between Steve and Elaine Wynn Over the Wynn Resorts Casino Empire Escalates

The former wife of Wynn Resorts Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn has filed a counterclaim in a lawsuit filed in Clark County District Court that is putting her ouster from the Wynn board a year ago back in the public spotlight.

Elaine Wynn, a co-founder of the company and its third-largest shareholder, sought to regain control of her company stock, which has been restricted by an agreement reached in 2010 that she now says her ex-husband breached.

The claim was filed Monday as part of Wynn Resorts’ lawsuit against former partner Kazuo Okada and his company, Aruze USA Inc., and Okada’s countersuit against Wynn.

Steve Wynn disputed Elaine Wynn’s claims Monday in statements issued through the company and a personal spokesperson.

Elaine Wynn said her ex-husband orchestrated her ouster from the Wynn board of directors in retaliation for asking questions about the “tone at the top,” the absence of internal controls, the withholding of information from the board and the “reckless activity of the CEO and others in the company.”

Elaine Wynn said as a result of her removal from the board, she no longer has a meaningful avenue to protect her economic interest in the company and because Steve Wynn and the board have failed to address the matter, she said she had no choice but to proceed with legal action.

She is seeking a judicial determination that the January 2010 stockholders’ agreement which prohibits her from transferring stock that she owns without Steve Wynn’s permission and gives him all rights to vote her stock, is invalid and unenforceable.

Steve Wynn responded to the allegations in statements from the company and from a personal spokesperson.

The company said that Elaine Wynn’s counterclaim “simply not true and are rehashed from her previous, unfounded statements made during her proxy campaign” in which she lost election to the Wynn board in collecting 7 percent of the votes cast.

Elaine Wynn conducted a dissident campaign last year that ended in shareholders re-electing two board-recommended candidates, John Hagenbuch and J. Edward Virtue, to the board at the company’s annual meeting on April 24. At the time, Elaine Wynn said while disappointed in the vote outcome, she felt she stood for being “an agent for change and improvement for this company which I love so deeply.”

Steve Wynn responded to the allegations in statements from the company and from a personal spokesperson.

Through a personal spokesperson, Steve Wynn called Elaine Wynn “a disappointed ex-wife who is seeking to tarnish the reputation of Wynn Resorts and Steve Wynn and their daughters.”

“This lawsuit is filled with lies and distortions and is an embarrassment to Ms. Wynn and her counsel,” the statement said. “This is simply an attempt to inflict personal pain on Mr. Wynn.”

Steve Wynn said his ex-wife never raised the issues stated in the court claim in her 13 years on the board of directors and that she agreed to the terms of the 2010 stockholders’ agreement when it was drafted and at the time of the couple’s divorce.

“What particularly saddens Mr. Wynn among the many falsehoods is the assertion that Mr. Wynn’s estate planning does not provide for his daughters and grandchildren,” the statement said. “This is untrue in every sense of the word and is a shocking allegation for a mother to make concerning family.

“This is an action unbecoming of a long-time director, significant shareholder and mother.”

Steve Wynn, 74, developer of The Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio in addition to the Wynn properties, is worth $2.7 billion, while Elaine Wynn, 73, is worth $1.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Court papers show the Wynns married in 1963, divorced in 1986, remarried in 1991, and divorced again in 2010.

Elaine Wynn controls 9.4 percent of Wynn Resorts’ stock, while Steve Wynn controls 11.8 percent, Reuters data show.

The company’s stock was largely unaffected Monday, closing down 0.68 percent or 64 cents to $92.83 on average trading.

Tweet

National DNA Database Created to Enhance Anti-terror Fight

Italy on Friday approved the creation of a national DNA database to allow greater cooperation among states in the fight against terrorism, a step in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks that killed 31 people and injured around 300.

The database would store the DNA samples from different categories of people including those who are being held in custody or under house arrest, those who are arrested while committing a crime, the presumed authors of voluntary crimes and convicts with a definitive sentence.

Based on the new law, profiles can be retained for a maximum of 40 years while biological samples would be destroyed after 20 years.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano hailed the database as a "formidable power tool from the IT point of view." He said the database will allow to store DNA information of fundamental importance both in the fight against terrorism, and against organized crime and irregular immigration.

The move came in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks. Local media said among the victims there could be also an Italian national, Patricia Rizzo, an official for a European Commission agency who is presently listed among the missing people.

Justice Minister Andrea Orlando stressed that the DNA database will be crucial to increase the security level in Italy. He said the data collection will start soon in the coming days and will not only ease investigations but also help deal with cases that had been considered unresolved so far.

Italian experts agree that Italy has one of the most advanced anti-terrorism systems in Europe, but the strategic aim should be increased exchange of information with European Union (EU) member states, an objective which looks very hard to achieve.

"In a geopolitical scenario where it is difficult to get along as regards short term migration policies, I wonder whether it is possible that (EU) member states give up one of the cornerstones of their sovereignty, that is to say their intelligence," Rome Prefect Franco Gabrielli was quoted as saying by Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"Robust increase in public investment, and with a common intelligence, defense and foreign policy should be put at the center of the anti-terror fight," Italy's leading economic daily

Il Sole 24 Ore said.

As part of anti-terrorism measures, according to Alfano also on Friday, Italy has repatriated nine terror-related people so far this year and a total of 75 last year. The latest was a Moroccan

national and former president of a local Islamic center "known for his fundamentalist stance and desire to go fight in Syria."

Earlier this week, Italian leaders called for a European common strategy as the only effective tool against the terrorist threat as the country raised security measures at airports, railway stations, subways, and all places considered at risk.

Thanks to Marzie De Giuli.

Tweet

An Offer We Can't Refuse - The Mafia in the Mind of America

It's ironic that at a time when the real-life Mafia has never been weaker, its grip on the American consciousness has never been stronger. Just as Westerns - first as novels, then television shows and movies - did not become popular until long after the frontier was settled, the Mafia seems to be reaching a media peak even as its leaders die, get sent away or turn state's evidence.


It's been all but conceded that "The Sopranos" is the greatest thing on television ever, and "The Godfather" trilogy continues to occupy a huge space in the cultural landscape. Mafioso appear regularly in movies, television shows, commercials and even animated cartoons. Robert De Niro provided the voice for a piscine godfather in the movie "Shark Tale."

Why the public so loves media portrayals of the Mafia is the subject of George De Stefano's "An Offer We Can't Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America." Journalist De Stefano traces the roots of the American Mafia to southern Italy and explains how prejudice against Italian immigrants fostered the growth of organized crime here even as it exaggerated the Mafia's reach and power.


Early portrayals of Italian criminals were crude and racist, but the public's fascination with stylish outlaws eventually gave celluloid gangsters an anti-hero cachet. While disparaging earlier, racist depictions of the Mafia, De Stefano has little patience with Italian-Americans who think "The Sopranos" and "Goodfellas" hurt the community. It is too well established and too successful to be hurt by Tony Soprano's excesses. In fact, the author singles out "The Sopranos" for its realistic portrayal of the Mob as chaotic and in decline, hardly the omnipotent syndicate of popular fiction.

The subject is a fascinating one, but "An Offer We Can't Refuse" only partly delivers. For one, it feels padded. Scarcely a page goes by without a lengthy quotation from an Italian-American critic, actor or social commentator. No point is made unless it is belabored. Nonetheless, people who want to know how we got from Edward G. Robinson's Rico "Little Caesar" Bandello to James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano will enjoy this book.

Thanks to James Sweeney

Tweet

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires By Selwyn Raab

As the Mafia grew into a malignantly powerful force during the middle of the last century, it owed much of its success to its low-priority ranking as a law enforcement target. During most of his reign as FBI director from 1924 to 1972, J. Edgar Hoover denied that the Mafia even existed. In the late 1950s, Hoover was ''still publicly in denial" that there was such a thing as the Mafia, writes Selwyn Raab in ''Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires," his engaging history of the New York mob.

Even Hoover, who hesitated to tackle mob cases because they were difficult to win and might corrupt his agents, grudgingly came around. ''Five Families," a gritty cops-and-robbers narrative and a meticulous case history of an extraordinary law enforcement mobilization, shows how the federal government finally brought the Mafia down.

Raab, a former reporter for The New York Times whose beat was organized crime, exudes the authority of a writer who has lived and breathed his subject. Indeed, Raab seems too attached to every last nugget that he has unearthed. ''Five Families" bogs down in places under the groaning weight of excessive, repetitious detail.

Even as he tosses congratulatory bouquets to the cops for having reduced the mob to a ''fading anachronism," as one of them puts it, Raab inserts a cautionary note. The redeployment since 9/11 of US law enforcement personnel from an anti-Mafia to an antiterrorism posture is providing Cosa Nostra -- as the Italian-American organized-crime syndicates refer to themselves, meaning ''Our Thing" -- a ''renewed hope for survival," Raab says.

If they are to prosper again, all five of New York's mob families (the Gambinos, Luccheses, Colombos, Genoveses, and Bonannos) must first rebuild their leadership. The top bosses of the five families, along with many underlings, have been convicted in racketeering prosecutions and sentenced to long terms in federal prison. Those prosecutions constitute ''arguably the most successful anticrime expedition in American history," according to Raab.

The decades-long jelling of the law enforcement response to the Mafia threat commands Raab's close attention. An impetus came from Democratic Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, whose subcommittee investigated labor racketeering in the late 1960s. One key behind-the-scenes figure -- an American hero, in Raab's account -- was G. Robert Blakey, who helped craft the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations legislation as an aide to McClellan and, as a crusading law professor, tirelessly promoted the statute's use after Congress enacted it in 1970.

The law enabled prosecutors to throw the book at top mobsters, who otherwise would have been able to insulate themselves more easily from criminal accountability. Electronic surveillance, which a related law authorized, added another invaluable weapon to the federal prosecutors' arsenal.

Another of Raab's heroes, G. Bruce Mouw, supervised the FBI's Gambino Squad. Mouw's relentless, six-year investigation of John Gotti stands as a model of aggressive anti-Mafia pursuit. Gotti, whom the tabloids dubbed ''the Teflon Don," beat federal charges three times. Mouw produced ironclad evidence of Gotti's guilt by identifying an old lady's apartment as the Gambino godfather's clandestine inner sanctum and bugging it. Prosecutors nailed the Teflon Don in a fourth trial.

As for the villains portrayed by Raab, they and their operatic brutality seem endless. Raab's profiles of such ogres as Joseph ''Crazy Joe" Gallo or Salvatore ''Sammy the Bull" Gravano quickly dispel any Hollywood depiction of mobsters as lovable rogues or, as in the case of Tony Soprano of HBO's prize-winning series, as an angst-ridden man groping for life's meaning.

Mobsters typically start out as losers, dropouts from school at an early age. They are natural bullies who turn to crime out of desperation and indolence. As adults, to quote Raab's description of Gotti's wise guys, they join together as a ''hardened band of pea-brained hijackers, loan-shark collectors, gamblers, and robotic hit men."

No surprise, then, that such lowlifes would resort to violence as their modus operandi. But their cavalier acts of viciousness are nonetheless shocking. Thus, when Vito Genovese falls in love with a married cousin, he apparently has her husband strangled to death so he can marry her.

Or when Lucchese thugs believe that one of their own, Bruno Facciolo, is talking to authorities, they shoot and stab him to death. They then murder two of his mob buddies, Al Visconti and Larry Taylor, to prevent them from retaliating. Visconti is deliberately shot several times in the groin because the Luccheses believe he is a homosexual and has shamed the family.

Although ''Five Families" detours outside New York to chronicle aspects of the Cosa Nostra story, New England's Patriarcas, who deferred to New York's Gigante family, rate only passing mention. Summarizing how officials view Cosa Nostra's once-thriving 20-odd families around the country, Raab reports that those in New York and Chicago retain a ''semblance of [their] organizational frameworks," while the others, including Patriarca's, are ''in disarray or practically defunct."

Raab has much to say about what he regards as the possible involvement of a Florida mafioso, Santo Trafficante Jr., in President Kennedy's assassination. Raab theorizes that Trafficante -- who lost his organized-crime base in Havana when Fidel Castro took over and who loathed Kennedy for not unhorsing the Cuban revolutionary -- may have conspired to kill Kennedy.

Exhibit A is the confession of a gravely ill Trafficante, four days before his death in 1987, that he had had a hand in Kennedy's murder. Raab's source for the purported confession was Trafficante's longtime lawyer, Frank Ragano. Raab collaborated with Ragano on a book, ''Mob Lawyer."

Of course, any mob role in Kennedy's assassination remains a speculative matter, as Raab concedes. But in ''Five Families," he notes that ''Ragano's assertions are among the starkest signs implicating Mafia bosses in the death of President Kennedy." To buttress his theory, Raab might have mentioned that the Mafia was at or near the apex of its power in 1963, the year of Kennedy's murder.

Reviewed by Joseph Rosenbloom

Tweet