1944 stock certificate signed by Pat Mooney

1940-1953

In 1946, Pat Mooney, chief field deputy of the Nevada Internal Revenue (IR) Bureau office, made gambler-Mobster Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer* an offer he couldn’t refuse.

If the gambling club owner purchased $52,400 ($699,000 today) worth of shares in the Mountain City Consolidated Copper Co. (MCCCC) then his 1945 federal tax debt in that same amount would be erased and prosecution avoided. Mooney would prepare Remmer’s tax return to ensure that be the case.

The Bay Area-based racketeer accepted. Remmer paid $2,400 ($32,000 today) for 6,000 shares at $0.40 apiece.

Like him, hundreds of other California and Nevada and business people, including convicted abortionist Gertrude Jenkins of San Francisco, took a similar deal over the previous handful of years. Here are some of The Silver State gamblers who did so between July 1943 and May 1946 and what they paid:

These and all of the other people who bought MCCCC stock had tax problems that disappeared subsequently.

Mining Misrepresentations

Along with Mooney, the key perpetrators of the scam were Ernest M. Schino, chief field deputy for the tax bureau in Northern California, and Martin Hartmann, an ex-con turned MCCCCC sales agent. They told prospective shareholders that the corporation owned a reputable, producing copper mine sitting on valuable property that included 14 mining claims, a mill site and water rights. They touted the fact that the land adjoined that of the producing Rio Tinto copper mine in Nevada’s Elko County, owned by Anaconda subsidiary Mountain City Copper Co., a different entity from MCCCC. 

In reality, MCCCC didn’t have a working mine. The company had no value, and, thus, the stock was worthless. The property was nothing more than “a rathole in Nevada,” Frank Dwyer of the San Francisco Stock Exchange told the San Francisco Examiner (Aug. 29, 1950).

Mooney founded and incorporated MCCCC in 1937, allegedly spent $137,000 on some work there, including a geophysical survey of the land and some underground work in 1944, but that was all. By 1950, MCCCC had about 600 shareholders, a major one being Robert L. Douglass, an IR collector in Nevada.

Compounding The Crime

As promised, Mooney calculated and filled out Remmer’s tax returns not just for 1945 but for all of the five years between 1942 and 1947, a violation of IR regulations. Specifically, the bureau’s employees were prohibited from doing any work that could affect a person’s tax liability and/or from moonlighting in any capacity in which their personal and professional interests would conflict.

Scandal Sees Sunlight

In early 1950, the San Francisco Examiner exposed the IR scheme and the workers involved. Subsequently, William A. Burkett testified before Senator Estes Kefauver’s United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce in San Francisco in November 1950, telling them what he knew about it.  He previously quit his position as the IR intelligence chief for Northern California after his department ignored his reports on the MCCCC stock extortion in what he alleged was a coverup.

“The Internal Revenue office hearing [before the Kefauver Committee] showed … that established law enforcement and investigative officers were in many cases the exploiters rather than the exploited in their relationships with the underworld,” William Howard Moore wrote in The Kefauver Committee and the Politics of Crime, 1950-1952.

Probe, Legal Action Ensue

After an investigation by East Coast U.S. Treasury agents into related tax cases going back to 1940, the federal government pursued a lawsuit against Mooney, Schino and Hartmann for a single extortion case, the one involving Jenkins, the abortionist, who purchased $5,000 worth of MCCCC shares. By this time, Mooney was 81 and retired, Schino was 55 and fired. Hartmann was 63.

A federal grand jury indicted the trio for attempting to defraud the U.S. government by attempting to obstruct the IR bureau’s prosecution of Jenkins for income tax evasion.

Ralph Read, head of the IR bureau’s intelligence unit in San Francisco, said that his team, after investigating the Jenkins case years earlier, concluded “there was nothing involving any Internal Revenue personnel” and “there was nothing in the nature of solicitation of a bribe or any act to influence an Internal Revenue officer” (San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 30, 1950).

In early 1952, federal prosecutors tried Mooney, Schino and Hartmann together. A jury found all three guilty.

Schino and Hartmann appealed the ruling, but in December 1953, the Ninth U S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it. Schino’s sentence was two years in prison, Hartmann’s was two years in prison plus a $5,000 ($49,000 today) fine. Mooney got two years’ probation and a $5,000 fine.

As for gambler-Mobster Remmer, he later was convicted of federal tax evasion and sentenced to a $20,000 ($194,000 today) fine and five years prison, of which he served 2.5.

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* Remmer’s gambling houses included the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe in Crystal Bay, Nevada; and in California, the Menlo Club, 110 Eddy and B&R Smokeshop in San Francisco; the 21 in El Cerrito; and the Oaks Club in Emeryville.

Sources

Frost, 1936

1906-1967

Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and businessman, George Wingfield, Sr. Frost had a checkered past, which eventually got him blacklisted from Nevada’s gambling industry.

Here we present the “work” (criminal) highlights of Frost, tracking him geographically through Illinois, then California and, finally, Nevada.

Chicago, 1906-1930: Murder Charge By Age 30

Though Frost was born in California, he spent most of his youth in Chicago and eventually became part of its North Side Aiello–Moran gang (Giuseppe “Joe” Aiello and George “Bugs” Moran), which was involved heavily in bootlegging during the 1920s. Frost, who used the aliases Eddie Ryan, Frank Bruna and Frank Citro there, was arrested three or four times for disorderly conduct but wasn’t charged.

Also, Frost was the primary suspect in the November 16, 1928 machine gun murder of John G. Clay, head of the Laundry and Fyehouse Chauffeurs’ Union. Police theorized that Moran ordered the hit because Clay was thwarting Moran’s attempts to muscle in on the cleaning and dyeing racket in The Windy City’s West and South Sides, Alphonse “Scarface” Capone’s territory. Though Frost was arrested for the murder, he wasn’t charged.

In a supposed act of retaliation by Capone, some of his soldiers, disguised as police officers, lined up and machine gunned down six of Moran’s men on February 14, 1929, nearly wiping out his crew. Initially, Frost was thought to be among the victims of what was dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Afterward, Frost switched his allegiance to Capone.

When Chicago Tribune crime reporter, Alfred “Jake” Lingle was murdered June 9, 1930, police traced the gun, left at the scene, back to Frost but determined that a Leo V. Brothers was the shooter.

Frost

Los Angeles, 1930-1934: Not Staying Out Of Trouble

Frost was indicted by a grand jury for accessory to the Lingle crime because he presumably had guilty knowledge of the killer(s) and their motives, but he was in Los Angeles at the time, using the alias Frank Foreman. He was captured there on July 1, 1930, arrested, returned to Chicago and placed in the county jail. After five months, though, he had to be released by law, so he got out on a $20,000 ($309,000 today) bond.

In March of the next year, Frost testified at Brothers’ trial. Also called to the stand was a witness who said he saw Frost and Brothers flee the scene in different directions after Lingle was shot. One detail the witness recounted was seeing Frost help Brothers light a cigarette afterward so Brothers didn’t have to take one of his hands out of his pocket.

The trial of Frost, for his alleged involvement in Lingle’s murder, was scheduled for April 28, but it never took place because the witnesses disappeared. Frost was back in Los Angeles when he learned, in June, that charges against him were dropped.

In September, Frost was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with a scheme to extort money from the widow of soap magnate, Leo Bergin. Bergin racked up a gambling debt of at least $6,000 ($102,000 today) in a days-long dice game run by representatives of New York gambler-Mobster Arnold Rothstein. Bergin wrote some checks for what he owed but later stopped payment on some. Before Rothstein’s men could collect in full, Bergin died, so they went after Gladys Bergin for payment. Due to lack of evidence, Frost wasn’t charged.

The following year, 1932, in February, a patrol officer pulled over Frost, who was working at the time as a bail bondsman. A search of the new car he was driving yielded a fully loaded, 0.45-caliber automatic pistol. Frost also had with him a letter from a “Ben” in New York, possibly Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, which read in part, “Other people out there are trying to keep out of trouble, but are always in touch with New York. Glad you have gone into the bonding business, as that is good cover for the business you are in.” Frost was found guilty of carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. Because he then failed to appear at a hearing of arguments concerning a possible new trial, the judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

A month later, police in San Francisco raided an apartment in their investigation of a $100,000 ($1.8 million today) jewelry robbery and took the four men inside to the station. Frost was among them. It resulted in a vagrancy charge (that later would be removed) and him being returned to the City of Angels. He was sentenced to six months in the county jail for the concealed weapon offense. Frost, though, disappeared, and a nationwide hunt for him began. Before he could be found, the appellate court reversed his conviction.

Presumably, the man who repeatedly had gotten away with crimes laid low in Southern California for the next few years.

Reno, 1935-1967: Focus On Gambling, Business

Frost next turned up living with his wife in The Biggest Little City. Only five months later, in April 1936, he was arrested for allegedly stealing $125,000 ($2.3 million today) worth of jewelry from a New York City store that January. For the story, see next blog post, Reno Mobsters Aid Gangster From Chicago, Raising Suspicions.

In 1938, the owner of a New York clothing store, Cy Kronfield Inc., sued Frost for $630.85 ($11,500 today) for not paying for goods and services it provided to him between 1933 and 1939.

Using the name Frank Foster, Frost was arrested in Elko, a city about 300 miles northeast of Reno, in May 1940 for attempted burglary of the Reinhart general merchandise store. Two months later, he was arrested and served 30 days in jail in Reno for “prowling through parked automobiles” (Reno Evening Gazette, Dec. 10, 1940). In June 1941, he was arrested for petty larceny after getting caught trying to sell children’s clothes he’d stolen from somewhere.

Frost reportedly ran or helped run the race horse pool at Graham and McKay’s Bank Club for several years, after which he opened and operated his own book, the Reno Turf Club.

In 1947’s first half, Frost applied for another gambling license from the city, this one for a new entity, Washoe Sports News, which was to supply race results from the Trans-America News and Publishing Co. wire service to local outlets. On behalf of Capone, Siegel was tasked with forcing bookmakers on the West Coast to switch to Trans-America from Continental Press. While the city council was mulling over whether or not to eliminate the existing cap on the number of race pools allowed in Reno, because granting Frost the license would’ve exceeded it, Trans-America went bankrupt and folded after its primary owner-operator was murdered. Soon afterward, Siegel was killed, too, and Frost withdrew his gambling application.

In 1951, Frost sold the Reno Turf Club. Afterward, he returned to working at the Bank Club, supposedly wrapping money. However, members of the Nevada Tax Commission, the entity which in 1947 gained the task of issuing state gambling licenses, saw him overseeing a game of faro there once. Because of his criminal background, the commissioners didn’t want Frost involved with running the gambling in any Silver State casino.

However, they spotted him again doing just that, counting money and giving orders at Reno’s Palace Club. After a related brouhaha, the casino banned him from working there in 1953, and after that, according to Frost, he no longer could get a job in the state’s gaming industry.

Dorothy Frost

In 1955, Frost’s wife Dorothy, a Manitoba, Canada native, took her life by overdosing on sleeping pills.

His Final Years

The widower remained in Reno and was involved subsequently in some shady business dealings, which came to light through various lawsuits. Frost held and breached the lease on the Mt. Rose Sawmill. In an incident that led to a lawsuit, Frost physically prevented a competing lumber firm (Frost owned the Nevada Pine Mill and Lumber Co.) from taking from the sawmill wood it purchased. Also, he was sued for failing to pay for lumber he bought from a Lake Tahoe man.

In another arrangement, Frost was a co-partner with McKay and Marion T. Weller in F.M.W. Drilling Co. In 1957, an employee sued F.M.W. for not paying him $1,650 ($15,000 today), the remainder of wages due him for building an oil derrick.

In 1961, a Frank Frost appeared to be working at the local Buick dealership as the assistant general sales manager. It may or may not have been him.

The Mobster Frost, who’d left a trail of crime in his wake, passed away on April 1, 1967 at age 68 in Nevada.

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