The Friars Club in Beverly Hills had been a favorite haunt of Hollywood celebrities and the area’s wealthy since 1946, but something underhanded began happening there in the 1960s, unbeknownst to most of its 670 members.

Friendly Wagering

Card playing for money was a regular activity at the Southern California hangout. Games included poker, bridge, panguingue and klabberjass.* Gin rummy was the most popular and usually played for $0.02 or $0.03 cents a point, resulting in wins/losses of about $300 to $400 ($2,500 to $3,200 today).

The third floor of the $750,000 ($10 million today) club, at 9900 Santa Monica Blvd. was dedicated primarily to that activity. Stark with bright lights and hard surfaces, the expanse included a large card room for gin rummy and two smaller private spaces for poker.

“Inside it looks not unlike a Brinks counting house,” described the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 9, 1967).

To access the gambling amenities, visitors entered a plain, mirrored door, at which a guard stood to ensure only members and their guests went through.

In contrast, the second floor showcased high ceilings, muted lighting, warm-hued carpeting, oak paneling and inviting colors: burnt gold, maroon and mauve.  A small bar and a large dining room with a long elaborate buffet comprised the main areas. (The first floor contained a parking area.)

To be a Friars Club member, people had to donate a large sum of money, around $1,500 (about $13,000 today), to charity and subsequently pay $40 (about $350 today) a month in dues.

Gin rummy hand

Chicanery Comes To Light

In July 1967, five federal agents inspected the A listers’ hotspot for four hours. This led to a roughly six-month federal grand jury investigation, for which 75 people were subpoenaed to testify. Some flat out refused, some pleaded the Fifth.

The inquiry uncovered a surreptitious card cheating scheme. Players’ cards were spied on through holes cut in the ceiling, directly over the gambling tables, and covered with fake air vents. Based on everyone’s cards, the observer in the attic, relayed to his partner in the game what moves to make.

This was done through an electronic device, worn by the person at the table, which emitted silent taps. The sender and receiver used their own system of coded signals. For instance, when the player wanted to know whether or not to put down his cards, he placed his empty palm flat on the table. A single tap by his accomplice meant don’t knock, and no tap was a green light.

The perpetrators of the cheat had bilked Friars members this way for five years, between 1962 and 1967, the government alleged.

“Millionaires and celebrities, proud of their ability at gin rummy, [individually] lost up to $100,000 [$800,000 today] in games against opponents who knew what cards they were holding. Few even guessed they were being cheated,” reported the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 9, 1967).

Among the victims were Tony Martin, singer; Harry Karl, shoe magnate and Debbie Reynolds’ husband; Zeppo Marx, comedian and actor; Phil Silvers, comedic actor; and Theodore “Ted” Briskin, former Chicago camera manufacturer and, previously, Betty Hutton’s husband. The government claimed that in less than one year, Friars Club members and guests’ losses due to cheating totaled $400,000 ($3.3 million today).

Quartet To Be Tried

Ultimately, the federal government charged five men with various infractions related to conspiring to swindle people, including interstate transportation to aid racketeering, interstate transportation of funds obtained by fraud and under-reporting income, and totaling 49 counts among them. The alleged criminals were:

• Maurice “Maury” H. Friedman, 62, developer of the Frontier hotel-casino in Las Vegas
• Warner T. Richardson, 62, Frontier casino manager
• Johnny Rosselli, 62, Los Angeles-based Chicago Mobster
• Manuel “Ricky” Jacobs, 48, Beverly Hills professional gambler, promoter of legalized panguingue and owner of a Santa Monica card club
• Benjamin J. Teitelbaum, 53, wealthy art collector and co-owner of a studio equipment manufacturing company

All but Richardson were Friars Club members.

Genesis Of The Cheating

Friedman concocted the scheme with Richardson and hired William Douglas (unindicted ), an electronics expert, to modify the ceiling and install the tapper. At some point, Friedman hired George Emerson Seach (the key witness in the trial) to install and maintain better equipment because the initial system was problematic. When Seach went to prison for an unrelated offense, Friedman replaced him with Miami-based electronics engineer, Edwin Gebhard (refused to testify before the grand jury).

Friedman invited Al Mathes, famed restaurateur (granted immunity for his testimony), and Rosselli, to join the swindle. Mathes did the same with Teitelbaum.

“As more conspirators were brought into the scheme, the prosecutor said, there was ‘dissatisfaction over the division of the proceeds,'” reported the Los Angeles Times in its trial coverage (July 26, 1968).

Jacobs also cheated card players at the Friars Club but using a different method. During play, he and his accomplice conveyed to each other in conversation, using a version of alphabet code, what cards they needed.

After the five co-conspirators were indicted, Friedman gave Seach $25,000 ($186,000 today) and offered another $25,000 so he’d lie about Friedman’s involvement in the Friars Club scandal. Richardson offered Seach $5,000 to say Richardson hadn’t had anything to do with the scam. Teitelbaum threatened Seach, telling him, “He who digs a hole for others falls in himself.” These actions came out in the trial.

“The defendants have approached witnesses in an attempt to have them withhold evidence,” one of the prosecuting assistant U.S. attorneys said in his opening statement (Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1968).

The Verdict Is In

During the trial, which commenced June 12, 1968, Friedman admitted that he’d rigged games and cheated at the Friars Club but claimed he hadn’t done it past 1962, the time when the five-year statute of limitations no longer applied. He said his motive hadn’t been money. Rather, it had been to get back at Briskin, an excellent gin rummy player who regularly beat Friedman at it. As for having tried to pay off Seach, Friedman claimed Seach had shaken him down for the money.

Finally, after 68 witnesses and 200-plus exhibits, the nearly six month-long trial neared its end in January 1969. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for 22 hours. They found all five defendants guilty. Subsequently, though, Richardson was acquitted.

Judge William P. Gray meted out these sentences, listed from most to least severe:

Friedman: 6 year prison term and $100,000 fine (months later, he’d get three more years for bribery in the Friars Club case)
Rosselli: 5 year prison term and $55,000 fine
Jacobs: 4 year prison term and $5,000 fine
Teitelbaum: 4 year prison term and $75,000 fine

Before the court, Gray told Friedman his “cynical cheating of people was cold and calculated.” He added, “Even wealthy people are entitled to the protection of the laws” (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 1969).

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* Klabberjass, pronounced “klobber-yoss” and thus often simply called klob, is a Hungarian, combination poker and gin rummy card game.

Photo from pond5.com: Gin Rummy Hand

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1963-1964

Caifano/Marshall

Mobsters Marshall Caifano (aka Johnny Marshall) and Charles Delmonico were arrested in Las Vegas on a federal warrant in July 1963 for conspiracy to commit extortion and engaging in interstate transportation in the aid of racketeering.

The latter charge was because the two supposedly schemed in California to commit the crime and then tried to finish carrying it out in Nevada. The two pleaded innocent and were released on $20,000 bond apiece (about $165,000 today).

Caifano/Marshall (born Marcello Giuseppe Caifano), age 54, had been listed in Nevada’s Black Book of personae non gratae in the state’s casinos since 1960. He was a prime suspect in several murders in Chicago, Illinois, his stomping grounds before Las Vegas.

Delmonico

Delmonico, age 36, was actually Charles “Chuck” James Tourine. He was the son of Genovese capo Charlie “The Blade” Tourine, a former gambler in Las Vegas and Cuba.

The mobsters’ target was Raymond “Ray” J. Ryan, wealthy head of the Ryan Oil Co. in Evansville, Indiana, owner of the El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs, California and a high-rolling gambler.

The Alleged Crime

The story, pieced together from various newspaper accounts, Caifano/Marshall and Delmonico picked up Ryan at the El Mirador on April 30 and drove off. Ryan, unfamiliar with the men, had vetted them through his friend John S. Drew, then the co-owner of the Chicago Outfit-owned Stardust in Vegas, but also had two of his hotel employees trail the mobsters and Ryan in another car.

Ryan

In the back seat with Ryan, Caifano/Marshall demanded he pay him $15,000 and $60,000 in short order and then $60,000 each subsequent year. The first amount was to settle a supposed debt to high roller Nicholas “Nick the Greek” A. Dandolos resulting from a poker game Dandolos and Ryan had played 15 years before, in 1949. The annual $60,000 was protection money, as the Outfit had averted Ryan getting kidnapped in the past, for free, it claimed, but not anymore.

Delmonico hit Ryan in the chest to emphasize the mobsters’ message. Yet Ryan said he wouldn’t give them any money, and they argued. Eventually, though, they let him go because he had a flight scheduled later that day to Las Vegas.

On May 1, in Ryan’s Desert Inn hotel room, Caifano/Marshall told Ryan they were going for a ride in the desert because Ryan hadn’t forked over any cash. The mobster forced Ryan into the hallway, where he spotted Delmonico and Dandolos. The oil tycoon made a run for it, shielded himself behind a full luggage rack, got to the lobby and had a security guard contact the authorities.

Facing The Heat

Caifano/Marshall and Delmonico’s trial began in Los Angeles in January 1964, with Thomas Sheridan, assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the criminal division for Southern California, prosecuting the case.

Dandolos, 81, testified that he and Ryan had known one another for 32 years and often had played cards together, for as long as five consecutive weeks at a time, with some games lasting five or more hours.

The supposed debt, Dandolos said, had stemmed from an August 1949, lowball poker game by the pool at the Flamingo or the Thunderbird in Las Vegas (reports differed on this point), during which Ryan allegedly had cheated him out of $550,000 ($5.8 million today). He claimed Ryan had used a shortwave radio to learn what cards Dandolos had either from someone who could see them somehow via a set of mirrors or from someone on the roof with a telescope (again, reports varied). (The money Dandolos had played with in that game supposedly had been put up by Chicago high rollers, thus, Ryan’s allegedly swindling the bundle from Dandolos enraged the Outfit.)

Dandolos said Ryan had paid back only $26,000 ($275,000). The big-time gambler said he had four men looking for Ryan to collect on the alleged gambling debt of $524,000 ($4.3 million), which was the $550,000 minus the $26,000.

Was Dandolos willingly in cahoots with the mobsters for some reason, perhaps because he needed money? Or were the mobsters using Dandolos to scam Ryan out of thousands of dollars?

Strange Twist

On the tenth day of the trial, Dandolos files a lawsuit against Ryan for $1,572,000 ($12.8 million) in damages and in which he charged Ryan had welched on the $524,000 he owed him from that 1949 rigged lowball poker game. Why hadn’t Dandolos filed the suit sometime during the past 15 years? Had the mobsters forced him to do so during their trial?

Back To Testimonies

Ryan took the stand and recounted that he’d won $15,000, not $550,000, during that very same 1949 poker game at the Flamingo. He said that later, Dandolos had asked him for $15,000, which he’d given him in cash, and he subsequently had loaned Dandolos $1,000 twice.

One witness, Lonnie Joe Chadwick, who Ryan claimed knew of the extortion attempt, was called by both the prosecution and defense. In a secret meeting in the judge’s chambers, Chadwick pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

The defense’s position was that Ryan had cheated Dandolos out of $555,000 during that 1949 poker game, as Dandolos has testified, and that neither Caifano/Marshall nor Delmonico had extorted or threatened Ryan to squeeze money out of him. Rather, they were simply trying to collect on a bad debt. In fact, the defendants, on the stand, denied trying to shake down Ryan and said they just were trying to get him to pay back Dandolos.

The defense also asserted that Ryan had contrived the extortion events to avoid making good on what he owed.

Jury And Judge

In February, the jury of nine men and three women found Caifano and Delmonico guilty.

(At the time, Caifano/Marshall was awaiting trial in Chicago on charges of conspiring to defraud an insurance firm of $48,000 [$395,000]. Delmonico had federal charges pending against him for a $22,000 [$181,000] bank robbery in Evansville committed on October 8, 1962.)

At March’s end, U.S. District Judge Jesse Curtis sentenced Caifano/Marshall to 10 years and Delmonico to two concurrent five-year stints. The men were taken into custody immediately.

The Fatal Postscript

Thirteen years after the trial, Ryan was murdered. On Tuesday, October 18, 1977, he left his neighborhood exercise club in Evansville after a workout and in the parking lot, got into his Lincoln Continental Mark IV, which then exploded into pieces.

The case went and remains cold, but the theory was advanced the Chicago Outfit had ordered the hit on Ryan in retaliation for him cheating Dandolos in that 1949 card game and for him snitching on Caifano/Marshall and Delmonico in 1963.

Featured photo from freeimages.com: Cards and Chips 3 by Chris Wrightson

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