1946

A Reno, Nevada casino hired a man, new to the city and gambling, as a shill. (A shill is paid to play games in a gambling house to entice others around to do the same.) The floor manager gave him $20 (about $300 today) to gamble with at a specific game, which he did for a while. Then the shill disappeared.  

Just when the manager thought employee and cash were gone for good, the shill showed back up.

“Here’s $800” ($11,500 today), he said. “I couldn’t win in here, so I went into the club across the street and had a little better luck!”

The two guys split the winnings 50/50.

Source: Nevada State Journal, “Nevada Story: This Couldn’t Be Elsewhere,” March 3, 1946.

In Nevada, where casino operators can employ shills to play in their clubs, it was established that a licensee may not act as a shill, gambling in their own establishment. Their spouse can’t either unless playing with money other than the licensee’s personal funds.

Photo from freeimages.com: “We’ve Got a Winner” by Dimitri C.

1958

Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino.

Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of a church seminar and had gone to a bus station where he’d heard a woman purchase a ticket to Las Vegas.

On a whim, he’d done the same. With only $20 in his pocket, he’d headed to Sin City, having left his wife and two adult children behind.

Photo from freeimages.com, by Andrew Beierle

1952

When Ernest J. Primm owned the Monterey Club, a poker house in Gardena, California (a Los Angeles suburb), he claimed on his state income taxes the losses of his shills, up to $500 ($4,500 today) a month, as expenses or losses — illegitimate deductions.

Seven years later, it caught up with him. The state’s Franchise Tax Board assessed him $1,589 ($13,000 today) for that year when his enterprise grossed $1.3 million ($11.7 million today).

(Primm also owned the Embassy Club and Rainbow Club in Gardena and Club Primadonna in Reno, Nevada.)

1947-1979

“Neat appearing girls from 21 to 25 to shill and learn to deal games at Rolo Casino, 14 E. Commercial Row,” read a Help Wanted ad in the Nevada State Journal (June 6, 1947).

A shill, as later defined by the Nevada gaming authorities, is: “an employee engaged and financed by the [gambling] licensee as a player for the purpose of starting and/or maintaining a sufficient number of players in a card game” (Regulation 23).

Another type of decoy is a proposition player — “a person paid a fixed sum by the licensee for the specific purpose of playing in a card game who uses his own funds and who retains his winnings and absorbs his losses.”

During the mid-1900s in the Silver State, a shill’s purpose was twofold: to entice others to play by making it appear winning was more likely than it truly was and to spur or keep action alive at game tables. In 1954, the pay for such a job in Reno was $5 a day.

In Northern Nevada, shills most often were female. Oftentimes, they were married, residing in Reno for the requisite six weeks to be awarded a divorce and wanting to earn some money in the meantime.

Occasionally, though, they were male.

“Once in a while to liven things up, a gambling house will employ a man shill and give him $10,000. With this bundle, the man shill will up and roar and scatter large bets,” wrote columnist Stan Delaplane about Reno casinos (Reno Evening Gazette, May 6, 1957).

Casino management worried shills would succumb to temptation and steal money, so they enforced strict rules to prevent theft.

“You can tell a shill by the way she stacks her silver dollars,” Delaplane added. “They stack them five on edge, five flat and so on, so the pit boss can see exactly how much money she has at a glance. The lady shill is told to play only $1 at a time. If the game is dice, she must play only the Do Pass line.”

Female shills were prohibited from carrying a purse or wearing clothing with pockets. When reaching for a cigarette or handkerchief on their person, they had to rub their open palms together first to show they were empty.

Reeled Them In

Later, in 1979, the Silver State instituted Regulation 23, mandates with respect to gambling decoys, the use of which remains legal today (unlike in most other states). They are:

• No more than two proposition players or a combination of four shills and proposition players may play in a card game.

• Shills may only wager chips or coins.

• All of a shill’s winnings must be wagered or turned in to the card room bank at the end of play.

• When asked, casinos must identify the shills and/or proposition players on the floor.

• Casinos must display a sign saying Nevada casinos allow the use of shills and proposition players.

• Shills cannot play in such a way that disadvantages the other players.

• Gambling licensees must maintain employee records on all of their shills/proposition players.

Stakes players — “a person financed by the licensee to participate in a game under an arrangement or understanding where by such person is entitled to retain all or any portion of his winnings” — are prohibited.

Sources

Illustration: by Gil Elvgren

1941

The man who played roulette in the Palace Club nearly every day for six months was noticeable for his suave appearance. Henry Helmut, age 47, had a bit of gray hair and sported a tasteful, waxed moustache, Pince Nez glasses with ribbon and sharp, tailored attire.

“He looked like a college professor out on a gay holiday and gambling club operators say he ‘was the most impressive piece of scenery’ they have had around in a long time,” reported the United Press (The Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, Dec. 7, 1941).

Eventful Work Shift

On Friday night, December 5, while Helmut was on the job, shilling for the Reno, Nevada casino, police officers arrested then turned him over to federal agents who’d flown in from San Francisco and New York. Helmut’s capture marked the end of a 1.5-year search for him that required 37,000 travel miles through the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Helmut was wanted on a secret indictment in New York for conspiracy against the United States with international ramifications, the feds said.

The name Henry Helmut was one of 40 different aliases — including Paul Laval, Dr. Hoffman and Martin Helmuth — the dapper man had used. His actual name was Helmuth Hartmann.

On a search of Hartmann’s Reno hotel room, police found an unloaded Mauser firearm, about $350 in bills in the lining of his suitcase, gold ore and letters written in German.

Was he a German spy? Was he a drug trafficker? Was he involved in a counterfeit ring? Was he a Nazi?

The feds wouldn’t say, but they extradited Hartmann to The Big Apple to face trial.

Filling In The Portrait

More information about Hartmann later came to light. He’d been born in Germany but since had obtained American citizenship. He was associated with a New York gang. In fact, Reno Detective Captain Harry Fletcher surmised that Hartmann had been casing the local casinos on behalf of his East Coast colleagues who wanted to get into the business. The gambling club booster’s lavish spending around town on a 50 cents-an-hour income made Fletcher suspicious.

Hartmann had been an international racketeer and swindler (stock and matrimonial cons, for example), and had served time in prison. He’d been an associate of 1) Victor “Count” Von Lustig (an alias), the U.S.-based mastermind of an extensive counterfeit operation that law enforcement dismantled in 1935 and 2) Miroslav Skrivanek, a widely known narcotics trafficker in Czechoslovakia.

Recent Unlawful Activity

Hartmann had been apprehended in Reno for his involvement in an extensive conspiracy to smuggle drugs from Mexico and distribute them in New York City. The specific charges against him were conspiring to import, distribute, conceal and transport narcotics.

He’d acted as the liaison between Mafiosi in East Harlem —the 107th Street Mob — and opiate sellers south of the United States border. In doing so, he’d arranged for New York mobsters — Frank Livorsi, Dominick “The Gap” Petrilli and Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro, all with long records of violent crimes, from rape to homicide — to obtain a continuous supply of narcotics from Mexico. He’d accompanied these dealers on a drug buy, at least once, in summer 1940.

“The boys now have enough money to buy all the narcotics you can find in Mexico,” Livorsi had told Hartmann. “Do a good job for us” (Advisory Committee, Feb. 16, 1946).

In Northern Nevada, officers also had discovered opiates, in sample-size quantities, in Hartmann’s belongings:

• 200 grains of heroin
• 41 grains of raw opium
• 133 grains of morphine hydrochloride

Punitive Consequences

Once in federal custody, Hartmann divulged what he knew about the narcotics operations and fingered numerous accomplices. This led to a second indictment, in which he also was named, in Arizona, the state through which the drugs entered the U.S.

Hartmann was found guilty in both the Arizona (May 1942) and New York (July 1942) trials. In each, he was given a suspended sentence of two years’ prison time, with probation.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Pince Nez felts by Infrogmation of New Orleans