1968-1971

A couple and a third man approached a 21 table in the Frontier in Las Vegas, Nevada on a Monday afternoon. The husband, Douglas Anderson, distracted the dealer.

In that moment, his wife, Beverly Hanson, pulled a marked deck from her purse, handed it to the other man, Fred Padilla, who swapped it for one of the sets to be used. Hanson put the real house deck in her bag.

Anderson played all six seats, and in three hands, won $6,200 (about $44,500 today).

Officers from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office’s intelligence division, who quickly appeared at the table, arrested Anderson and Padilla and confiscated Anderson’s chips and bills, which, at that time, totaled $5,300.

The dealer, T.J. Underwood, had been in on the cheat … and the bust.

Prearranging On Both Sides

Two weeks earlier, Keith Hense, a Las Vegan unknown to Underwood, had recruited him to participate in the theft for a cut of $5,000 ($36,000 today). The goal was to steal $60,000 ($430,000 today) in all after switching four stacked card decks for the house ones. At a subsequent tête-a-tête, Hense introduced Underwood to Anderson, a card shark and the ringleader, and Bob Parmane, another Vegas resident. “Look, we love money, and we hope you do, too,” Anderson told Underwood.

The dealer informed his boss about the plot, and casino security got involved. After Underwood agreed to help them catch the perpetrators in the act, they had him arrange a third meeting. That took place at the apartment of Frontier boxman Robert Moses Johns, who provided the casino’s blue monogrammed playing cards for the swindle.

End Of The Road

When the cheat took place, on March 11, undercover agents and sheriff’s deputies, who’d been milling about, heard it go down, through a wire Underwood wore. Cameras, which the security team had trained on the area, captured it on tape.

Anderson and Padilla, from California, and Hanson, from Utah, were booked on charges of obtaining money under false pretenses, grand larceny, swindling and bunco steering. Hense, Parmane (aka Robert Carl Underwood, no relation to T.J.)  and Las Vegas resident, Alan Samuels, whose role was to perform a sleight of hand to cover the crime, were booked on charges of embezzlement and conspiracy to commit grand larceny.

The Frontier pressed charges against the alleged cheaters, an unusual move in that casinos tended to deal with such individuals themselves.

Hand ‘Em Over To The Law

Nevada gaming regulators, in August of that year, publicly announced that in a policy shift, they now were encouraging gambling houses to prosecute cheaters to keep them out of the state’s casinos. They used as an example Howard Hughes, earlier that year, turning over to law enforcement the Frontier cheating suspects.

Roughly $5 to 8 million (about $36 to 57 million today) are filched each year from Nevada’s casinos by crossroaders, which results in The Silver State losing about $400,000 ($2.9 million today) in tax revenue, noted Frank Johnson, Nevada Gaming Control Board chairman.

“The idea is that the clubs don’t catch the cheater and then send him across the street to cheat somebody else,” Johnson said. “This is a step towards getting him out of circulation.”

Test Of The New Policy

Justice of the Peace Herman Fisher, Jr. ordered all six accused in the Frontier incident to stand trial on various revised charges. The videotape, the supposed smoking gun in the case, turned out to be not so helpful, as it showed a “pretty bad picture,” in Fisher’s words. Despite the quality, he allowed it to be introduced in court. The prosecution also used T.J. Underwood as a witness.

Numerous legal proceedings, defense strategies and trial delays ensued. By 1971, three years later, charges against the more peripherally involved men — Hense, Parmane/Underwood and Samuels — had been dropped.

It’s presumed that eventually the district attorney’s office also terminated the cases against Anderson, Hanson and Padilla; no accounts of actual trials, convictions or sentencing could be found in the press after April 1971.

Sources

1907

A faro game with a $50 limit (at least $1,200 today) was underway in the Tonopah Club on a Thursday night in February. Colonel Abe F. Brown, one of the three proprietors of this mining camp saloon in Central Nevada, was playing. A wealthy man, he’d accumulated his assets via gambling enterprises and playing the stock market.

Soon, Brown lost $25,000 ($630,000-plus today). He wanted the maximum bet removed, but this required consent of his partners — George Wingfield and Ed Kennedy. The manager of the Tonopah Club telephoned and explained the situation to Wingfield, who was in the town of Goldfield at the time. Wingfield permitted him to raise the limit to $5,000 ($126,000-plus today).

Brown began betting $5,000 on a single card, and before long, he was about $100,000 ahead. But then his winning streak reversed and he lost repeatedly. Roughly 24 hours later, he’d amassed a debt of  $300,000 (at least $7.5 million today)!

“It is doubtful if ever such an enormous sum of money has been lost by one man,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Feb. 25, 1907).

Brown wanted to play $50,000 more, but the dealer convinced him to stop. The gambler seemed nonplussed by the misadventure.

“Brown was as cool as a cucumber after he had lost his fortune. He arose from the table, sauntered to the bar, where he took a drink, and bidding his friends goodnight, went off to bed.”

However, the next day and subsequently, he wouldn’t discuss the event and tried to keep it out of the local papers, to no avail. It was the talk of Tonopah.*

Settling Up

Kennedy, the club’s third owner, arrived from Goldfield shortly to settle Brown’s debt with him.  Because faro was a game played against the house and Brown had a one-third interest in it, in his capacity as co-owner he won $100,000 of his personal $300,000 loss, so his net debt was actually $200,000 (at least $5 million today).

To pay it off, Brown supposedly gave his Tonopah Club co-owners 11,000 shares of the Mohawk mine, valued at $17 apiece at the time, and some other stocks.

“His fortune went the same way it came,” the newspaper noted.

The whole unpleasant incident didn’t stop Brown from twisting the tiger’s tail. The very next night, he sat in on another faro game, albeit one for smaller stakes.

————————

* Tonopah began in 1900 when prospector Jim Butler discovered silver ore in the area.

Sources

1949

Casino owners balked when the question of going on daylight saving time (DST) arose in Nevada in 1949.

Gamblers’ Outcries

Charles Mapes, owner of the Mapes hotel-casino in Reno, made a few arguments:

• “It’s difficult to put on a floor show at 9 p.m. with the sun just going down. A spotlight can’t compete with the sun when it comes to showing an attractive star to best advantage. It cuts the glamour. She should be in a bathing suit at that time of the day.”

• Extended daylight reduced night life.

• It caused restaurant patrons to alter their eating habits and all crowd the restaurant at the same time, creating problems.

• It confused out-of-town guests about hotel checkout time.

Raymond “Pappy” I. Smith, co-owner of Harolds Club, also in Reno, cited loss of business, saying casino owners would “lose their shirts unless the clocks stay put” (Nevada State Journal, May 6, 1949) and were united in this opinion.

He said his casino had lost $1,000 ($10,000 today) per night the previous year due to DST, which had been effected due to a power shortage. This year, his business couldn’t withstand such a hit as revenue had decreased 56 percent. He pointed out that another club was $70,000 in debt ($707,500 today), primarily due to the influx of California visitors having plummeted the summer before.

Playing Hot Potato

By Nevada law (as of 1946), only the governor had the authority to call or not call for daylight saving time each year. Yet in 1949, Governor Vail Pittman left the choice to each of the 13 counties because “the heads of the local county and city governments are in a better position to know the needs and desires of their people in matters of this nature than is the governor,” he said (Reno Evening Gazette, May 2, 1949).

Immediately, in April, counties began deciding. White Pine County opted to begin DST on April 17. Elko County followed suit, choosing a May 1 start date. Nye and Esmeralda Counties planned to spring forward on May 15. Likewise, based on a slew of requests for it, Washoe County tentatively agreed to DST effective May 15 pending formal approval.

When the Washoe County commissioners next met, DST opponents, including the casino heads, made their cases against a time change. Then District Attorney Harold Taber informed the governing body that, after conferring with state Attorney General Alan Bible, the two had concluded the counties lack the power to proclaim DST legally.

Consequently, Washoe County reversed its stance and tossed the issue back to Pittman. Ormsby County (now Carson City) did the same, accusing him of “passing the buck” (Nevada State Journal, May 3, 1949).

Time Change Fallout

Pittman’s final word was he wouldn’t proclaim DST on a statewide basis. This left 4 counties with their clocks already set ahead or about to be and the remaining 13 counties on standard time.

“It was presumed that the counties can remain on daylight time as long as they want to — although such action by commissioners is not legal technically,” noted the Nevada State Journal (May 10, 1949). “In other words, as long as nobody raises the point legally, any county can adopt daylight time — or any other time system — it wants if its residents are satisfied.”

Sources

Illustration from pond5: “Antique Clock Face” by StellaL 

Japanese police emblem

1974-1975

For many Japan-based businessmen, gambling trips to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada turned nightmarish.

Kikumaru Okuda, 46, also a resident of the Land of the Rising Sun, and a film producer with Toho Film Company, organized numerous trips on behalf of the Nevada hotel-casino, at the request of its president, Harry Wald. Caesars Palace paid Okuda, who’d met all of Nevada’s requirements for junketeers, $3,000 ($15,000 today) a month for his services.

The agreement with junket guests, which was typical, was that the resort would pay their airfare and hotel bills in exchange for them gambling a certain number of games while in Sin City. If they won, the casino would pay them in U.S. dollars on site. If they lost, the guests would pay in yen what they owed after returning to Japan.

Illegal Collections

In the case of a 32-year-old, Yokohama dry goods dealer, upon his return home, Okuda told him he owed $93,000 (about $455,000 today) and demanded payment. (It’s likely the man hadn’t known the size of his marker or how fast it had grown when he was in Vegas.) He refused to pay.

Soon after, Okuda’s partners —Yoshihisa Kuroda, 45, and Manabu Nakajima, 40, both corporate executives — told the debtor they had Mafia and Yakuza (Japanese organized crime members) associates who’d “liquidate” him if he didn’t pay immediately (Las Vegas Sun, July 17, 1975). He gave them $18,000 (probably all he could at the time) then reported the incident to police. (Such extortion by junketeers is why the state of Nevada, in 1972, had augmented its regulations concerning junkets.)

Consequently, in 1975, members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) investigated possible links between organized crime and gambling junkets to Las Vegas.

“In general, the situation occurred at about the same time as the movie, The Godfather, was being run in Japan, and from the point of view of the Japanese the entire affair appeared to have been engineered by organized crime interests,” wrote Jerome Skolnick in House of Cards.

Police discovered other victims, including:

• A golf course proprietor who was forced to repay $670,000 ($3.3 million today)
• A nightclub owner who had to come up with $100,000 ($490,000)
• A Tokyo jeweler who’d lost $50,000 and paid about $10,000 ($49,000)

They learned Okuda had begun the junket enterprise in January of 1974 and since then, had taken to Las Vegas 85 men, whose gambling losses had totaled $83 million ($407 million today)! Okuda had collected about $600,000 ($3 million today), two-thirds of which he’d sent to the casino through a U.S. attorney living in Japan.

The MPD arrested Okuda, Kuroda and Nakajima on charges of extorting millions of yen from Japanese citizens.

Nothing Doing

Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) agents also looked into the allegation, in the United States and in Japan. When they questioned Wald, he said he was clueless as to the intimidation tactics Okuda had been using. Further, he claimed Okuda had offered to take over junket debt collection, but Okuda asserted Wald had asked him to do it. (Caesars Palace already had been in the NGCB’s crosshairs over junkets in 1969.)

When overseas, Japanese police prevented NGCB agents from reviewing any and all related documents, saying they were being held as evidence for the trio’s upcoming trial.

Back home, Nevada gambling regulators noted that opposition to and a major media campaign against gambling and junkets was growing in Japan and said the climate there toward the U.S. industry was “economically and emotionally bad” (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 19, 1975). Silver State officials were displeased with the circumstances surrounding the junkets from Japan and the resulting strained relations with the country.

As for Okuda, the Tokyo MPD arrested him a second-time in 1975 on different junket-related charges, but what ultimately happened to him, his henchmen and Caesars Palace — if anything — is unknown.

Sources

Art from Wikimedia Commons: by Mononomic

Howard Hughes, 1973

1968

Howard Hughes, billionaire industrialist, received the Nevada Gaming Commission’s blessing to buy the Stardust hotel-casino in Las Vegas for $30.5 million and moved forward with the acquisition.

He already owned five such properties on the Strip — the Castaways, Silver Slipper, Frontier, Sands and Desert Inn. (Adding the Stardust would’ve given him control of about 14 percent of Nevada’s gambling volume.) 

A few days before the deal’s closing, however, the U.S. Department of Justice asked Hughes to delay it by 90 days so it could investigate whether the Stardust purchase would violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Instead, he abandoned the transaction altogether.

1931

Belle Livingstone wasn’t the typical Nevada gambling club owner.

She’d acted on the stage and screen in the 1890s. She’d mingled with royalty and wealth in Europe and the United States. During Prohibition, she’d operated a speakeasy on New York’s Park Avenue. During that stint, she’d been arrested three times and spent 30 days in jail for selling alcohol to her patrons. She moved to Reno, Nevada in 1931, the year the state legalized gambling.

“Reno, everybody said, was the obvious place for me; Reno was the widest-open town in America, where enforcement was a farce; in Reno the Truckee River sometimes ran dry, but never Old Man River Booze,” Livingstone wrote in her memoir, Belle Out of Order. “Besides, there was always the legal gambling!”

When Livingstone’s request for a gambling license came up for a county board vote, ranchers who lived near the location she’d chosen for her club objected. They said a casino in the neighborhood would be detrimental to the children residing there. They implored the board to investigate Livingstone’s “character and fitness to conduct such a resort” and ask her about her criminal record.

The licensing board, however, approved it in a 3-to-2 decision. In September, The Cowshed, Livingstone’s nightclub, debuted. The former cow-milking barn had been transformed into an entertainment hotspot offering gambling, dining and dancing, and it drew crowds, 1,700 people on opening night alone.

It was located on South Virginia Street, the main Reno thoroughfare, about two miles south of downtown. (For those who know the locale, it was at 2295 S. Virginia Street, which is about where El Pollo Loco is, across from the old Park Lane Mall site.) “You haven’t seen Reno if you haven’t seen Belle’s ‘Cow Shed [sic],’” advertisements declared (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 24, 1931).

Shortly thereafter, troubles surfaced for the owner/hostess. The newspapers reported that internal conflicts arose between Livingstone and her investors, and Prohibition agents raided the club, seized bottles of liquor and arrested its three bartenders.

The Octopus Rears Up

Livingstone, however, attributed the difficulties to the “four-headed Octopus which strangled every business that didn’t pay money into their till … no one could possibly operate without their sanction.” This tentacled animal that controlled Reno’s underground was financier George Wingfield and his three partners, William “Bill” Graham, James “Jim” McKay and an unknown third person, perhaps Reno Councilman William A. Justi.

“In spite of the fact that the governor had given me Nevada and the mayor had given me Reno, the underworld now gave me the works,” she added. “In the weeks that followed they installed in my place a man to provide my liquor, another to watch my cash register, others to stand back of my crap table and my roulette wheel. They carried out a campaign of psychological terrorism to the point where I felt obliged to hire a guard to watch my cottage while I slept. Finally came a complete blockage on my liquor, and what night club can exist without liquor?”

In a few months’ time, the Octopus successfully squeezed out Livingstone. In November, she headed to Dallas to run another club there.

A few days later, The Cowshed’s doors closed, and the entity became caught up in legal entanglements. In 1932, in abatement proceedings, a judge ordered the facility be locked for one year.

In May 1933, new management held a gala opening for The Cowshed, at which hundreds of attendees reveled. Success was fleeting, however, and the establishment closed and reopened a few more times before The Cowshed name was abandoned for good in 1937.

Sources

1967 & 1970

Apparently, the beloved crooner had a temper, which he sometimes unleashed when casino operators denied him additional, excessive amounts of credit when gambling.

In one instance when Frank Sinatra lost control, he wound up losing two front teeth. That was in 1967, when he provoked a fight with Carl Cohen, the manager of the Sands in Las Vegas, Nevada, yelling obscenities at him and hurling a handful of chips into his face.

The 250-pound Cohen, who also got angry, punched the star in the mouth, knocking him to the floor. Sinatra tore up the hotel switchboard, drove a golf cart through a glass window and tried to call Howard Hughes, who’d just purchased the hotel.

It’s unclear what the kerfuffle was about. The media reported it was because Cohen closed the singer’s $200,000 (about $1.4 million in today’s dollars) line of credit. Others said it was related to Sinatra ending his 16-year professional relationship with the Sands and contracting with Caesars Palace instead. Maybe it was both. You’d think the dental consequences of that incident would’ve cured Sinatra of future behavioral eruptions, but they didn’t.

Tantrum Turned Assault

In 1970, Sinatra had just begun a three-week engagement at Caesars Palace when he got into an argument with Sanford Waterman, Caesars’ casino manager. Sinatra had been playing baccarat for $8,000 a hand at a table where the limit typically was $2,000. He asked Waterman to double the limit to $16,000 (about $98,000 in today’s dollars) and let him play on credit. Waterman refused.

Sinatra threw gambling chips, squeezed Waterman’s throat hard enough to leave marks and threatened, “The mob will take care of you.” In response, Waterman pulled a 0.38-caliber revolver from his waistband and pointed it at Sinatra, which ended the scuffle. But Sinatra cancelled the remainder of his scheduled performances at Caesars because, according to his spokesperson, Sinatra was suffering from exhaustion and a recent hand surgery. Sure.

Waterman was arrested but released, as law enforcement and the district attorney figured Sinatra had been the instigator. The local sheriff, Ralph Lamb, had enough of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ rudeness and antics.

“If Sinatra comes back to town Tuesday, he’s coming downtown to get a work card, and if he gives me any trouble, he’s going to jail,” Lamb said. “I’m tired of him intimidating waiters, waitresses, starting fires and throwing pies. He gets away with too much. He’s through picking on the little people in this town. Why the owners of the hotels put up with this I plan to find out.”

Sources

Caricature: “Frank Sinatra” by Andy McDougall, ©2013 / License

Presumably to gain money, power and notoriety, a small clique of men monopolized gambling in Reno, Nevada during the 1920s and 1930s through violence, payoffs, intimidation, threats and other gangster techniques. The industry mostly was illegal, with some games allowed, until 1931.

The syndicate’s modus operandi became the example of how it was done in Nevada, a guide for their mobster friends who, later, would rule gambling in Las Vegas.

Along with games of chance, the Reno Mob offered endless alcohol during Prohibition and sex for sale. The hotbed of vice that was The Biggest Little City, along with a relaxed divorce law, spurred tourism long before Vegas became the state’s largest metropolis and took over as that industry’s leader. Further, with their dollars (and perhaps coercion), the racketeers were instrumental in getting gambling legalized in Nevada.

George Wingfield

The Strings Puller

George Wingfield, Sr. (born 1876): The man with the vision (and gobs of money at the time), he initially orchestrated the launch of illegal gambling in Reno, choosing the few men to effect his plan, getting them trained in casino operations and having them run games in town. Wingfield wanted the buildings he owned to be filled and believed the offer of gaming in them would achieve that end. Although he, himself, was a savvy card player, he needed what he believed to be a cleaner image to carry out his other pursuits, such as politics.

Bill Graham

Jim McKay

The Deadly Duo

James “Jim/Cinch” Carmichael McKay (born 1888) and William “Bill/Curly” James Graham (born 1888): After meeting in Tonopah, McKay and Graham became fast friends and crime partners. Wingfield had them learn the gaming business at one of his and Abelman’s casinos, The Big Casino in Tonopah, before he summoned them to Reno in the 1920s to establish illegal gaming there. While maintaining a thin allegiance to Wingfield, the pair quickly plotted their own course, which would, for starters, involve launching their own casino (Willows) and brothel (Stockade).  

William Justi

The City Councilman

William A. Justi (born 1873): Justi was the councilman for Reno’s liberal Third Ward, in which most casinos were located, between 1923 and 1944. He also was the council’s police committee chairman for a number of years. In those two roles, he could and did act on behalf of McKay and Graham, who allegedly owned him.

The Loyal Associate

Nathan “Nick” Abelman (born 1876): Abelman was Wingfield’s willing, sensible and most law abiding partner throughout the years. When he made Wingfield’s acquaintance in Goldfield, Nevada in 1904, he already had experience running saloons in the Midwest. Abelman went on to co-own, with various partners, numerous gambling enterprises.

The Willing Henchmen

These Reno Mobsters had a few, trusted men who worked at their various Northern Nevada casinos — Willows, Bank Club, Rex, Cal-Neva Lodge, Haymarket, Monte Carlo, Country Club — overseeing the gaming, ejecting troublemakers, assaulting cheaters, encouraging debtors to square up and the like. They also did other dirty work, such as menacing competitors and delivering graft. They were:

Jack Sullivan

Bones Remmer

Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer (born 1898): Jokingly called “Bones” due to his ample size, Remmer grew up in the Bay Area of Northern California. He was mean and feared. Seemingly more entrepreneurial than Sullivan and Hall, Remmer would go on to co-own the Cal-Neva Lodge, run several casinos and clubs on San Francisco Bay’s east and west sides and become embroiled with both Jewish-American, Italian-American and other mobsters.

Jack Sullivan né John B. Scarlett (born 1879): A professional boxer in his youth, Sullivan “was a large man with a brusque manner and an intimidating personality,” wrote Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City. He moved to Reno from Tonopah with friend Henry “Tex” Hall in the 1920s. He would help open and run the Willows then own a portion of and operate Bank Club, both popular Reno casinos.

Henry “Tex” Hall (born 1878): A cowboy from Texas, Hall worked as a manager at several Graham-McKay casinos, including the Cal-Neva Lodge, of which he came to own a piece.

The Reno Mob’s dominion began to ebb when crises arose during the 1930s — financial ruin for Wingfield and prison terms for McKay, Graham and Hall.

The Business Model

These were the Mobsters’ 5 main tenets behind running unlawful gambling:

1) Pay Bribes: They paid whatever graft necessary — to members of the police force and sheriff’s office, the mayor, at least one city councilmember and some higher-level politicians — to continue their reign obstacle free. In return, they were permitted to serve alcohol until 1933 when Prohibition ended and offer gambling until 1931 when Nevada legalized it. In the instances they landed themselves in a legal bind, rare because they were generally protected from such occurrences, the officials in their pockets made the trouble go away.

2) Limit the Competition: The quartet decided who, if anyone, could open their own gambling enterprise in town. It usually had to be someone that at least one man in their group knew and/or would vouch for. If approved, however, the mobsters imposed stipulations, such as limits on the quantity or type of gambling offered. They demanded payments for being allowed to operate — 15 percent of the profits.

The gangsters were especially ruthless with men and women who opened shop without asking their permission beforehand and/or after they’d been warned to do so. In those cases, the four would  worm their way in and usurp the operation for themselves or, via threats, destruction of property and intimidation, they’d drive the proprietors out of their businesses and even out of town.

3) Do Whatever It Takes: The existence of laws didn’t deter the group, especially McKay and Graham, when they desired something. They exercised free will always and carried out (or, most often, had someone else carry out) whatever was necessary to remain on top in Northern Nevada’s gambling world. 

“Both were equally ruthless players within and outside the limits of the law,” wrote the authors of Baby Face Nelson about McKay and Graham.

4) Don’t Tolerate Cheating: McKay and Graham had no qualms about mangling and bloodying the bodies of cheaters, both customers and dealers, as punishment. Ironically, the zero tolerance rule didn’t apply to them; they ran various scams on primarily unsuspecting tourists, bilking them for fortunes at a time.

5) Reward Underling Loyalty:  The four acknowledged their subordinate’s obedience and solid work performance by affording them an ownership stake in one of their casinos.

Sources

Photos of McKay, Graham and Sullivan: from the University of Nevada, Reno’s Special Collections
Photo of Wingfield: from the Nevada Historical Society