Accardo

1935-1965

Tony Accardo, né Antonino Leonardo Accardo (1906-1992), is credited with reviving and expanding the Chicago Outfit’s gambling business in the 1940s after the organization’s head Paul “The Waiter” Ricca named him underboss. Accardo himself had his hand in various gaming enterprises before and after, too.

Accardo is the great-grandfather of the National Football League’s Bosa brothers:* Nick, defensive end for the 49ers and Joey, outside linebacker for the Chargers.

Individual Participation

As early as 1940, Accardo and some Outfit partners owned and operated the prosperous Owl Club, an illegal casino-nightclub in Calumet City, Illinois, on the corner of Douglas and Plummer avenues.

The Mobster-gambler also ran book, oftentimes under the name Joe Batters, a nickname Al “Scarface” Capone had bestowed upon him for his prowess in thrashing people with a baseball bat. In the early 1940s, for example, Accardo conducted a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at 192 N. Clark St. in Chicago’s Loop.

Not only was Accardo an operator of games of chance; he also was a player and thus, a gambler in both senses of the word. Reportedly, he was one of the best patrons of his own joint, the Owl Club. Even when he older and less mobile, he kept up the activity, placing bets via the telephone.

Group Activities

While underboss, Accardo shifted the Outfit out of labor racketeering and into other areas of organized crime, including gambling. He pushed the syndicate into three specific areas: slot machines, wire service and casinos.

Slots: The Chicago Mob broadened its footprint by placing slots in various establishments beyond the main street gambling house. These included gas stations, restaurants and bars and the group’s favorite targeted outlet, social clubs and fraternal organizations. The Catholic War Vets, the American Legion Posts, the CIO Steel Workers Club, the Polish Democratic Club, and the Italian American Republican Club, are just some of the many local ones.

After successfully flooding its territory in and around Chicago with slots, the Outfit expanded geographically. It hit the neighboring cities first, then nearby states and eventually Nevada.

“Accardo made sure that all the legal Las Vegas casinos used his slot machines,” wrote John William Tuohy in the article “Accardo.”

Wire Service: During the mid-1940s the Outfit took over the Continental Press Service, the wire service that distributed race results throughout the U.S. It did so by killing the operator, James Ragen, after he’d refused to partner with the Chicago Mob.

Once under its control, Continental “became so big and lucrative that an investigating Senate committee later called it the ‘life blood’ of the syndicate,'” reported the Chicago Tribune (Nov. 18, 1984).

Casinos: Three, during the 1950s, the Outfit pursued gambling in a bigger scale. It moved into owning stakes in and skimming millions from casinos. It stuck primarily to legal gambling jurisdictions, first Havana, Cuba, while that lasted, and then Nevada. For instance, by 1961, Chicago owned controlling interests in the Riviera, Stardust, Fremont and Desert Inn, in Vegas.

Despite having a major hand in the Outfit’s gambling (and other lines of business), Accardo always denied being one of the organization’s members never mind a boss. Instead, he claimed he merely was a beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.

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* How Accardo and the Bosa Brothers Are Related

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1961-1990s

“As a boy in Chicago, [he] learned to cook standing on a milk crate in his mom’s kitchen, where Mrs. Capone — Scarface Al’s mom — would join them,” reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal (May 8, 2009).

That youngster was Joseph D. Pignatello.

Once an adult, the nascent chef prepared meals for his boss, Sam “Momo” Giancana, then head of the Chicago Outfit, when they traveled together. Pignatello was his chauffeur and bodyguard.

Nicknamed “Joe the Cook” because of his superb culinary skills, he worked for years in the restaurant business in Illinois, even running and selling both a bakery and an eatery.

Chef Pursues Ownership

In early 1961, at age 35, he was working as a chef at Anjoe’s,* a popular continental restaurant on Highway 94 in Las Vegas, Nevada that had recently undergone a $100,000 remodel to reflect an Old World ambiance.

After some time, Pignatello expressed his desire to purchase half of the restaurant for $15,000 ($121,000 today).  The owner, Sam Baker, agreed but only if the buyer obtained liquor and gambling licenses.

The next month, the prospective restaurateur was arrested for working without the required permit. On his person, he had $16,000 in cash and cashier’s checks.

In April, Pignatello applied for a gambling license for 50 percent interest in the operation at Anjoe’s. A few days later, entertainer Frank Sinatra reportedly spoke to a Las Vegas official to facilitate the proper agencies’ granting “Joe the Cook” the necessary papers.

Later, when the FBI questioned the crooner about it, he admitted knowing the chef through his friend, Giancana, but denied intervening on Pignatello’s behalf.

The Dreaded Monkeywrench

Ultimately, in July, the Nevada Gaming Commission denied him a gambling permit because of his affiliation with Giancana, one of the first underworld denizens to be listed in Nevada’s “Black Book,” thereby banned from entering any casino in the state. Gaming regulators were concerned Anjoe’s would become a front and Pignatello the straw man for the Chicago Outfit, and Baker, which wasn’t his birth name, may have been connected to the Chicago underworld.

Perhaps their argument had merit as Johnny Rosselli had been spotted holding a meeting at Anjoe’s with eight other people. An organized crime strategist, he was in charge of the Outfit’s holdings in Las Vegas. Contrarily, the gaming at the restaurant consisted of four slot machines, not the setup size for major cash flow, but perhaps the plan, if one existed, was to dramatically expand the enterprise.

Going To Plan B

With the Anjoe’s deal dead, Giancana had an upscale eatery built for Pignatello using a loan from the pension fund of the Teamsters Union’s Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas. Villa d’Este, which offered fine Italian dining, was located at 355 Convention Center Drive (Piero’s is there today).

“This will be our place, a multimillion-dollar restaurant,” the mob boss told the chef, reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nov. 29, 2015).

In fact, it became a known haunt for mobsters, celebrities and other powerful people. For Giancana, obviously it was a favorite, Sinatra, too. He ate there whenever he was in town. Actor Joe Pesci fell in love with Pignatello’s food when he was in Las Vegas filming the movie, Casino.

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“Joe the Cook” ran Villa d’Este for nearly two decades.

* Anjoe’s originally was the Big Hat saloon and casino in which, in 1948, the owner Sam Baker shot a man. He subsequently changed the name to Villa Venice and ran it only as a restaurant. A few years later, Baker leased the facilities to other parties who operated both gambling and dining components. After an intervening devastating fire, Baker reopened the place in the late 1950s as Anjoe’s.

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