U.S. FBI seal

1970-1975

In a massive, coordinated effort, federal agents raided illegal bookmaking operations throughout the U.S. with ties to organized crime.

On December 12, 1970, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents struck in 11 states and 26 cities, including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Miami Beach, six in Ohio and five in Georgia. The feds served 160 search warrants and made 27 arrests.

Mobsters Wanted

In Nevada, the Feds targeted Caesars Palace and the Rose Bowl Sports Book in Sin City. The following men were arrested, among others, for allegedly running an illegal sports book, in connection with the nation’s top bookmakers, between Palm Springs, California and Las Vegas. They were charged with violating interstate gambling laws.

• Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, Rose Bowl Sports Book manager and alleged Chicago Outfit member

• Jerome Zarowitz, former Caesars Palace casino manager and reputed mob associate in partnership with the New York Genovese and Boston Patriarca crime families

• Elliot Paul Price, Caesars Palace casino host and alleged Patriarca crime family associate

• Sanford Waterman, executive vice president of Caesars Palace

When FBI agents raided Caesars Palace, they seized about $1.6 million in $100 bills (about $9.9 million today), mostly from Zarowitz’s lockboxes kept at the casino, the rest from those of Price and Waterman.

Watertight Case … Or Not

With the defendants free on bond, a trial was set, and the defendants retained attorney Oscar Goodman to represent them.

“The case hinged on wiretap information, which solidly established the multi-state connections and the activity of the group. In short, they were dead,” Goodman said in Of Rats and Men, John L. Smith’s biography of the attorney who later became Las Vegas’ mayor.

In prepping for the case, Goodman noticed an irregularity on the wiretap authorization, that someone other than U.S. Attorney General (AG) John Mitchell had signed his name. The defense attorney later determined the assistant AG had signed for his boss, which is illegal.

On that basis, Goodman requested the court dismiss the case. It did, but an appeal followed.

Ultimately, in late 1975, District Court Judge Roger Foley ended the saga for good. He determined the federal government hadn’t exhausted all other investigative avenues before they’d resorted to bugging and that made the wiretap evidence inadmissible.  Without it, prosecutors didn’t have a case.

“Every defendant walked away without a scratch from the biggest federal assault on the national bookmaking syndicate since the Roaring ’20s,” Smith wrote in Of Rats and Men.

Sources

1970-1971

In the summer of 1970, a package and suitcase found in a Sparks Nugget Motor Lodge room in Northern Nevada with a note affixed saying to please deliver the items to Nugget owner John Ascuaga’s office. A $20 bill was attached as a tip.

A few days later, Nugget manager Gil Padroli opened the package. It contained a bomb — an explosives-filled cardboard tube attached to a timing mechanism and battery! (Police discovered, though, it wasn’t wired to detonate.)

A handwritten message with the device demanded a total of $1 million from the Sparks Nugget, Harolds Club and Harrah’s Club. The casinos were to exactly follow two outlined steps to deliver the cash. First, they were to mail $100,000 to two different California post office boxes. The money had to arrive within four days (Wednesday, June 24). If it wasn’t, wired bombs like the one in the package would be planted in their casinos.

Padroli, however, hadn’t even opened the package left for Ascuaga until the day after the deadline. But no bombs exploded or were found. Police, however, sent a portion of the $200,000 to the mailboxes and posted surveillance teams at each. Nothing happened.

A similar extortion case would take place in Southern Nevada two years later, in which a different perpetrator demanded 21 Las Vegas hotel-casinos pay a total of $2 million or get bombed one by one.

Instructions, Part Two

The second step was for the casinos to place another $200,000 in the trunk of a car parked on a rural street south of downtown Reno. If this wasn’t done by 10 p.m. Tuesday, June 30, then 84 bombs in various places would detonate. In the trunk would be the location of 40 explosive devices along with final directions for where to leave the remaining $600,000. At that site, a note would indicate where the remaining 44 bombs were placed.

That day, about 60 law enforcement officers, many disguised as campers and hunters, staked out the area around the drop site. But by 11:20 p.m., when the police chief aborted the operation, no one had shown to retrieve the money.

Pursuit Of Suspects

Having worked the case for days, the police identified some suspects:

• One was arrested on an unrelated charge in California soon after the package had been left at the Nugget.

• Police booked the primary suspect, a second California man, Eugene Raymond Dill, a 32-year-old contractor, and charged him with extortion.

• Three months later, Frank Richard Gunn, a friend of Dill, also was apprehended in Seattle and charged with being an accessory after the fact.

The district attorney’s office, however, only pursued charges against Dill, who pleaded innocent, and the case went to trial in March 1971. A latent fingerprint examiner testified that Dill’s fingerprints were found on the sample bomb. When the prosecution called Gunn as a witness, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The judge, however, threatened him with contempt of court charges, forcing him to testify, during which he denied any knowledge of the crime.

After four hours of deliberation, the jury decided Dill was innocent.

A month later, Frank Gunn billed the Washoe County Board of Commissioners for $45,000 in damages as compensation for a false arrest in the bomb extortion case. Commissioners denied the request.

Sources

August 5, 1943 Help Wanted ad

1937-1970

Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal.

Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance — but never dealing.

Smith’s concern had been that women would be too-easy targets for cheaters and, consequently, the casino would get fleeced. (A total of up to 10,000 silver dollars sat on the various tables during a typical night.)

Smith, though, soon realized women could hold their own, and both genders enjoyed gambling with a “pretty, smiling dealer” (Lima News, Aug. 4, 1943).

With World War II and the resulting shortage of men to employ, women filled the gap at Harolds Club. By that time, 90 percent of the employees there were female. Smith launched a school to train women to become professional dealers. They learned how to deal cards, spin wheels, rake in chips, compute payoffs and watch for cheaters’ tricks, among other skills.

Smith advertised in local newspapers’ Help Wanted sections for recruits in ads indicating, “Men Please Do Not Apply” (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 4, 1943). The pay was $25 per week while attending his school, then up to $60 per week when hired. Students ran the gamut, and included housewives, divorcées (women living in Nevada the requisite six weeks to get an expedited divorce), telephone operators, school teachers, sales clerks, stenographers and newspaper reporters.

By 1943, casinos throughout Northern Nevada were hiring graduates of Smith’s school.

Slow To Change

It was the opposite in Las Vegas. Although women worked as dealers in nearby towns such as Henderson and North Las Vegas, none did on the Strip or in downtown Sin City until 1970, nearly three decades later.

That year, the Silver Slipper, a Howard Hughes-owned casino, hired the first — 47-year-old Jean Brady, who had years of experience from dealing at other Silver State gambling houses.

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