A sextet of flimflammers arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada in December, set up at the corner of Main and Fremont Streets and began separating the locals from their money.

” … the spindle was ‘cleaning’ the town — getting away with large sums of ready money, which would otherwise have gone to local merchants or citizens who conduct legitimate gambling games,” reported the Las Vegas Age (Dec. 22, 1906).

The scam involved a spindle game, a classic carnival con involving a spinning wheel. The spindle is spun, eventually stopping at a pin, which is associated with a good or bad prize.

Even in an honestly operated game, the player’s chances of winning were low.

In a cheating game, the operator could physically manipulate the pointer to stop at certain pins. How? The pins were twisted into the board, some ever so slightly higher than others. With a secret gaff, the pointer could be moved up or down to hit either lower- or higher-set pins.

Because the gang had obtained a gambling license from the deputy sheriff, their swindling activity was tolerated for several days. It all came to a head, however, when they fleeced a young man said to be “unsophisticated” out of $125 ($600 in 1913, the earliest year for which inflation conversion is available), and the neighbors encouraged him to press charges. He did.

The scammers were arrested and pled not guilty.

At their ensuing hearing, evidence proved the spindle game was what the Nevada statutes defined as a “hogging” game — one that easily lent itself to cheating — which was illegal. However, based on insufficient evidence against the gamblers, the judge dismissed the case.

The hucksters continued to fleece the locals for another week and, again, were arrested. The second trial ended as the first had.

That time, however, the con men got the hint and left town.

Sources

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

1958-1959

(Part I ran last week.)

The Nevada Tax Commission withdrew the gambling license of the New Star casino’s operators — Brent Mackie and Kenneth Henton — in July 1958 after investigators allegedly witnessed 21 dealers cheating customers in eight different ways at the Winnemucca casino.

Later that month, defense attorney Thomas Foley of Las Vegas, petitioned the district court to review the tax commission’s license revocation order on the grounds that it was “capricious and arbitrary” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 29, 1958). District Judge Merwyn H. Brown ordered the agency to defend its action.

Bias Alleged

However, Brown was automatically disqualified from hearing the case. This was due to Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) member, William Sinnott, alleging via an affidavit that Brown, also of Winnemucca, possibly was biased against the tax commission as he’d ruled on the side of the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas when its gambling license was in contention. 

The commission also was concerned Brown had become too close to Mackie and Henton when they’d owned the Mint Club casino in town previously.

“I’ve been booted off the case for an asinine reason,” Brown said (Reno Evening Gazette, July 30, 1958). “Frank Petersen [NGCB’s counsel] called and said he felt I was disqualified because a lady who has been my neighbor for 30 years owns a half interest in the building in which the New Star casino is located. I told Petersen that if that reason is valid, I can’t sit on any case because I have had friends here for 50 years.”

Legal Sparring Ensues

In August, District Judge John F. Sexton of Battle Mountain, Brown’s replacement, stated the license revocation was too strict, and as such, he lessened the penalty to closure of only the 21 game for 60 days and covering of the dice table for 30 days with time served taken into account. Mackie and Henton still could operate the slot machines.

Petersen, attorney for the gaming regulators, called the alteration “improper and prejudicial,” pointing out that Sexton must have determined cheating had taken place or he would’ve reversed the revocation (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 11, 1958).

“Sexton’s modification decision was another milestone in the evolution of Nevada’s thorny problem in policing the state’s multimillion-dollar legalized gambling industry,” noted the Nevada State Journal (Aug. 9, 1958).

Petersen appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court. In mid-August, that court sided with the tax commission, granted its motion to stay Sexton’s order, or in other words, reinstated the license revocation and casino closure.

One Last Tack

Mackie and Henton, however, continued to fight. Foley asked the high court to dismiss the tax commission’s appeal of the district court decision that eased the revocation order and, instead, to allow a motion for re-hearing of the testimony in the lower court.

That effort, too, was unsuccessful as the Nevada Supreme Court in September said it, not the district courts, was the final arbiter on appeals concerning state gambling regulation orders.

Foley again appealed to the higher court, the second time asking the revocation be overturned because evidence had been lacking and insufficient for the penalty to be imposed initially.

In court in December, the justices asked Petersen how the tax commission could function in a judicial capacity when there was a dispute over which witness to believe and the commission itself had not observed the witnesses. (Before 1955, the tax commission directly heard all hearing testimony but that duty was transferred to the NGCB when the legislature created the entity that year).

Petersen replied that the commission has the record of the gaming board hearing and determines the weight and credibility to be accorded to the various accounts.

Out Of Gas

In January 1959, the Nevada Supreme Court found that Sexton’s order to reduce the penalty was administrative rather than judicial. It also determined a reasonable cause for the revocation had existed. The final ruling was that Mackie and Henton’s gambling license for New Star would remain cancelled for the requisite year, and it was.

Gambling At New Star Revived

That didn’t mean a different party couldn’t obtain a license and run the gambling at New Star. In fact, that’s what happened.

In February, the tax commission granted a gambling license to Sumner and Doris Kirkby to operate 20 slot machines at the club. The next month, it approved Roland I. Benum of Las Vegas to run blackjack and dice games there, too, with a $25 table limit, a restriction that in July was removed.

In December 1960, Harold Larraguetta invested $40,729 in and assumed control of the entire casino operation, which he ran for four years.

Sources

Photo from freeimages.com: by Steve Roberts

New Star (restaurant, casino, bar), Winnemucca, Nevada, 1960s

1958

Casino workers at the New Star allegedly were caught in flagrante delicto.

In April, a gambling detective — Michael MacDougall from New York — conducted a statewide, in-person survey of various gambling entities upon the request of Robbins Cahill, head of the Nevada Tax Commission, the state’s gambling regulatory agency at the time.

MacDougall spotted dealers cheating during games of 21 (blackjack) on two different days at the Winnemucca gambling house. In May, Fred Galster, an agent for the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), which investigated all cheating complaints, played the game at New Star for hours, and he, too, noticed the same deceitful activity.  

Array Of Infractions

The two witnesses observed the dealers employing the following cheating methods

• dealing seconds = dealing the second card in the deck

• turning the deck = turning a card over and dealing from the deck bottom

• one hand bottom = taking a card from the deck bottom to give the dealer 21

• copping the cut = picking up the cards in the same way they’re cut

• hi-low stack = picking up discards in such an order that the dealer gets two high cards and the player gets one high and one low card

• dealer’s stack = picking up discards in such an order that the dealer gets 21

• bubble peeking = bending the top card slightly to glance at it

• bridge = bending a card so players unconsciously cut at that card

• false shuffle = passing cards through a shuffle without rearranging their position

During the 1950s, Nevada gaming authorities cracked down on cheaters, typically revoking the gambling licenses of the casino operators, thereby closing their establishments for a year.

This was to portray to outsiders, federal lawmakers in particular, that the industry in The Silver State was honest and clean. One might argue they were extra vigilant during 1958 because Robert F. Kennedy was working diligently and blatantly to eradicate racketeering throughout the U.S., and gaming was an obvious place to root out such underworld activity.

Defense Offered

The NGCB ordered New Star casino’s operators — Brent Mackie and Kenneth Henton — to appear at a hearing to show cause why their gambling license should be maintained.

At the proceeding — during which MacDougall, Galster and numerous other people testified — New Star’s defense attorney, Thomas Foley of Las Vegas, denied his clients were guilty and asserted the NGCB had failed to prove the cheating charges. The primary defense was that MacDougall’s findings weren’t credible and, therefore, he wasn’t either. Foley argued MacDougall  had:

• Identified one of the allegedly cheating dealers by physical description but that man hadn’t worked then

• Testified that a certain allegedly cheating dealer was right-handed when in fact the dealer at the time was left-handed

Despite the discrepancies, though, the tax commission pulled Mackie and Henton’s gambling license in July, closing New Star’s casino.

But this isn’t the story’s end. Check back next Wednesday for the finale.

Sources

Trailways bus parked at the Golden Nugget Casino in Sparks, Nevada, 1970

1969-present

When executives of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada hosted 12 people from Kansas City in 1969 as part of a gambling junket, it unexpectedly backfired.

When their guests, after four days at the resort, boarded the plane to return home, Clark County sheriff’s deputies arrested all of them on charges of vagrancy because they were believed to be mobsters or associates.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) recommended that each of Caesars’ 59 shareholders be fined up to $50,000 and the casino, $10,000.

“Catering to persons of notorious or unsavory reputation or to persons who have extensive police records reflects or tends to reflect discredit upon the State of Nevada and the gaming industry and is a violation of the regulations in that it is an unsuitable method of operation,” the NGCB’s complaint noted  (Nevada State Journal, June 13, 1969).

Throughout the 1960s, these strategic trips brought hundreds of thousands of tourists to The Silver State to gamble. Under this type of arrangement, an employee or, most often, an independent operator, frequently out of state, found people with a good credit rating and a desire to gamble (some casinos required that visitors be able to lose $2,500) then transported them to a hotel-casino for a few days to play.

The gambling licensee assumed all costs of transportation, meals and accommodations in the hopes the guests would lose money — lots of it — in his casino. The junket organizer received about $50 per person per junket.

“The casinos spend millions for the trips from as far away as New York and try to recoup the money from patrons at the gambling tables,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (February 17, 1967).

If a junket gambler exceeded his credit, the casino might give them a marker, or written IOU. Typically, the coordinator, or junketeer, was responsible for collecting that money for the casino once the guest got home.

Cheating, Extortion, Murder

The lack of rules governing these trips led to abuses by junketeers. Some were involved with organized crime. Some enlisted people who couldn’t meet the credit requirements, then loaned them money at exorbitant rates. Some skimmed off the debts they collected before turning the money over to the casino. Via phone, some threatened junket participants who owed money.

In early 1970, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) proposed regulations that addressed these problems. Soon after, Harry Otake, 46, who’d facilitated many gambling junkets from Hawaii to Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe hotel-casinos, was found lifeless in the trunk of a car, having been strangled.

Police theorized that gangsters had murdered him, gamblers who’d lost significant amounts or from whom he’d attempted to collect on debts. Robbery was another possible motive, as Otake allegedly had $95,000 in his possession before his death.

Shaken by this homicide, NGC members got all casinos in the state to stop voluntarily all junkets run by non-employee agents until governing rules could be established.

Nevada Takes Control

That same year, after months of discussions and six drafts, the NGC adopted a rule calling for punishment, even potential gaming license revocation, of any casino doing business with unsavory junketeers.

In 1972, the NGC added further stipulations, which comprised Regulation 25. Among them, all junketeers, now called independent agents, had to register with the NGCB, and licensees could work only with those whom the board had approved.

All junketeers, now called independent agents, must register with the NGCB and provide certain documentation, including a copy of the agreement between the agent and the gaming licensee, financial info if the agent is to give money to the licensee and a designation of secondary representatives. Licensees had to report quarterly what agents they’d worked with during the previous three months.

Some minor additions in 1992 aimed to ensure agents and licensees were made aware of the rule’s requirements. Regulation 25 remains in effect today.

As for Caesars Palace, for some reason, the state dropped the matter, leaving the resort’s shareholders free from reprisal.

Sources

1961-1966

Early in 1961, Michael Catrone, 60, an apartment complex owner, presented to the Nevada Club in Las Vegas a winning keno ticket for $25,000 ($198,000 today). Yet the casino’s general manager didn’t pay it because it was suspicious — the ink on the ticket was lighter than on other ones.

An internal inquiry revealed a discrepancy between the machine-generated original and duplicate. The copies typically were locked up and used to confirm a winning ticket.

Catrone complained to the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) the gambling house had stiffed him. The casino’s owner, Robert Van Santen, went to the police, claiming Catrone had tried to cheat the house and hired a private eye to look into the incident. Law enforcement, the NGCB and the district attorney’s (D.A.’s) office investigated.

Concluding that Catrone and two Nevada Club employees — Robert Pearson, 27, and Stanley Wagner, 28 — had colluded to take the casino, detectives theorized the perpetrators had run a blank ticket through the keno machine, then after the winning numbers had been posted, had opened the machine and had marked those digits on the ticket. The D.A. charged the three with attempting to obtain money under false pretenses (the doctored keno ticket) by defrauding the club.

NGCB agents looked into the matter and after receiving a confession from Wagner, told Van Santen he didn’t have to pay the $25,000.

In the preliminary hearing, the prosecution tried to introduce into evidence Wagner’s written and signed confession of his involvement, but the defense objected, noting the Nevada Club had offered Wagner $1,000 in exchange for the confession. (Was this true?) Later, claiming the casino had only given him $250 of the agreed upon $1,000, Wagner retracted his previous admission of guilt.

Prosecution’s House Of Cards

D.A. John Mendoza pursued a case against the three, all of whom pled innocent.

During the trial, which began in April 1962, the prosecution’s key witness, Frank Cirinna, a bartender at the Log Cabin, testified that Pearson had approached him about participating in an illegal keno ticket scheme. Cirinna, however, lied on the stand about his meetings with Van Santen, asserting he’d only met him once informally. (Had Van Santen asked or paid Cirinna to testify as he had about Pearson?)

Despite defense attorney Harry Claiborne grilling him about meeting with Van Santen more than once, Cirinna stuck to his story. When Mendoza questioned him, Cirinna admitted he’d lied but wouldn’t say why, so the judge had him jailed for contempt. After several hours, though, the judge freed him.

John Baptist Pollett (aka Johnny Dean) a former friend of Wagner and an ex-convict out on bail at the time for a disorderly charge in Reno, took the stand for the prosecution. During his testimony, it came out that someone, Dean refused to say who (perhaps Van Santen or his P.I.), offered him $3,500 to get a confession out of Wagner for the Nevada Club’s private investigator. Dean claimed he never got the $3,500. (Had Dean gotten the money or not? Was Dean supposed to give $1,000 of it to Wagner for his confession but only gave him $250?)

While Dean was on the stand, Mendoza filed a motion to dismiss the charges against all three defendants, as Claiborne had discredited his two key witnesses, Cirinna and Dean, and he didn’t believe he could win solely based on two document experts’ testimony. He noted that Cirinna and Dean, while testifying, had divulged information that Mendoza hadn’t known when he’d filed the complaint against the defendants. District Judge Compton agreed with the motion.

Back To The Money

Following the ruling, Van Santen reiterated his refusal to pay the disputed $25,000 because “the trial had nothing to do with the validity of the ticket” (Las Vegas Sun, May 2, 1962).

Claiborne tried to get the NGCB to force Van Santen to pay, to no avail. Mandating that a gambling win be paid or not wasn’t part of the NGCB’s role, Chairman Ed Olsen said.

“Our function is merely to determine whether the circumstances are such as to warrant the board in proceeding against a club’s license for unsuitable method of operation on the basis of a failure to pay a gambling win,” he added (Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 27, 1962).

Catrone and his attorney pursued a different tack for getting the money. They sued Van Santen and his corporation for $750,000 in damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

District Judge George Marshall, however, handed down a summary judgment in favor of the Nevada Club. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court, in 1966, unanimously affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

Sources

1953-1955

In fall 1953, John “Fat Jack” Galloway was playing the card game, 21, at Leo Quilici’s hotel-casino, the El Rancho Hotel, in Wells, Nevada.

Fat Jack himself, in his early 40s, was the operator of a gambling saloon located 8 miles west of Fallon. Beforehand, he’d been employed as a dealer at Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas clubs and had served prison time on bunco and vagrancy charges in the early 1940s in California.

Leo’s son, Joe Quilici, 27, the El Rancho’s manager and a city councilman, was dealing to Fat Jack. Thinking Fat Jack was a tourist, Joe cheated him out of about $4,200 ($37,000 today); Joe’d often peek at the top card in the deck and deal the second card rather than the first.

After Fat Jack left the casino, another El Rancho dealer told Joe that Fat Jack was an undercover agent for the tax commission. Joe ran across the street to the Bulls Head Bar, and told his father, the proprietor, he’d been caught cheating. (Joe had been discovered dealing dishonestly previously, and his gambling license had been suspended but then reinstated. The same had happened to Leo for having cheated customers with a plugged slot machine that couldn’t pay out jackpots.)

The day after Fat Jack and Joe’s gaming encounter, Dudley Kline, 61, allegedly paid Leo a visit at his saloon. Dudley was second in charge of the Nevada Tax Commission’s gambling division that, since 1948, had been tasked with keeping games of chance in the state honest. Dudley told Leo that Joe had swindled a tax commission agent and that he, Dudley, might be able to help. Then he left.

Fat Jack then paid a visit to Leo several hours later. After deceptively introducing himself as a tax commission agent, Fat Jack reiterated that the problem of Joe cheating him could go away for $3,000 ($27,000 today), an amount he said he had to split with another person, presumably Dudley. Leo paid him the full amount.

In February 1954, after an investigation in which the Quilicis were the only witnesses, Dudley and Fat Jack were arrested. They were bound over for trial and released on $5,000 bond each.

Elko County District Attorney Grant W. Sawyer, who’d learned of the incident from an anonymous tipster, asserted that Dudley was an accessory before the fact to extortion but charged him as a principal because he supposedly “set the stage” for Fat Jack telling Leo that he, Fat Jack, was a commission member (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954). Sawyer similarly charged Fat Jack.

Despite Dudley denying knowledge of any blackmail attempt, Robbins Cahill, the tax commission’s secretary, fired him. 

“The circumstances of this case dictate that we continue to dig. We are going to turn over every spade full around and weigh it carefully,” Cahill said (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 11, 1954).

Without a choice, Leo Quilici closed down the gambling at his two properties — standard procedure when cheating has been discovered.

Pursuit Of (In)justice

Sawyer’s charges against Dudley were dismissed twice. Two different judges, first in district then in justice court, granted Dudley a permanent writ of habeas corpus based on insufficient evidence to warrant holding him for trial.

In a third attempt to convict Dudley, Sawyer, in early 1955, filed an appeal with Nevada’s Supreme Court, challenging the writ.

“I have searched my conscience and I honestly believe there is evidence to hold [Dudley] Kline for trial,” he said, denying he was attempting to persecute him (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 13, 1954).

At that point, Fat Jack was awaiting trial pending the outcome of Sawyer’s appeal on Dudley’s case. He closed his gaming operation.

The higher court upheld the original writ, saying “there was no error in the conclusion of the district court that Kline had been held to answer without reasonable or probable cause or in the order discharging him from custody by reason thereof” (Nevada State Journal, April 14, 1955). This ended the legal ordeal for Dudley. Despite the outcome, though, he wasn’t reinstated on the tax commission.

Within the week, Sawyer dismissed the extortion charges against Fat Jack, believing the state wouldn’t be able to adequately prove a guilty verdict.

Was Dudley guilty or, perhaps, framed by Fat Jack and the Quilicis?

Sources

1906-1909

An underage young man, Master Wadell, gambled at various games from poker to faro and lost big over the winter of 1906-1907.

His preferred playhouse was the Sixty-Six casino in the mining town of Rhyolite, Nevada. Subsequently, he sued the club’s three owners for what he claimed were his total losses — $10,000 (about $240,000 today).

During the trial in 1909, testimony revealed the proprietors allegedly had cheated repeatedly at various games, thereby swindling him out of large sums. None of that mattered, though, as the question before the court was whether or not a minor had the right to recoup money lost from gambling.

Wadell’s attorney argued that the defendants must repay Wadell as Nevada law prohibits casino proprietors from allowing minors into their establishments, never mind letting them gamble. He said that rule stood regardless of whether the individual said he was of age or looked it.

In the case of Wadell v. the Sixty-Six, the club owners’ counsel argued the law stated if an individual claimed to be 21, he couldn’t, after losing in a gambling house, take advantage of his own fraud and sue to recover his losses. Further, no statute existed that allowed for the recovery of money lost from gambling, he said.

Nevada law at the time — when some kinds of gambling were legal — stated that it was a misdemeanor for any gambling operator to knowingly allow anyone under age 21 to enter or play in their licensed club. (Previously, as of 1869, the legal gambling age had been 17.) To further protect minors, lawmakers in 1897 had allowed for parents of a minor to collect, in a civil action, between $50 and $1,000 from proprietors who’d allowed that child to spend time or play games in their gambling rooms.

In what was the first case of its kind in The Silver State, the jury found in Wadell’s favor in the amount of $2,762.40 (about $66,000 today).

“The decision makes a landmark in Nevada litigation and was one of the most hotly contested and longest cases ever tried in the state,” The Tonopah Sun reported (Reno Evening Gazette, June 8, 1909).

Sources

When Nevada legislators legalized gambling in 1931, they didn’t consider one significant caveat.

The omission came to light in January 1955 when an industrious Las Vegas casino patron was arrested for using Mexican 10 centavo coins in 25 cent slot machines — an act called slot slugging. Apparently, the coins fit perfectly.

The judge ruled the gambler hadn’t broken any law, dismissed the case and suggested lawmakers revise the statute.

They did. In February 1955, Nevada Governor Charles Russell signed into law AB70, which read in part: “It shall be unlawful to use anything but a coin minted by the U.S. government in a slot machine. Violators may be punished by up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine.” It also forbade cheating casinos by using marked cards, loaded dice and other devices. Violation would be a misdemeanor.

That didn’t stop people from trying to get away with it, though. At least three more incidents occurred that same year. A 64-year-old Salt Lake City resident was caught and arrested in the rural town of Tonopah for feeding Mexican coins into a one-armed bandit. He’d had a roll of the currency hidden in his coat sleeve. In May, two Californians were arrested for the same infraction in another rural place, Smith Valley. In June, a 30-year-old woman from Texas also was busted in Reno.

An Unexpected Tender

Later in 1955, casino operators began finding specific wooden nickels in their slot machines, which displeased them.

They were pieces that merchants in Sparks (city adjacent to Reno) had handed out as part of the Chamber of Commerce’s celebration of the city’s 50th anniversary; 10,000 had been distributed. They were redeemable for five cents’ worth of merchandise or cash from the chamber.

Some people, though, were gambling with the promotional discs instead. Chamber officials apologized, noting there wasn’t much else they could do.

“The old adage which says, ‘Don’t take in any wooden nickels’ is being bandied all over town. The whole thing is pretty funny to everybody except the harried gambling club owners and to law enforcement agencies,” a United Press reporter noted (Nevada State Journal, Sept. 20, 1955).

Sources

In The Silver State (Nevada), casinos hired men for the sole job of picking up dice that rolled off the game tables. Only these workers were allowed to touch the cubes to keep cheaters from swapping them with crooked ones.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Dice Closeup 2” by Crow Girl