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

Las Vegas Hotel on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1915 (just left of Billiards)

1916

The year brought indictments in Las Vegas against individuals for violating Nevada’s anti-gambling statute, which was unusual because law enforcement generally ignored or poorly enforced it. Operating a gambling game then constituted a felony.

In 1916, most games of chance were illegal except for these that the legislature had allowed via passage of an act in 1915:

• Poker, stud-horse poker
• 500: a social, trick-taking card game* with two to six players that arose in America before 1900
• Whist: a classic English trick-taking card game with four players
• Solo: a trick-taking card game based on the English whist but in which one player often plays against the other three
• Parimutuel betting on horse races
• Slot machines with winnings used only toward the purchase of cigars and drinks
• Social games only played for drinks or cigars served individually or prizes not exceeding $2 in value

“The 1915 law seemed to have no effect on the illegal games, which increased in size and number each year. Bribes to allow unmolested games were so widespread that they were considered little more than a form of license,” wrote Jerome H. Skolnick in House of Cards: Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling.

The Accused

The grand jury for Clark County in Southern Nevada returned felony indictments against eight alleged games of chance operators:  

• O.D. Hicks, a Las Vegas city commissioner
• Ed Van of the 00 saloon
• Lon Grosheck of the Northern saloon
• Carl Wassenbach of the Star saloon
• Fred J. Pierce of the Las Vegas Hotel bar
• Joe Nakagawa, a gambler
• J. Graglia and Tom Biama of the Turf saloon

They all were arrested. Bail was set at $3,000 apiece ($67,000 today)!

The defendants were convicted of gambling and sentenced to serve from one to five years in the Nevada State Prison.

Laxity Of The Law

However, for unknown reasons, the judge in the case, Charles Horsey, suspended the sentence of all of them.

Subsequently, all but the men associated with the Turf applied for a pardon, which the Board of Pardons denied in December of that year.

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* A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a hand centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner, or taker, of that trick.

Sources

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries’ Digital Collection

The article, “Las Vegas Gamblers Arming in Control Battle,” ran on the front page of a Los Angeles newspaper in the third week of December, to the chagrin of Nevada gambling regulators, casino owners, officers of the law and other industry representatives.

The story reported that in the new iteration of Sin City:

• Casino owners (gamblers) were readying to fight for control of gambling there
• Many gamblers were carrying weapons and had armed bodyguards
• Men (presumably hired by the gamblers) were cruising competing casinos’ parking lots, trying to persuade guests to play at their clubs instead
• Ladies planted in cocktail lounges were directing visitors to specific casinos
• Although unreported, several physical beatings took place in gamblers’ inner circles
• One casino owner left the state because his life had been threatened*
• Fixers, dispatched by East Coast Mafia heads, were en route to negotiate a truce

Landscape At The Time

In the ’40s, downtown Las Vegas transformed when a handful of its gambling properties changed owners and names. The 1949, or post-war, Fremont Street was home to the:

Las Vegas Club (1930)
Boulder Club (1931)
Frontier Club (1935)
El Cortez Hotel (1941)
Western Club (1941)
Pioneer Club (1942)
Santa Anita Turf Bar (1943)
Monte Carlo (1945)
Golden Nugget (1946)
Club Savoy (1946)
El Dorado Club (1947)

Downtown Las Vegas in early 1950s

Also in that decade, the city saw the start of what would become the Las Vegas Strip, with the debut of this quartet of hotel-casinos:

El Rancho Vegas (1941)
Last Frontier (1942)
Flamingo (1946)
Thunderbird (1948)

Still fresh in the minds of those in the gambling world was the execution two years earlier, in 1947, of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, violent mobster (Genovese crime family associate) and Meyer Lansky pal. Siegel had overseen (badly) the building of the Flamingo in Vegas, and had run the business until his murder.

In mid-December 1949, the Flamingo double-crossed Club Savoy, which was across the street, with a play that involved a cheating gambling stunt. The incident was extensively reported in the papers when Savoy’s owner refused to pay the Flamingo its winnings. It was negative publicity that gambling regulators and state officials disliked.

Also around the time, several casinos agreed to stop some of their blatant efforts to poach customers from other gambling properties. They’d used people on megaphones and “circus-type banners” to inform passersby that their slot machines had better payouts than their competitors’.

The L.A. newspaper article didn’t specify which gambling factions supposedly were fighting one another. Perhaps it was a Strip vs. downtown beef.

Similar, Widespread Reaction

The overarching response to the newspaper report from the big names in and associated with the Vegas gambling industry was denial: A turf war? What turf war? Calling the article’s contents hogwash, they deduced it merely was an attempt to hurt Nevada’s booming sector at a time it would feel it the most, the New Year’s Day weekend.

Here are some of the individuals who publicly weighed in and their comments. (All quotes are from the Nevada State Journal, Dec. 29, 1949.)

Gus Greenbaum, mobster, Meyer Lansky lieutenant and Flamingo hotel-casino president:

“The stories to that effect are fabricated entirely,” he said, specifically referring to an impending war for control. “No guns are being carried on any hotel or club property except by authorized personnel.”

Spokesman for the Nevada Tax Commission, the then gambling regulation agency:

Any impending warfare over gambling control “is news to us.”

Spokesman for the downtown casinos, who asked to remain anonymous:

“Relations between the gambling clubs and the casinos are more harmonious than ever. We think the story was carried mainly to counteract favorable publicity given our gaming recently by another Los Angeles newspaper. This whole business has been dreamed up by some eager newspaper correspondent.”

William J. Moore, Jr., Hotel Last Frontier executive vice president and tax commission member:

He wasn’t aware of any threats on the gambling scene, he said. In fact, the various gamblers have gotten along well in recent months and hold weekly meetings to hash out any issues. The story was “a deliberate attempt to keep California dollars from coming into the state, appearing as it did on the eve of the biggest weekend in the history of gambling in Las Vegas.” He added Vegas gamblers aren’t using “steerers,” or “persons corresponding roughly to ‘B’ girls in cocktail lounges who direct visitors to a certain casino,” which the state prohibits.

Archie Wells, City of Las Vegas acting police chief:

He didn’t know about any alleged beatings of certain gambling figures, he said. “We checked thoroughly and found no violence of any kind — reported or otherwise.” His department found no evidence the reports perhaps stemmed from possible attempts at revenge by Club Savoy.

Glen Jones, Clark County sheriff:

“We’ve received the utmost cooperation from all gambling operators.” He didn’t know of any gambler who was carrying a gun openly other than the special officers with deputy sheriff status in the clubs.

Informal Peace Summit

After the story appeared, the city’s casino and gambling club owners quickly convened to address its allegations.

They must’ve come to a mutually satisfactory resolution, if in fact a battle for gambling control had been underway or imminent, as no lives were taken . . . at least that we know of.

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* One gambler, Beldon “Jake” Katleman, co-owner of the El Rancho Vegas, had traveled to the Middle East recently but was back in town at the time the newspaper article was published, the Nevada State Journal noted.

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