During the Prohibition years in California, 1919 to 1934, San Mateo County was a hotbed for illegal vices — gambling, prostitution and drinking. Even a Mobster, Hillsborough-based Sam Termini, said the county was the state’s most corrupt one in 1930. This was under the watch of James J. McGrath, the sheriff for 24 years starting in 1926.

McGrath

“There were numerous wide-open gambling joints operating in county territory under his jurisdiction; slot machines were operating in these establishments as well as in other public places; and bookmaking enterprises flourished throughout the county,” reported California’s Final Report of The Special Crime Study Commission on Organized Crime (1953).

Nothing changed after Prohibition ended except bootleggers moved into gambling.

“After years of violating liquor laws, the general attitude toward crime had softened. … Bookies prospered through illegal off-track betting and gambling dens,” wrote Carmen J. Blair in “The Most Corrupt County.”

Big, Big Business

Fast forward to 1949, and McGrath still was in office.* In his county, in the unincorporated community of Colma,** “Red” MacDonald (or McDonald, the spelling and true first name couldn’t be verified) launched a bookmaking enterprise, his area of expertise. The operation primarily was telephone based and a layoff spot for other U.S. bookies. It also served, though, as a West Coast clearinghouse for betting monies coming from and going to other areas of the country.

The business reportedly handled about $100,000 to $200,000 a day (about $1.2 to $2.3 million today).

The California organized crime commission dubbed it the Olmo Group because MacDonald ran it on George Olmo’s ranch and horse stables property, on Washington Street in Broadmoor Village.

“[The book] had operated virtually unmolested during nearly two years during this entire time with the connivance of certain law enforcement officials,” according to the Final Report, its findings based on the testimony of subpoenaed witnesses at hearings.

In Tight With Lawmen

MacDonald paid about $1,000 ($12,000 today) weekly in the form of bribes, most of them “related in one way or another to Sheriff James J. McGrath,” the Final Report noted.

McGrath ordered the occasional raid on the Olmo land, but no arrests were made. At most, officers removed telephones.  

Various relationships between lawmen and various Olmo associates were blatant conflicts of interest. For instance, all of the horse riding members of the San Mateo Sheriff’s Office kept their horses at the Olmo stables.

Also, the deputy sheriff, Milton Minehan, who went on all raids, was related by marriage to John O’Neil, a feed and grain dealer who partly financed the Olmo bookmaking endeavor and personally handled bets. O’Neil and McGrath were good friends.

Further, when the Olmo group’s bagman, collector and enforcer, Richard “Big Dick” Charles Trabert, transported large sums of money from or to the ranch, certain San Francisco Police Department officers escorted him.

The Other Principals

In addition to MacDonald, O’Neil and Trabert, the following men helped bankroll the Olmo bookmaking business:

Emilio “Gombo” Georgetti: an alleged member of the San Francisco-based Lanza Crime Family and the boss of all San Mateo County gambling activities for many years, including slot machine distribution. He ran several gambling establishments there, too, including the Willow Tree in Colma. Georgetti and Sheriff McGrath were close friends.

Ralph Cody: a longtime bookmaker involved in football and basketball pools.

Abe Fox: a bookmaker.

Cody and Fox had been arrested in 1946 in a raid on a different bookmaking business in San Francisco.

Reportedly, Arthur “Artie” H. Samish had financed Cody and Fox in the Olmo operation. Samish was a California lobbyist, representing the interests of race track owners, liquor and brewing producers, movie studios, attorneys and insurers.

John “Red” Robert Gregory: a race horse owner and trainer and a former associate of Southern California’s Guarantee Finance Company bookmaking syndicate.

Frank “Porky” X. Flynn: a lobbying associate of Samish

Circumstances Change

The Olmo group closed their enterprise in Colma in June 1950 and planned to move it to San Francisco as it is in a different county. Two major factors precipitated this: the odds were long that McGrath would get re-elected for a fifth term in the upcoming election, and the book’s leader MacDonald passed away earlier in the year. 

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* McGrath’s 24-year tenure as San Mateo County sheriff was the longest ever in the history of the office.

** Colma, known today as the City of Souls, always has been home to more dead bodies than living people. Due to cemetery overcrowding in San Francisco in the early 20th century, 150,000-plus corpses were transferred to and buried in Colma, which, since, was and still today is the burial ground for The City by The Bay.

Photo of money-filled suitcase from pond5.com: by maxxyustas

Sources

The Louvre and Oberon Saloons in Reno, Nevada

1900-1906

A snapshot of six early years of one popular gambling-saloon in Reno, Nevada spotlights some of the problems these establishments routinely faced: on-site crime, financial troubles, crooked games and changes in both owners and gambling operators.

Though the Louvre debuted in May 1897* at 22 E. Commercial Row in the then-called Marshall Building, it wasn’t until 1900 that any gambling associated with the enterprise was mentioned in the local newspapers. All earlier Louvre reports touted its unique beer offerings, fine cigars, music and lunches, but this new news brief was that “two new games are running there.” One was faro, the other one, unknown, perhaps craps.**

Thus, we begin our presentation of events then, just after the turn of the century, when the firm of Robinson & Matson owns the Louvre and remodels its interior.

1901

October: Burglars attempt to rob the Louvre’s safe, but it doesn’t go as planned. They successfully blow off the door with explosives but fail to penetrate the inner vault. They abort their plan.

1902

April: C.C. Cox, from Texas, acquires the Louvre for $6,500 (about $180,000 today).

December: Alex Aguayo assumes management of the Louvre’s gambling.

1903

Bookmaking becomes legal in Nevada.

January: Thomas Ward joins Aguayo in management.

February: For unknown reasons, Aguayo “retires” from the Louvre (Nevada State Journal, Feb. 23, 1903).

April: A.L. Mason & B.F. Bailey, of Red Bluff, California, purchases the Louvre for $7,000 ($196,000 today), gives it a front facelift and adds a second story for gambling, per Nevada law.***

June: While playing faro in the Louvre, a 59-year-old man, Frank Fusselman, dies from a heart attack.

September: Bailey retires, leaving Mason to run the Louvre on his own.

November: Bert and Grant Crumley take over running the gambling and upstairs bar.

December: Leading up to Christmas and then, New Year’s Day, the Louvre gives away a turkey to every patron who pays 10 cents to spin the Big Wheel.

1904

April: Charles Dreyer, proprietor of the adjoining Oberon gambling saloon, secures the top floor of the Louvre. (His plan is to combine it with the Oberon’s, creating one large space in which to offer gambling, but he never does).

1905

Slot machines now are legal in Nevada.

April: Dreyer purchases the Louvre’s building from Mrs. Marshall for $18,000 ($505,000 today). Mason remains the Louvre’s proprietor.

May: Charles Stout and Mart Johnson take over management of the Louvre. Stout has a stake in Reno’s Arlington Hotel. Johnson is the proprietor of The Ingleside roadhouse and former co-owner of the Palace Hotel, both in Reno.

June: The Louvre bank goes broke, and Stout and Johnson temporarily shut down the faro and craps. They restart them the next day, though, with a new, $20,000 bank roll.

September: Stout and Johnson again close the Louvre’s games, this time due to a dissolution of the duo’s partnership. Johnson bows out.

October: At the Louvre, a former Reno department store clerk, Joe Mitchell, cashes some checks, for which he has no money.

1906

March: C.J. Miller, who previously owned the International Hotel in Nevada’s Virginia City, joins Stout in managing the Louvre’s gambling.

“The change is of interest to Reno and Nevada sporting circles on account of the prominent part taken by the new owners in square games,” reported the Nevada State Journal (March 30, 1906).

This quote suggests someone was operating crooked games at the Louvre. It may have been Johnson, given the local newspaper described him once as “the ‘smooth’ man of the Louvre” and given he stepped down seemingly over a disagreement with Stout (Reno Evening Gazette, Aug. 11, 1905).

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* The Louvre ended its run in 1939 when it became the Martin Hotel Bar.

** In 1900, Nevada allowed some forms of gambling, only these games: faro; monte; lansquenet/rouge et noir; keno; fantan; 21; Diana; stud poker; red, white and blue; and banking games (ones in which there is a fund against which all players may bet). Per state law at the time, any and all commercial gambling had to be conducted in an establishment’s back room(s) so that passersby out front wouldn’t see, through the windows, the action inside. State legislators amended this statute in 1903 (see ***).

*** The new version of law required that gambling establishments in more populous Nevada counties (in which at least 2,000 votes had been cast in the previous general election) confine games of chance to their location’s second floor.

Sources

It opened in 1939 and for years was the world’s largest.

It was (and still is) in Argentina‘s Mar del Plata, the “smartest, most opulent, most ostentatious shore resort in South America,” as described by “Around the World” columnist Temple Manning in 1949 (The Courier-Express).

Its large, magnificent building showcased an eclectic architectural style.

It was owned and operated by the government.

Its nightly take was higher than at any other continental enterprise of its kind.

In the late 1950s, it could accommodate up to 20,000 people.

It was Casino Central.

1894-Today

In his paintings depicting dogs as humans, Cassius “Kash” Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934) brilliantly captured the nuances of poker playing and gambling. The dogs’ expressions are spot on and the details, comedic. Perhaps Coolidge himself had some experience in that world.

Along with Poker Game (above), here are the paintings, all oils on canvas, created between 1894 and 1910:

In A Bold Bluff, originally titled Judge St. Bernard Stands Pat on Nothing, it appears as if Judge St. Bernard has bluffed his way through the game with a weak hand and, with only one opponent left, all eyes are on Judge, eager to see his next move or his hand.

Waterloo continues the story, with Judge St. Bernard having won the game and the big pot, his fellow players shocked at his hand and how he’d bluffed them.

Looks Like Four of a Kind, also called A Friend in Need, shows a group of buddies playing poker at 1:10 a.m. Mr. Bulldog is about to cheat by slyly giving a card to his compatriot on his left. Mr. Dog on Mr. Bulldog’s right witnesses the pass. (Note how Mr. Collie has his legs crossed!)

In His Station and Four Aces, three dogs are playing poker while traveling on a train, and a few others, the attendant included, are watching. Mr. Dog seated on the left has a rare hand (four aces) but before he can play it, the train arrives at his stop, and he’s grumbling about it.

Pinched with Four Aces depicts a police raid on an in-progress, illegal poker game. Mr. Collie No. 1 starts to flee, knocking over his liquor glass and sending his chips flying in the process. Mr. Collie No. 2 looks angrily at the cops for the intrusion whereas the other players just seem surprised by it. Mr. Bulldog has four aces, but his hand will go to waste.

In Poker Sympathy, Mr. Bulldog hasn’t won anything all night and looks to be saying, “I freakin’ give up!” The other players express their sympathy except for Mr. Pitbull, who seems to be laughing at the repeat loser’s misfortune.

In Post Mortem, at about 1:23 a.m., three players are enjoying a snack while kibbitzing and discussing and analyzing the games just played that night.  

Sitting Up With a Friend shows a group of guys keeping their ailing pal company. Some are trying to entertain him, at least one other is playing cards with him, and a third and fourth are passing the time reading.

Stranger in Camp depicts a mining camp, in which two card-playing men are unhappy with an unknown dude who wandered over to join them. One seems to be sizing him up, the other looks to be yelling at him. Meanwhile, the newcomer looks a tad frightened.

Unwarranted Dissing Of The Artist

The art community of Coolidge’s time didn’t give the New York-born any respect, as if they believed he and his works were inferior, products for the lower classes. Ironically, it’s those very elitists whom Coolidge seems to mock in his paintings of anthropomorphized dogs, wearing suits, ties and pricey accessories, smoking pipes and cigars, drinking expensive liquor and gambling away heaps of money.

Given that Coolidge’s images are still being reproduced and hold iconic status today, more than 100 years after their creation, and given two of the original paintings sold at auction in 2005 for $590,400 (about $829,000 today), Coolidge, god rest his soul, (deservedly) is having the last laugh. Not bad for someone without any formal training in the arts.

An older and a younger Cassius Marcellus Coolidge

Which one is your favorite painting? 

With their involvement in Nevada casinos behind them, Silver State residents, Clifford “Cliff” A. Jones and Jacob “Jake” Kozloff, together accrued a string of gambling enterprises in and around South America.

Who They Were

Kozloff (1901-1976), was a Russia-born businessman who’d owned the Lebanon Valley Brewing Company in Pennsylvania for two decades. He’d sold it and moved to Las Vegas in the late 1940s. There, he’d invested in various hotel-casinos over the ensuing years, including the Thunderbird, Frontier, Golden Nugget, Royal Nevada and Hacienda.

Missouri-born Jones (1912-2001) was an attorney, had founded the Jones, Jones Close & Brown law firm and had been the lieutenant governor of Nevada between January 1947 and December 1954. He’d held interests in Las Vegas resorts, including the Last Frontier Hotel, Lucky Strike Club, Pioneer Club, Westerner Club and Silver Palace.

Kozloff

Jones

Driving Forces

Both men had a reason to focus on opportunities outside of the U.S. Regarding Jones, the Nevada Gaming Commission in 1958 made him (and other Nevada gambling licensees in a similar situation) choose between his Nevada and his international holdings. (Then, Nevada law disallowed simultaneous ownership of gambling enterprises inside and outside Nevada). Jones divested of his domestic holdings and kept the one he held in Cuba, the Havana Hilton casino, until Fidel Castro became Cuba’s prime minister. At that time, in January 1959, Castro closed all of the country’s casinos, kicking out all of the Americans, many of them Mobsters, who owned and ran them.

As for Kozloff, Nevada’s gaming regulators had denied him a state gambling license in 1956.

New Casino Ventures

In four years’ time, doing business as Caribbean American Investment Inc., a Liberian corporation, partners Jones and Kozloff added the gambling concessions at four international casinos, all in different countries, to their holdings. They were as follows.

1958: HAITI

The duo first had success in Haiti, when, in 1958, government officials asked them to run the Casino International in Port-au-Prince. Kozloff and Jones became the casino’s primary shareholders. According to their gambling agreement, the Nevadans got 60 percent of the gross casino revenues, the Haitian government got 20 percent and the rest went toward maintenance.

“Since putting new life in Haiti’s government-owned casino, [Kozloff and Jones] announced plans to enlarge their horizon to include a chain of gambling parlors strategically placed throughout the tourist-popular West Indies,” reported The Miami Herald (March 15, 1959).

Casino International

1959*: ARUBA

Caribbean American Investment next garnered the casino concession at the new, $5 million Aruba Caribbean hotel sited on the white sands of the island’s Palm Beach. New York architect, Morris Lapidus, who’d designed many Miami Beach buildings, designed the property for owner Condado Caribbean Hotels Inc. This Chicago-based company also owned the Executive Hotel in the Windy Cindy, eventually the headquarters of James “Jimmy” R. Hoffa’s International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Aruba Caribbean

“[Aruba] is being called the new Cuba at the Caribbean, since many Americans who previously  wintered in Cuba are now visiting Aruba to take advantage of the island’s miles of white beaches, its new hotel accommodations and the ever-popular gambling casino at the Aruba Caribbean Hotel,” reported The Salt Lake Tribune (Jan. 29, 1961).

1960: ECUADOR

Early in the following year, Jones and Kozloff expanded into Ecuador. They landed the gambling concession at the just built, elegant 250-room Hotel Quito located in and named after the country’s capital. At the resort designed by U.S. architect Charles McKirahan in a modernist style, the casino offered an array of games, including craps, blackjack, chemin de fer, poker, roulette and slot machines.

“The most popular feature of the hotel to the guests was the casino, operated on a high level by operators from Las Vegas,” Garth C. Reeves wrote in The Miami Times (Dec. 8, 1962).

Hotel Quito

1962: SURINAME

In 1962, Caribbean American Investment added to their portfolio a fourth casino, located at another new hotel. That one was the 80-room Torarica Hotel-Casino on the river in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname,** formerly Dutch Guiana. Chicago’s Condado Caribbean Hotels also built and owned this property.

As for all of the above gambling opportunities, the two Nevadan gambling entrepreneurs never pursued them, Kozloff told The Miami Herald. Rather, officials in the various countries sought out him and Jones and proposed that the duo take on their casinos.

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* In 1959, before Aruba, it appeared as if the Puerto Rican government was going to grant the gambling concession at the new Barranquitas resort to Caribbean American Investment, but, ultimately, it decided against it.
** Until January 1978, the country’s name was spelled “Surinam.” Now, it’s spelled “Suriname.”

Sources

The Red Carpet in Biloxi was cheating its craps players by using a “juice joint,” a two-ton electromagnet that controlled metal-containing dice on a game table, in 1965. At the time, Mississippi prohibited all forms of clean, never mind dirty, gambling.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation. Agents learned that Harry Bennett, 63, had turned his three-bedroom home into The Red Carpet, which he ran. One room contained two roulette wheels, two blackjack tables and one Beat My Shake table. Another room housed two craps tables. The third room featured slot machines and a bar. The Red Carpet owner of record, however, was Dewey D’Angelo, 39, because Bennett had been under federal indictment in Iowa when he’d started the club.

A Widespread Network

Inquiries about the juice joint led federal investigators to Tulsa, Oklahoma businessman, Jack E. Kress, whose company had manufactured and had sold the contraption to Bennett for $15,000 ($125,000 today). Kress also helped install it in The Red Carpet’s concrete floor. The 1951 Transportation of Gambling Devices Act prohibited the crossing of state lines with any and all gambling equipment via any method (mailing, shipping, vehicle transport, etc).

Kress

Ultimately, as part of its query, which carried over into 1966, the FBI raided multiple illegal Mississippi casinos, in Biloxi, Mississippi City and Jackson, finding various cheating implements — magnets, weighted dice, marked cards and more. Agents also searched Kress’ factory, Kress Manufacturing Co. (see Part I).

Ultimately, the federal law enforcement agency arrested 15 people, including Bennett, D’Angelo and Kress, from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada.

Agents also collared Wilbur K. Sullivan (aka Pat Sullivan), 56. He owned and operated Christy and Jones Inc., a dice manufacturing firm in Las Vegas, Nevada and competitor of Kress Manufacturing. In 1965, FBI agents confiscated from Christy and Jones misspot dice, weighted dice and company records. Among them, they found evidence that Sullivan had manufactured and had shipped an order of crooked dice in June 1965 to illegal gambling operator, James L. Porter, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

In early April 1966, Sullivan renamed his enterprise to Las Vegas Card Co. and moved it to a different Sin City location. Two months later, he was arrested and sold the business to a former gambling equipment manufacturer.

Conspiracy, Aiding And Abetting

A federal grand jury indicted all 15 suspects on four counts related to illegal gambling. The first count was conspiracy to promote gambling (racketeering) through, one, transportation of a juice joint from Tulsa to Biloxi in a U-Haul trailer and, two, use of the U.S. mail. The second count charged aiding and abetting relative to the conspiracy. The final two counts alleged the use of two checking accounts to house funds collected for gambling debts.

About a month before the trial was to begin in January 1968, Bennett was found murdered outside his Biloxi apartment, having been shot eight times.

The Dice Reveal

The U.S. government reduced the number of defendants in the trial to seven, Kress and D’Angelo included. Sullivan testified on behalf of the government. A total of 56 witnesses took the stand during the eight-day proceeding.

The jury deliberated for four hours and returned an across-the-board guilty verdict. Twenty months later, the appeals court would uphold all of these convictions in its September 1969 ruling.

In the meantime, a federal judge punished Kress with two consecutive sentences: for count one, five years in prison and a $5,000 ($36,000 today) fine, and on count two, a $10,000 ($71,000) fine and five years of probation.

Sullivan, sentenced for the same charges as Kress, received one year in prison followed by five years’ probation.

D’Angelo got three years of prison on count one; two years on count two, the sentences to be served consecutively; and a $3,000 ($21,000) fine on count three.

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Was this FBI investigation a productive or nonproductive use of time, money and effort? What do you think and why?

Sources

In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos.

The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27, 1966). The latter contained stamped logos of various major casinos in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe and Elko along with smaller clubs throughout The Silver State. They included the:

Dunes — Las Vegas
Louisiana Club — Las Vegas
New Frontier — Las Vegas
Stardust — Las Vegas
Golden Bank — Reno
Riverside Hotel — Reno
Commercial Hotel — Elko
Crumley Hotel — Elko
El Bo Room — Wells
Cal-Neva Lodge – Crystal Bay (Lake Tahoe)

Agents also confiscated various other implements used to cheat at gambling. Among them were metal filings and discs used to weight dice; arm mirror manipulators and glasses used to read marked cards; holdout devices to secret away a desirable card for later use; magnets and magnetic coils used to control dice when rolled; and switches and relays used in rigging equipment like roulette wheels.

The search also turned up Kress invoices that showed the Tulsa gaming equipment manufacturer shipped its products to establishments throughout the U.S. Recipients included the Stardust and Riviera hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and the Citizens Club in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Casinos Deny Wrongdoing

As soon as the news of the search and seizure went public, proponents of Nevada gambling reacted.

Officials from the Riviera, Stardust, Louisiana Club, Riverside, Dunes and the Commercial Hotel all publicly denied using any kind of cheating device. They never ordered gambling equipment from Kress Manufacturing, they said. In fact, they never heard of it.

“I never knew [Kress] existed until right now. This comes to me out of the clear blue sky,” said James Lloyd, president of Riverside Hotel Inc. However, he continued, “This happens lots of times. Some of these companies make crooked equipment to sell to crossroaders who try to cheat the house.”

State Agency Weighs In

Edward “Ed” Olsen, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), the state’s gambling investigative arm, publicly made four points.

1) This happened before (which was true) and, thus, there is no cause for alarm. 

2) History shows that such cheating paraphernalia is not for Nevada casinos to swindle their customers with but, instead, it’s for individual career cheaters, or crossroaders, to use to cheat the gambling houses

3) To err on the side of caution, though, the NGCB will look into whether or not any of the state’s casinos ordered rigged equipment, but sending gaming agents to Tulsa isn’t necessary.

4) The Golden Bank Club, the El Bo Room and Crumley Hotel, the logos of which were on some of the found dice, no longer offer gambling or are out of business (this was true). The El Bo has been closed for 10 years.

Newspapers Take Side

When the Las Vegas Sun reported the news of the found cache of illegal gambling devices, it used the biased headline, “Foil Plot to Cheat Casinos.” It explained what that meant with a slanted lead, or opening line: “A national plot to cheat top casinos throughout Nevada was uncovered yesterday by the FBI in Tulsa, Okla.” (July 27, 1966).

Reno’s Nevada State Journal published an op-ed piece that refuted any possible merit to the notion some Nevada casinos cheated their customers. It read: “The gamblers and the state gaming officials know that the Tulsa dice were intended for use against the Nevada casinos. So, from a standpoint of the casinos being innocent of buying cheating gambling devices, there is no question. They just simply don’t do it” (July 18, 1966).

“Anyone who knows anything about gambling, however, knows immediately that the implication that the bigger Nevada gambling houses may be buying crooked dice or cards to cheat their patrons is just plain ridiculous,” the writer went on. “That the casinos, and particularly the big casinos, would risk, their licenses, representing millions of dollars in investment, by using crooked playing equipment is beyond comprehension.”

Also, the writer called out the FBI for intentionally misleading the public to think, by not saying otherwise in its report of the Kress raid, that the crooked equipment was intended for casinos not crossroaders.

An Opposing View

Op-ed writer Paul Harvey for The Ada Evening News in Oklahoma purported that Nevada’s gambling industry wasn’t as squeaky clean as it wanted the country to believe. In a published piece titled “No Gamble,” he wrote:

“Las Vegas is not going to incriminate itself. We are going to learn nothing new from this recent self-investigation. A hearing where the bosses are not subpoenaed and the witnesses are not under oath and the sessions are secret could hardly be anything but a whitewash. Accusers say the games are rigged and the cream is skimmed by the underworld before the casinos compute their taxable income, but you can hardly expect the State Gaming Commission to indict itself.

“We’d all heard the naive say, “Mathematical odds on cards, craps and roulette favor the house: they don’t have to cheat!’ Now the FBI has shown us that they do anyway. But the swindle goes on and the suckers stand in line and the casinos continue their business as usual” (Sept. 13, 1966).

Next week in Part II, read about the gambling investigation that led to the Kress raid, the indictment of 15 people including a Las Vegas-based dice maker and the legal outcomes for the key players.

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Louisiana Club chip photo: from the Museum of Gaming History’s Chip Guide

Sources

1935-1939

The reach of Reno, Nevada’s Mobsters into gambling during their heyday allegedly extended to a small Oregon hideaway for California’s rich and famous: Currier’s Village.

William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay are said to have operated the gaming at the secluded resort with “their friends from Los Angeles,” according to Al Moe in The Roots of Reno, perhaps mobsters there such as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. (Despite trying, this writer couldn’t determine the specific games they ran there.)

In his 2017 article about Currier’s Village, writer Finn J.D. John wrote that, according to rumor, the resort’s developer and owner Roy G. Currier “had some connections in organized crime, which were helping him out with advice and maybe financial assistance with his gambling and fine-dining operations.”

Currier, however, didn’t need financial backing; he was a multi-millionaire, having made his fortune selling pills for various ailments under the Currier’s brand. He likely needed an experienced casino manager, gaming workers and perhaps an enforcer.

The extent of McKay and Graham’s involvement in the Lakeside, Ore. casino isn’t clear, but assuredly they were getting a portion, if not all, of the gaming-generated revenue there.

Any gambling that took place at Currier’s Village at the time was prohibited, as the only legal betting activity in The Beaver State then was parimutuel wagering on horse (legalized in 1931) and greyhound (1933) races.

“The casino action wasn’t very surreptitious at all. It didn’t have to be,” John wrote. “The whole place was on private property — Currier’s very own 160-acre townsite. No cops, no district attorneys, and of course no liquor-control agents were allowed in Currier’s Village.”

Various Attractions

Along with gambling, the summer resort offered fine dining (entrées included fillet mignon with mushroom sauce; roast young tom turkey, walnut dressing and cranberry sauce; and special cut New York sirloin steak), dancing and live entertainment (The Ink Spots, Sons of the Pioneers and more) in the 40-by-90 foot Pier Café situated at the end of the Tenmile Lake pier. Outdoor opportunities included fishing, horseback riding, swimming, boating and water skiing.

Currier’s Village drew the likes of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Lily Pons, Charles Laughton, Sydney Greenstreet and Roy Rogers, who paid $250 a week (about $4,700 today) to stay there, in the 36 luxurious cabins, electrified and heated by steam from nearby hot springs, with garages and designated parking spaces.  

Possible End Of The Run

In 1939, Graham and McKay were convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to serve years in the U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth. Coincidentally, that same year, Currier sold Currier’s Village to a San Diegan named Edward Jackson. That year most likely marked the end of the partnership among the three men related to gambling at Currier’s Village.

Sources

1938, 1946

Notorious mobster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, borrowed money several times from his friend, actor George Raft, according to the biography George Raft, for which author Lewis Yablonsky interviewed the subject on numerous occasions.

Siegel first asked the man he’d known since childhood for a loan in roughly 1938, in the amount of $20,000 ($364,000 today). It was to invest in Anthony “Tony” Cornero Stralla’s Rex, a gambling ship anchored off of the Southern California coast. Raft obliged.

Over the ensuing months, Siegel paid back Raft but in numerous cash tranches of $500 and $1,000.

“George was puzzled because he had heard that his ‘pal’ was betting $2,000 to $5,000 a day on his horseraces, fights and ballgames,” Yablonsky wrote.

Siegel’s final loan request came in around 1946, when he pleaded with Raft for $100,000 ($1.3 million today), which he needed, he’d told him, to save both the Flamingo hotel-casino in Las Vegas and his own life. The actor, who didn’t have that much money on hand, dipped into his annuity fund and borrowed from various sources to get Siegel the full amount.

Raft never got repaid because shortly thereafter, the mobster was murdered.

Photo: From freeimages.com: “The Stack” by Jon Syverson

George Raft

1958-1959, 1966-1967

Having grown up in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen with various mobsters-to-be — Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello and others — he remained cordial with them throughout adulthood.

He had deeper relationships with two, first Owney Madden, who’d encouraged him to try acting, and later Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, when they both lived in Southern California.

Life had taken this gentleman in a different direction than that of his childhood peers. He became a famous Hollywood movie star, best known for his portrayals of underworld characters, such as Frank Rio (Al Capone’s bodyguard) in Scarface (1932). His film career spanned three decades, the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.

When that was winding down, he shifted industries and worked in the one dominated by the likes of his syndicate friends: gambling.

He was George Raft, né Ranft (1895-1980).

Pearl Of The Antilles

Starting in spring 1958, at the age of 62, Raft served as the host and entertainment director for the Casino de Capri at the Hotel Capri in Havana, Cuba, then a newly built, luxurious, 19-floor hotel with a rooftop swimming pool.

A group headed by Charles “The Blade” Tourine, a caporegime for the Genovese crime family in the U.S., operated the casino; Lansky took a cut.

The job, however, was short-lived. At the start of 1959, revolutionaries overthrew then Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro immediately took power and quickly closed the casinos.

Thus, Raft’s employment on the island ended.

The Great Wen

His next similar gig, beginning in 1966, was as the debonair, personable host (and front man) of the Colony Club in London, England, a plush and hugely successful casino there.

“All that was required of him at the Colony Club was to play the role of George Raft — a role that he had lived for many, many years,” Lewis Yablonsky wrote in George Raft, noting that a sign above the property read, “George Raft’s Colony Club.”

Various members of the U.S.’ National Crime Syndicate co-owned the business as overseen by Lansky, and numerous Englishmen owned stock in it. Lansky’s American associate, Dino Cellini, also a co-owner, managed the casino, for which London mobsters, Reginald and Ronald Kray, dealt with and kept out troublemakers.

Raft, then age 70, worked from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. For his efforts, he earned about $200 a week ($1,500 today) and a 5% stake in the club. He also was provided with an apartment in Mayfair with a cleaning service and a maroon, $35,000 Rolls Royce with a chauffeur. 

“The Colony Club became the ‘in’ place in London, the place to see and be seen,” Yablonsky wrote. “Frequent guests were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; Ari Onassis and Jackie Kennedy; former Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren; and Charlie Chaplin.”

Raft’s stint at this gambling house also ended abruptly, in early 1967, when the secretary of Britain’s Home Office revoked Raft’s residency permit, thereby deporting and prohibiting him from returning, due to his alleged associations with U.S. underworld denizens. Along with Raft, England banned seven other Americans that year, including Lansky, Cellini and Tourine, all without any sort of due process.

The country had legalized gambling as recently as 1960 and wanted to get and keep out the mobsters from the States who’d infiltrated it since. Despite attempts to get the ban on Raft lifted, it remained in place for the duration of his life.

Photo from The New York Public Library Digital Collections

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