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

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

1974-1983

A revolt of the performers — athletes in this case — threatened to close a popular attraction at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas — jai alai.

Unique to the Strip at the time, it was designed as part of the Nevada resort’s entertainment package to lure visitors into the casino.

Jai alai (jai meaning festival and alai, merry in Spanish) is a court game in which players use a long hand-shaped basket strapped to their wrist to propel a ball against a wall. In Spain it’s a national sport, particularly in the northern Basque provinces.

The MGM Grand generated revenue from parimutuel* bets made on the jai alai games and from ticket sales. On average, 1,300 people attended and wagered a total of $45,000 (about $217,000 today) per night. General admission tickets were $3.30 ($16 today), the loge option was $4.40 ($21 today) and boxes cost $5.50 ($26 today). The arena contained 2,200 seats.

Players Take A Stand

Unexpectedly, one day in October 1975, during the second season of jai alai at the hotel-casino, the team didn’t show, and the MGM Grand received word they were on strike. The hotel management sent a telegram to each member, informing them their no-show violated their contract with the MGM Grand and Nevada Gaming Commission regulations. They warned the players their jobs and their work visas were in jeopardy (most of them were from Spain and Mexico).

Subsequently, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) gave the 32 players a November 7 deadline to return to work or face deportation proceedings because the strike voided the hotel’s petition to accept the players into the U.S.

Reasons For Discontent

The team had approached the Teamsters Local 995 earlier that year and expressed discontent, wanting to have a say in their working conditions and contract.

Union secretary/treasurer, Richard Thomas, described it as “a one-way, unilateral agreement — totally illegal” that favored MGM management. He added the players were “grossly underpaid,” earning $550 a month ($2,400 today) with housing provided and one free meal a day and the opportunity to earn a $100 a month bonus.

At that time, the union filed a petition for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election to represent the players at the MGM, and the hotel protested the board had no jurisdiction over jai alai players. Due to that issue, the NLRB referred the case to its council in Washington, D.C., which still hadn’t weighed in after six months.

Weeks-Long Strike

Thomas said the strike would continue until the MGM acknowledged the union as the players’ official bargaining agent.

“These guys are caught between two federal agencies,” he said, “the immigration bureau and the National Labor Relations Board” (Las Vegas Sun, November 4, 1975).

Union officials and MGM management worked to hash out an agreement to end the strike but failed.

The INS’ deadline passed. The agency cancelled the work visas of the players and notified them of their upcoming deportation.

Soon after, the players left the United States, having agreed to go home or having been expelled.

“Their contracts are up the first part of December. They elected to go home,” Thomas said, stressing their action was not a defeat. “They were not hurt financially because they are going to be compensated for the time lost.”

The NLRB finally acted, ordering a representation election by the players within 30 days, but it was too late. 

The MGM restarted its jai alai program in late December 1975 with 27 new players, most of whom hailed from outside the country.

Thomas said the NLRB’s ruling gave the union a “clear shot at organizing future jai alai players, if they want it,” (Las Vegas Sun, November 26, 1975). Hotel executives disagreed, though, arguing the decision didn’t apply to the new team.

Jai alai lasted through 1983 at the MGM in Las Vegas. The hotel-casino also offered it at its Reno property from 1978 to 1980.

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* Parimutuel is a betting system in which those who bet on the winners of a race share the total amount wagered less a percentage for management

Sources

Vivian Blaine in Guys and Dolls in New York, 1953

1955

At least 10 hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip offered entertainment, typically marquee names like Liberace and Mario Lanza, who’d played Sin City time and again.

The Royal Nevada, though, changed it up with a first. They put on the musical, Guys and Dolls, featuring a number of the original Broadway cast members, including Vivian Blaine.

The estimated weekly cost was $55,000 (about $495,000 today), roughly $5,000 more than the weekly salaries of some in-demand stars.

Photo from Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections: “Guys and dolls,” 1953

Howard Hughes, 1973

1968

Howard Hughes, billionaire industrialist, received the Nevada Gaming Commission’s blessing to buy the Stardust hotel-casino in Las Vegas for $30.5 million and moved forward with the acquisition.

He already owned five such properties on the Strip — the Castaways, Silver Slipper, Frontier, Sands and Desert Inn. (Adding the Stardust would’ve given him control of about 14 percent of Nevada’s gambling volume.) 

A few days before the deal’s closing, however, the U.S. Department of Justice asked Hughes to delay it by 90 days so it could investigate whether the Stardust purchase would violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Instead, he abandoned the transaction altogether.

1969

Elvis Presley was one of the first headliners at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

His performances began a record-breaking run of 837 sold-out shows at the spot over the ensuing seven years. In his first month at the hotel-casino, Presley gave 58 concerts.

The venue booked him for two months a year and paid him a $1 million annual salary.

1945-1955

In the late 1940s, three bookies — or commissioners, as they preferred to be called — operated on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California under the name, Golden News Service. Hy Goldbaum, George Capri and Edward Cooke, all in their late 40s or early 50s at the time, specialized in assuming large bets that solo bookies couldn’t carry, and covering or placing them nationally with other bookmakers, which earned them the moniker, the bookie’s bookies.

The trio left California in 1949 and went to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they could ply their trade legally. Goldbaum went on to work at the Flamingo and the Stardust.

Two years later, the men became ensnared in a federal crackdown on bookmakers and were charged with income tax evasion and conspiracy, resulting from their having filed fraudulent returns. The government claimed the men together had done $6 million in business in California (about $70 million today!), but had only claimed income of $289,000 ($3.3 million today). Goldbaum also was charged individually for under-reporting his income.

They were convicted on 11 of 13 counts of tax evasion and conspiracy and sentenced to three years per count to be served concurrently.

“I’m convinced that a general conspiracy existed to defraud the laws of the United States, of Nevada and of California,” said the judge (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 5, 1952), but he also noted he imposed a lenient punishment because the defendants had been cooperative.

The U.S., however, wasn’t done with Goldbaum. The government filed a $1.6 million tax lien against him for past personal taxes it claimed he owed.

Time Served

After two years and five months at the McNeil Island Corrections Center, the three “commissioners” were released on $10,000 ($89,000 today) bail each, pending the outcome of their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1955, it looked like they might catch a break when the justices ordered the lower federal court to reconsider its ruling.

But the court of appeals in California affirmed its earlier decision, making the case overall a win for the federal government.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Graphic of Abacus” by Cyndi Papia

Sources

Louis Tom Dragna

1960-1967

Los Angeles mobsters, Louis Tom Dragna and John “The Bat” Battaglia, conversed in a hotel-casino cocktail lounge on the Las Vegas Strip one day in February 1960. But their visit was cut short when Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) agents appeared with local police who arrested the two.

They charged them with vagrancy and threatened to arrest them the next time they appeared in Sin City (they soon after dropped the vagrancy charge).

Gaming authorities didn’t want either man in any Nevada casino, which they formalized via the “Black Book” two months after the undesirables’ arrest. The black book, whose creation had been in progress prior to the Dragna/Battaglia incident, contained the names of individuals casino operators had to keep out of their facilities or lose their gambling license.

The NGCB strictly enforced it, having those on the list kicked out of gambling clubs. Repeat offender Johnny Marshall (aka Marshall Caifano), triggerman for the Chicago syndicate with 18 arrests on his record between 1929 and 1951, found himself booted out several times.

“I agree with any measures necessary to keep the hoodlums out of Nevada,” said Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer. “The operators have a great responsibility to cooperate. We might as well serve notice on underworld characters right now that they are not welcome in Nevada and we aren’t going to have them here” (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 2, 1960).

Hashed Out In The Courts

That year, Dragna tested the constitutionality of the black book in the courts. He sought a federal court injunction against it and the members of both state gaming agencies. He claimed they caused Las Vegas hotels to refuse him entry, depriving him of his rights as a U.S. citizen.

Marshall also sued each gaming regulator along with Governor Sawyer for ($100 apiece) and the Desert Inn (for $150,000), whose staff had kicked him out.

In 1961, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed Dragna and Marshall’s suits on the grounds that gambling isn’t a protected federal civil right and the matter was a state one.

Marshall Pursues The Cause

Within the following year, Dragna dropped his appeal upon being sentenced to five years in prison for extorting the manager of a boxing champion.

As for Marshall’s case, the appellate judges remanded it to federal district court for trial. One justice suggested that “Nevada has as much right to keep suspect persons out of its casinos as Texas ranchers have to ban cattle with hoof and mouth disease” (Nevada State Journal, May 13, 1962).

Subsequently, Marshall lost in federal court and again appealed. In 1966, six years after gaming authorities distributed the black book, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld its use. It noted that neither being put on the list nor being denied entry to casinos was unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in 1967, refused to hear the case, finally answering the civil rights question.

Sources

1970

When Connie Stevens, entertainer, departed after a stay at the Kings Castle hotel-casino in Incline Village, Nevada, she accidentally left $20,000 ($122,000 today) worth of jewelry in her suite.

Linda Cooley, a housekeeping team member, discovered the stash and promptly turned it over to the proper authorities. Stevens, who’d been robbed of jewelry recently in New York, got back everything she’d taken with her to Kings Castle.

1958

Sixteen glamazon, primarily English dancers from Paris’ Lido Club troupe were imported to open Las Vegas’ Stardust hotel-casino. The Bluebell Girls’ show broke all attendance records; about 1,400 people left the gaming tables and bars each night to see it.

“The celebrated dancers have been hailed as one of the most popular imports from the British Isles, since Scotch whisky,” noted the Bakersfield Californian (July 11, 1959).

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries’ Digital Collection: “Bluebell Girls Poolside at the Stardust”