Canada-born Jack Sullivan, né John D. Scarlett, had co-owned and run the Bank Club for two decades and prior to that, the Willows (it burned down in 1932) — both Reno, Nevada casino hotspots. He’d retired a mere six months before his death at age 72. He passed away on April 24, 1951 in a local hospital after a prolonged illness.

He left behind an estate valued at $844,952.00 (about $8 million today) and comprised of these assets:

TYPE	AMOUNT	BREAKDOWN
Cash:	$431,165.85
		$202,951.49 in a commercial account at Security National Bank
		$191,148.00 in a safety deposit box at First National Bank of Nevada
		$20,624.40 at the Bank Club
		$12,381.96 in a business account at a different FNB branch
		$4,060.00 in interest and dividends on investments
Bonds:	$245,893.45
Stocks:	$104,662.70
Loan Balance:	$25,000.00	(Amount due on loan he'd made to the Cal-Neva Lodge in 1948)
Miscellaneous:	$21,380.00
		$10,000.00 Diamond ring, 7 carat
		$4,500.00 Cadillac
		$6,880.00 Other
Real Estate:	$16,850.00
TOTAL:	$844,952.00

Post Mortem Withdrawals

The executor of Sullivan/Scarlett’s estate, First National Bank of Nevada, paid the federal taxes due, which amounted to $121,442.82. This reduced the estate value by 14 percent, to $723,509.18.

Then they paid the legal fees for the settling the estate, which totaled $65,307.16:

$42,619.40 went to Woodburn, Forman and Woodburn, the executor’s counsel
$17,187.76 went to FNB as a statutory commission
$3,500.00 went to Joseph P. Haller, the widow’s attorney
$2,000.00 went to McCarran, Rice, Wedge and Blakey, the heirs’ law firm

These expenses further reduced the estate’s value, by 9 percent.

What remained of Sullivan/Scarlett’s estate was $658,202.02 (about $6.3 million today).

Distribution Of Wealth

Sullivan/Scarlett left a will, which had been created in 1948, three years before his passing. He’d bequeathed the following:

To his widow: Half of all community property and the remainder of the estate after the other commitments were paid; the latter came to about $130,000.

To his daughter: $200,000. Held in a trust, the money was to be invested in U.S. government bonds and she was to be paid $400 a month from the investment returns until age 50. At that time, the trust was to be liquidated and the principal paid to her. 

In the event of her passing, the money was to be distributed equally to Sullivan/Scarlett’s three grandchildren once the eldest reached aged 21.

To his four sisters: $10,000 each.

Scarlett had left nothing to his brother, noting in the will that he’d provided for him when Sullivan/Scarlett was alive.

By year’s end, the gambler’s estate had been disbursed.

Sources

Photo from the University of Nevada, Reno Special Collections

Presumably to gain money, power and notoriety, a small clique of men monopolized gambling in Reno, Nevada during the 1920s and 1930s through violence, payoffs, intimidation, threats and other gangster techniques. The industry mostly was illegal, with some games allowed, until 1931.

The syndicate’s modus operandi became the example of how it was done in Nevada, a guide for their mobster friends who, later, would rule gambling in Las Vegas.

Along with games of chance, the Reno Mob offered endless alcohol during Prohibition and sex for sale. The hotbed of vice that was The Biggest Little City, along with a relaxed divorce law, spurred tourism long before Vegas became the state’s largest metropolis and took over as that industry’s leader. Further, with their dollars (and perhaps coercion), the racketeers were instrumental in getting gambling legalized in Nevada.

George Wingfield

The Strings Puller

George Wingfield, Sr. (born 1876): The man with the vision (and gobs of money at the time), he initially orchestrated the launch of illegal gambling in Reno, choosing the few men to effect his plan, getting them trained in casino operations and having them run games in town. Wingfield wanted the buildings he owned to be filled and believed the offer of gaming in them would achieve that end. Although he, himself, was a savvy card player, he needed what he believed to be a cleaner image to carry out his other pursuits, such as politics.

Bill Graham

Jim McKay

The Deadly Duo

James “Jim/Cinch” Carmichael McKay (born 1888) and William “Bill/Curly” James Graham (born 1888): After meeting in Tonopah, McKay and Graham became fast friends and crime partners. Wingfield had them learn the gaming business at one of his and Abelman’s casinos, The Big Casino in Tonopah, before he summoned them to Reno in the 1920s to establish illegal gaming there. While maintaining a thin allegiance to Wingfield, the pair quickly plotted their own course, which would, for starters, involve launching their own casino (Willows) and brothel (Stockade).  

William Justi

The City Councilman

William A. Justi (born 1873): Justi was the councilman for Reno’s liberal Third Ward, in which most casinos were located, between 1923 and 1944. He also was the council’s police committee chairman for a number of years. In those two roles, he could and did act on behalf of McKay and Graham, who allegedly owned him.

The Loyal Associate

Nathan “Nick” Abelman (born 1876): Abelman was Wingfield’s willing, sensible and most law abiding partner throughout the years. When he made Wingfield’s acquaintance in Goldfield, Nevada in 1904, he already had experience running saloons in the Midwest. Abelman went on to co-own, with various partners, numerous gambling enterprises.

The Willing Henchmen

These Reno Mobsters had a few, trusted men who worked at their various Northern Nevada casinos — Willows, Bank Club, Rex, Cal-Neva Lodge, Haymarket, Monte Carlo, Country Club — overseeing the gaming, ejecting troublemakers, assaulting cheaters, encouraging debtors to square up and the like. They also did other dirty work, such as menacing competitors and delivering graft. They were:

Jack Sullivan

Bones Remmer

Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer (born 1898): Jokingly called “Bones” due to his ample size, Remmer grew up in the Bay Area of Northern California. He was mean and feared. Seemingly more entrepreneurial than Sullivan and Hall, Remmer would go on to co-own the Cal-Neva Lodge, run several casinos and clubs on San Francisco Bay’s east and west sides and become embroiled with both Jewish-American, Italian-American and other mobsters.

Jack Sullivan né John B. Scarlett (born 1879): A professional boxer in his youth, Sullivan “was a large man with a brusque manner and an intimidating personality,” wrote Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City. He moved to Reno from Tonopah with friend Henry “Tex” Hall in the 1920s. He would help open and run the Willows then own a portion of and operate Bank Club, both popular Reno casinos.

Henry “Tex” Hall (born 1878): A cowboy from Texas, Hall worked as a manager at several Graham-McKay casinos, including the Cal-Neva Lodge, of which he came to own a piece.

The Reno Mob’s dominion began to ebb when crises arose during the 1930s — financial ruin for Wingfield and prison terms for McKay, Graham and Hall.

The Business Model

These were the Mobsters’ 5 main tenets behind running unlawful gambling:

1) Pay Bribes: They paid whatever graft necessary — to members of the police force and sheriff’s office, the mayor, at least one city councilmember and some higher-level politicians — to continue their reign obstacle free. In return, they were permitted to serve alcohol until 1933 when Prohibition ended and offer gambling until 1931 when Nevada legalized it. In the instances they landed themselves in a legal bind, rare because they were generally protected from such occurrences, the officials in their pockets made the trouble go away.

2) Limit the Competition: The quartet decided who, if anyone, could open their own gambling enterprise in town. It usually had to be someone that at least one man in their group knew and/or would vouch for. If approved, however, the mobsters imposed stipulations, such as limits on the quantity or type of gambling offered. They demanded payments for being allowed to operate — 15 percent of the profits.

The gangsters were especially ruthless with men and women who opened shop without asking their permission beforehand and/or after they’d been warned to do so. In those cases, the four would  worm their way in and usurp the operation for themselves or, via threats, destruction of property and intimidation, they’d drive the proprietors out of their businesses and even out of town.

3) Do Whatever It Takes: The existence of laws didn’t deter the group, especially McKay and Graham, when they desired something. They exercised free will always and carried out (or, most often, had someone else carry out) whatever was necessary to remain on top in Northern Nevada’s gambling world. 

“Both were equally ruthless players within and outside the limits of the law,” wrote the authors of Baby Face Nelson about McKay and Graham.

4) Don’t Tolerate Cheating: McKay and Graham had no qualms about mangling and bloodying the bodies of cheaters, both customers and dealers, as punishment. Ironically, the zero tolerance rule didn’t apply to them; they ran various scams on primarily unsuspecting tourists, bilking them for fortunes at a time.

5) Reward Underling Loyalty:  The four acknowledged their subordinate’s obedience and solid work performance by affording them an ownership stake in one of their casinos.

Sources

Photos of McKay, Graham and Sullivan: from the University of Nevada, Reno’s Special Collections
Photo of Wingfield: from the Nevada Historical Society

Teletypewriters

1940-1941

In a series of raids in December 1940, Washoe County deputy sheriffs confiscated gambling-related paraphernalia from three Reno, Nevada locations:

1) Bank Club casino

2) Washoe Publishing Company (WPC) (room 311 in the Lyons Building)

3) Western News Company (WNC) (room 15 in the Fordonia Building).

The equipment taken included teletypewriters,* Teleflash** units, telephones, switch boxes, typewriters and a radio. Documents seized were racing forms and sheets, forms for recording wagers, client phone numbers and account records, and more.

Unlawful Business Segment

These three enterprises received and distributed horse racing information — entries, betting odds, parimutuel prices, results and the like — to western United States locales.

The problem was that bookmaking, pool selling (the selling or distribution of chances in a betting pool) and dissemination of horse race data were against Nevada law. All gross misdemeanors, each carried a penalty of a $500 to $1,000 fine ($9,000 to $18,000 today), imprisonment of one to six months or both. Betting on horse races held in Nevada, however, was legal.

Two information streams involving the Reno businesses occurred regularly:

1) Data from the East Coast were teletyped to the Bank Club, which then phoned them to the WPC. From there, they were forwarded to 900 bookmaking/pool selling places in Nevada, California and Washington.

2) Data from the West Coast were teletyped to the WNC, which passed them on to the Bank Club and Reno’s Palace Club. The flow then continued from the Bank Club as with the East Coast info.

Steps To Eradication

Washoe County District Attorney (D.A) Ernest S. Brown filed a charge of illegal distribution of horse racing info against Bank Club Inc. and eight people, including Jack Sullivan and Raymond J. Poncia.

Sullivan (né John D. Scarlett) was the Bank Club manager and co-owner with mobsters William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” C. McKay, who were serving time in the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Kansas at the time for conspiracy and using the U.S. mail to perpetrate fraud. Poncia was the casino’s book operator. The other defendants were linked to the WPC and WNC.

Brown also had phone service to the three entities disconnected and ordered the Bank and Palace Clubs to cease bookmaking immediately due to it being a public nuisance. The gambling houses complied.

The D.A. clarified that the county’s efforts in this regard were to “‘clean up’ a condition which gave Reno a bad name throughout the West,” not to quell horse race wagering, reported the Nevada State Journal (Dec. 2, 1940).

Ultimately, Sullivan and Poncia were arrested but released on $1,000 bail ($18,000 today) apiece.

Gambling Law Revisions

Roughly a year later, in April 1941, the Nevada Legislature legalized both bookmaking and betting on horse races occurring outside of the state. Once that occurred, the Bank and Palace Clubs restarted their bookmaking operations. Distributing horse race information, however, remained illegal.

The Defendants’ Fate

Later in the month, a hearing took place on the demurrer and motion to dismiss the charges against Sullivan and Poncia filed by their attorneys, George B. Thatcher and William Forman. (A demurrer is a response in a court proceeding in which the defendant acknowledges the truth of the allegation but claims it isn’t sufficient as a cause of legal action.)

Before Judge Benjamin F. Curler Jr. in district court, Forman asserted:

• the facts didn’t constitute a public offense
• the alleged offense fell outside the jurisdiction of Nevada’s Second Judicial District Court
• the horse race info law was unconstitutional in that it encompassed a topic not in the title
• the same law interfered with the freedoms of speech and the press.

Brown countered all of the defense’s points. He requested the judge overrule the demurrer and a preliminary hearing scheduled. Forman then responded to Brown’s arguments.

Six days later, Curler delivered his ruling. He ordered the charge against the two men and Bank Club Inc. be dismissed and the bond they’d paid returned.

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* A teletypewriter, teletype for short, was a character printer connected to a telegraph. Teletype also was a brand of teletypewriter.

** Teleflash was the brand name for a system that provided radio-type broadcast programming to commercial entities via telephone lines versus airwaves.

Sources