Elliot Paul Price

1970-1973

When federal agents arrested Elliot Paul Price, 51, during a massive multi-city raid in 1970 and charged him with illegally transmitting race wire information across state lines via telephone, two dominos fell:

• He lost his job as a casino host at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

• The Clark County Sheriff’s Office pulled his work card, which is required for casino employment.

In April 1971, however, the sheriff’s department issued him a temporary permit to work in a similar position at Circus Circus. Within the week, though, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) voted to pull it due to his being under federal indictment and allegedly having an unsavory background. On the NGC’s orders, the sheriff’s office revoked his card, leaving Price again unemployed.

Price Won’t Take No

Unable to obtain a casino job, he filed a lawsuit, but it went nowhere because, according to the judge, he hadn’t pursued all possible avenues for re-obtaining his employment permit.

Price asked the NGC and the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) to reinstate it, but they didn’t. This was because, in a hearing on the issue, he refused to answer questions about his suspected association with underworld individuals. Price hailed from Boston and gambling regulators believed he was entrenched in the Mafia there.

Lawsuit, Take Two

At the start of 1972, with Oscar Goodman as his attorney, Price sued Nevada Governor Mike O’Callaghan and the NGC, claiming the latter had rescinded his work card arbitrarily. The suit purported the agency’s decision hadn’t been based on established guidelines but, rather, on unrelated “charts of the Mafia, ancient newspaper articles, dime store novels, and secret and confidential information” (Nevada State Journal, June 13, 1972). It also asserted the NGCB hearings had violated his freedom of association right and forced him to be a witness against himself.

Goodman requested the withdrawal of Price’s work card be deemed unconstitutional and a temporary restraining order (TRO) be placed against the gambling regulating agencies, preventing them from interfering with his obtaining a new one.

The state, on the other hand, argued that were the court to afford the TRO until the issue got resolved legally, it would be substituting its judgment for that of Nevada in a state administrative matter. Also, were Price to prevail, it “could well emasculate the total regulatory concept of gaming” (Reno Evening Gazette, June 13, 1972).

District Court Judge Howard Babcock granted Price the TRO.

Nevada Fights Back

The NGCB responded with a suit of its own to overturn Babcock’s action on the grounds that the local court lacked jurisdiction in the matter. The NGC and NGCB conceded Price could work in a non-casino job at Las Vegas’ Riviera hotel.

District Court Judge Carl Christensen denied the State of Nevada’s motion to dissolve the TRO. This meant Price could return to his casino host post at Circus Circus until the high court weighed in.

Off To Higher Court Land

Next, Goodman took the case to the Nevada Supreme Court, asking it to allow Price to regain his work card, thereby protecting his constitutional right to due process.

Deputy Attorney General David Polley, for the state, argued that upholding Babcock’s ruling would “set a dangerous precedent which would be detrimental to the inhabitants of Nevada and their major industry” (Nevada State Journal, June 13, 1972).

Resolution Three Years Later

In 1973 the Nevada Supreme Court delivered the opinion that, yes, the lower, or district, court had jurisdiction to rule upon the validity of Price’s right to work in gaming.

In other words, Goodman and Price* won the legal fight. Their doing so established that Nevada couldn’t deprive someone of their work card without due process. Subsequently, Clark County instituted processes for suspending or revoking a work identification card and for an appeal by the card holder.

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* In 1979, Price would be indicted for multistate race fixing along with other members of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang, James “Whitey” Bulger’s associates, for which he would serve two months. Subsequently, he would disappear, never to be heard from again.

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

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

1966

Suddenly, in the fall, the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) directed 41-plus casinos to cease operation of specific electronic blackjack machines because they were “experiencing difficulties when played so as to render the devices more liable to win or lose” (Nevada State Journal, Oct. 21, 1966).

These 101 devices, available in gambling rooms in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Tahoe, Carson City, Elko, Wells and Hawthorne and manufactured by Nevada Electronics, Inc., played like a slot machine with no dealer and were popular.

Because the NGC wouldn’t say more, mystery surrounded the issue. All, however, was revealed shortly.

Sneaky Tricks

It turned out these particular blackjack machines disfavored the player more than the hand-dealt version. This was because these electronic versions removed a card worth 10 points from the deck in play. This trick results in fewer blackjacks and boosts the casino’s edge by about half a percent, which doesn’t sound significant but is.

“Removing 10-value cards from play, whether by design of the game or by malfunction, requires some powerful, positive rules to make up for the impact it has on the odds of the game. If there really are 10-value cards missing from a deck in a regular blackjack game, you don’t want to play,” said gaming expert, John Grochowski (grochowski.casinocitytimes.com, Oct. 26, 2010).

Signs on the devices identified them as automatic blackjack games, thereby deceiving players into thinking they offered odds that were equivalent to games with a human dealer — which some blackjack machines actually did.

The suspect ones, however, did disclose, at the bottom of the game’s instructions, the 10-value card removal.

To satisfy the NGC, the distributor of the machines eliminated the automatic blackjack demarcation and replaced the instruction plates with ones where the card removal warning appeared at the top.

Once that was completed, about a month later, the gambling regulatory agency lifted the suspension.

Sources

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.

1950s Las Vegas Showgirl

1958-1961

The debut of topless showgirls in Las Vegas roused disapproval — not surprising given it occurred early in the “Leave it to Beaver” era.

The Stardust was the first to abandon bras and tops, doing so when it unveiled a show featuring the Bluebell Girls for the hotel-casino’s 1958 grand opening on The Strip. Other casinos soon followed suit, leading to an outcry from a Nevada-based Catholic Bishop, Robert J. Dwyer.

Dwyer condemned such shows as “filth,” a “flouting of morality” and a threat to “the public decency of our commonwealth.” Via letter, he clarified to all Nevada priests that no Catholic, resident or tourist, “is permitted to be a spectator of such entertainment” as doing so constituted a sin and “there is no vacation from the Ten Commandments” (Reno Evening Gazette, July 6, 1961).

In response to this flak, some properties, like the Dunes, vowed to continue their risqué shows because the public enjoyed them whereas others, such as the El Rancho Vegas, instructed their performers to cover up.

Later that year, two Nevada senators introduced what became known as “the bare bosom bill,” which would ban casino acts involving nudity. The state legislature killed it.

Migration North

This quelled the issue until about three years later, when two Reno hotel-casinos boarded the bandwagon, putting on shows featuring partially clothed women — the Riverside’s “Le Crazy Horse Revue” and the Golden Hotel’s “Playmates of Paris.”

Dwyer reiterated his views.

“If nothing is done to correct the situation, the state may well find itself in the position of a moral leper, and leprosy demands drastic treatment,” he said (Reno Evening Gazette, July 6, 1961).

The newly formed Nevada Gaming Commission, in its first meeting, in 1961, raised the controversial subject. The members doubted gambling regulation extended to showgirls’ exposed breasts so they referred the matter to Nevada Attorney General Roger Foley.

Foley volleyed back with an opinion the commissioners likely didn’t want to hear, that the agency holds the power to ban casino shows involving nudity. Governor Grant Sawyer approved of Foley’s determination. For whatever reasons, though, decades of commissioners since have let bare bosoms be.

Sources

1967

New York publisher, Lyle Stuart, applied to the Nevada Gaming Commission for a gambling license to purchase 1 percent of the Aladdin Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip for $25,000 ($178,000 today).

Regulators, though, denied him one due to his “unsuitable background” because a subsidiary of his company sold books that contained material they believed to be pornographic.

1960

A cheap, spiral notebook held great power in Nevada’s gambling world for decades.

It contained known U.S. mobsters whose underworld statuses and histories were such that the state gambling authorities didn’t want them anywhere near The Silver State’s casinos. This was a problem as these undesirables frequented major gambling operations in the state.

Nevada had legalized gambling in 1931, but it wasn’t until about two decades later that casinos became under stricter regulatory control, after the creation of two such agencies — first the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) in 1955 and then the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) in 1959.

Soon after, in 1960, the NGCB created and distributed the book to major casinos along with the state regulation mandating all casinos be operated in a way “suitable to protect the public health, safety, morals, good order and general welfare of the State of Nevada.” Casinos weren’t to allow the hoodlums in the book into their establishments … under any circumstances … ever.

Failure to comply meant losing their gambling licenses and, thus, ability to run such enterprises. The compilation garnered the name “Black Book,” not because of its sinister connotations but due to its plain black cover. And despite being labeled “Top Secret,” everyone seemed to know about it.

Each mobster in the black book garnered one page, which contained their picture, aliases and FBI file number. Over time, the NGCB deleted names from and added names to the list. The public never knew how and why the gambling regulators chose the undesirables they did for inclusion.

Blacklisted Mobsters

These were the 11 original bad boys in the black book and their primary cities of operation:

Chicago

• Salvatore Giancana (aka Salvatore Giancana, Sam Giancana, Momo, Mooney, Sam the Cigar, Sammy): a boss from 1957 to 1966
• Llewelyn Morris Humphreys (aka Murray Llewelyn Humphreys, Murray Humphreys, The Camel, The Hump): an alleged lieutenant of Al Capone and Sam Giancana
• Marcello Giuseppe Caifano (aka Johnny Marshall, Marshall Caifano): an overseer of mob-controlled casinos in Las Vegas who was suspected of numerous murders

Kansas City

• Nicholas Civella (aka Nick Civella): a mob boss (brother of Carl Civella)
• Carl James Civella (aka Cork): in charge of day-to-day operations (brother of Nicholas Civella)
• Motel Grzebienacz (aka Max Jaben): an associate and alleged lieutenant for Sam Giancana

Los Angeles

• Louis Tom Dragna (aka Lou Allen): a boss, who challenged the black book’s constitutionality
• John Louis Battaglia (aka The Bat): an associate
• Joseph Sica (aka J.S., Joe Sica): a racketeer involved in bookmaking, armed robbery, murder for hire, extortion and narcotics distribution
• Robert L. Garcia (aka Bobby Garcia): an associate

New York

• Michael Coppola (aka Trigger Mike): a capo for the Genovese crime family

Today, a digital version of the black book (the Excluded Persons list) exists on Nevada’s gambling agencies’ website. Along with underworld-affiliated individuals, it contains known, big-time gambling cheaters.

Sources

1974

The Nevada Gaming Commission, the industry’s state regulatory body, amended regulations to allow employees to own stock in a casino where they worked, without having to get a gambling license, a process that involved filling out an application, being investigated and paying the requisite costs.

Jerry’s Nugget in North Las Vegas was the first gambling establishment in the state to take advantage of it.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Jerry’s Nugget

1952

The Nevada Tax Commission members agreed by unanimous vote to allow reporters to sit in and report on its voting sessions, meetings in which they made key decisions. Previously, voting had been done behind closed doors during “executive sessions,” or as journalists called them, “secret sessions.” Exceptions to the new policy included times when confidential information would be revealed that, if published, would be illegal or could jeopardize an ongoing investigation or an agent’s identification.

The tax commission regulated the state’s gambling industry until the 1959 creation of the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC), which assumed its duties. The Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), established in 1955, was the investigative entity for both the tax and, subsequently, the gaming commissions. The NGC and NGCB still exist today.