You’re thinking of the CBS-TV series "Vegas," which ran for one season and was set during the Kennedy administration. During that time, the Milwaukee mob lacked a Vegas presence. That would change in the early Seventies when Allen R. Glick was looking for funding to back a purchase of a quartet of Strip casinos. He wanted to borrow the money from the Teamsters Union pension fund, but for that he would need to go through a fund trustee, namely Frank Ranney, and that meant going hat-in-hand to then-Milwaukee capo, Frank Balistieri. Glick had his suspicions "but the things I didn’t want to think about I didn’t want to think about."
A fateful March 20, 1974 meeting brought Balistieri to Vegas. A deceptively dapper man, Balistieri was known as "Mr. Slick" – and also as "the Mad Bomber," due to his fondness for explosives. (He would later be blamed for the car bombing which almost killed Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal.) Balistieri had a sit-down with Kansas City mob boss Nicholas Civella and with Civella’s associate, Carl "Toughy" DeLuna, who had influence with Teamster heavyweight Roy Williams. This led to a further meeting between Glick and Balistieri. The latter came away with an option for his sons, John Balistrieri and Joseph P. Balistrieri, to purchase a 50% share of Glick’s operation, should he chose to liquidate.
"Mr. Slick" came through with the $62.7 million loan. The deal was celebrated in the Pump Room of Chicago’s Ambassador Hotel. Glick tried to void his option with Balistieri’s sons … but they never returned their copy of the agreement.
One of Balistieri’s other provisos with Glick was that the latter promote Rosenthal and give him a raise. According to Glick, Rosenthal began acting as though he ran the casino and, when confronted on it once too often, threatened Glick’s life. The latter later told Nicholas Pileggi, in the book Casino, "Balistieri called back … and said I should heed Mr. Rosenthal’s advice and keep him in that position."
But Balistieri also protected Glick. When Edward "Marty" Buccieri, a former Glick confidant, demanded a finder’s fee, Balistieri had Tony "The Ant" Spilotro assassinate him in the Caesars Palace parking lot. Ditto disgruntled Glick business associate Tamara Rand, shot five times in her San Diego home: A lawsuit she was pursuing against Glick was bringing her dangerously close to Teamsters loan documents.
On one occasion, Balestieri flew to Vegas to confront Glick. "But for me you wouldn’t be here," he said. "You would have been killed." Such was the yin-and-yang of the Balistieri/Glick relationship.
The beginning of the end came in 1979, when federal wiretaps connected Balistieri to the skim. Before he faced justice, however, he had one more score to settle. According to Casino, "an FBI wiretap in Balistieri’s office a few weeks before the [1982 Lefty Rosenthal] bombing had recorded Balistieri telling his sons that he believed that Frank Rosenthal caused their problems. He promised his sons that he would ‘get full satisfaction.’"
As the feds made their sweep of Las Vegas and its mob ties, Balistieri was among those caught in the dragnet. He and his sons were indicted for skimming $2 million from the Stardust and from the Fremont Hotel. On Oct. 9, 1983, the elder Balistieri was convicted not of the skim but "of five gambling and tax charges [and] acquitted of five other counts stemming from a sports-betting ring," as the New York Times reported.
Facing trial on other charges directly related to the skimming racket, Balistieri pled out to racketeering and conspiracy indictments and received a 10-year prison sentence on New Year’s Eve, 1985. "In the plea-bargain arrangement, Mr. Balistrieri pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to maintain illegal hidden control of Argent and of skimming gambling receipts from its casinos," reported the Times. "Mr. Balistrieri also pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transportation in aid of racketeering." (His sons were acquitted of all charges.)
Balistieri was released from prison in 1991 and died of natural causes in early 1993, his hold on Vegas having been broken. The Milwaukee mob was, by that point, under the direction of his brother Peter, who died on Aug. 17, 1993, severing one of the last ties between Milwaukee and the most famous skim in Vegas history.
