Question of the Day - 16 December 2024

Yes, Nevada gambling regulators and local and federal law enforcement contributed to Frank Rosenthal's departure from the Stardust and the Las Vegas casino business. But it was the attempt on his life in 1982 that convinced Lefty to retire to Florida. That's another story, but in a nutshell, a bomb was planted underneath his Cadillac in the parking lot of Tony Roma's on E. Sahara, a favorite haunt of Lefty's. When he turned his ignition key, the bomb exploded. Only a heavy metal plate under the driver's seat, standard on those Cadillacs at the time, saved his life. 

After the assassination attempt, Lefty took the hint; not long after, he left southern Nevada, never to return, at least as far as we know. In 1988, the Gaming Control Board placed him in the notorious Black Book, which banned him from even entering any casino here, although he'd already been living in the Sunshine State for several years. 

During Lefty's reign, the Stardust was owned by Allen Glick's Argent Corporation, which purchased it 1974 using loans from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. It was a known front for various Midwest organized-crime families, who infamously skimmed the joint for millions of undisclosed dollars.

After Argent itself was forced out of the casino business by the FBI, the Nevada Gaming Commission licensed two local casino entrepreneurs, Al Sachs and Herb Tobman, to purchase the company's assets, which also included the Marina and the Hacienda on the south Strip and the Fremont downtown. However, the mob influence remained and in 1984, a couple of years after Lefty's departure, Sachs and Tobman's Trans-Sterling Inc. was fined $3 million for skimming. It was the largest fine imposed up to that time by the Gaming Commission and Sachs and Tobman were both stripped of their licenses, leaving the Stardust in search of a new clean owner.

That figure came in the form of locally based casino owner and legitimate businessman Sam Boyd, whose gaming company purchased the Stardust in March 1985 and found it to be an unexpectedly profitable proposition, once the illegal skimming was removed from the equation. Boyd Gaming was still the owner of the 'Dust when it permanently closed its doors to the public on November 1, 2006.