Was Vegas Better off When the Mob Ran the Show?

Like all good Vegas junkies, I have read many stories from the good old days when the mob ran things, etc. Many tell about how a criminal would arrive on Friday with a million in $5 and $10 bills; deposit it in the cage; gamble and take in fine dining and entertainment; and leave Sunday evening with $800K in hundreds. In other words: money laundering. My question is, since "the Good Old Days" were subsidized by criminal activity in our own home towns, do we really wish we could go back? Is it possible more sophisticated and effective law enforcement is worth the tradeout?

You make a very good point about criminal activity around the country supporting Las Vegas in the "good old days."

The people who are nostalgic for the days when the likes of Meyer Lansky and Lefty Rosenthal ran the show either weren’t around then or have very selective memories. It was a volatile and violent time, as documented in books like Cullotta, The Battle for Las Vegas, and Nicholas Pileggi’s Casino. Attempts at casino regulation were met with such things as bombs placed in Nevada Gaming Commissioners Harry Reid’s and George Swarts’ automobiles, not to mention the one that Rosenthal survived thanks only to a steel plate under the driver's seat of his Cadillac.

Burglaries, robberies, and murders were committed with impunity by the likes of Tony Spilotro. There's a story in Cullotta in which Strip valet parkers "rented" the cars of locals out for the evening to the hoods, who drove them to the locals' houses and robbed them blind, driving back in time for the cars to be returned to the victims.

Police officers had their homes shot at. Casino investors were blatantly shortchanged as mobsters indulged in all manner of skimming, including short weighing coin by as much as two-thirds, in addition to stock swindles and, in the case of Tamara Rand, murder (unsolved, but Tony Spilotro is long believed to have done the work). Advantage players met with rough justice at the hands of casino enforcers.

The Mob era in Las Vegas was also synonymous with segregation, with the town’s only integrated casino, the Moulin Rouge, being forced out of business under suspicious circumstances. Black entertainers had to enter the hotels through the service entrance and were tolerated at best, but only during, and for brief times before and after, their performances. Then they received the bum's rush out the back doors and they had to stay in Westside rooming houses.

Today, a Las Vegas casino floor is a rainbow coalition of customers from around the world. Initiatives to increase diversity, such as that at MGM Resorts International, would have been unthinkable in the “good old days.” One could say similar things about the #MeToo movement, which sent a dose of salts through what was left of the good-old-boy network on the Strip.

All that said, we might quibble a little with a couple of your assumptions.

First, the sums you quote seem exorbitantly high to us. Even big-time criminals from the major Mob cities of New York, Chicago, Kansas City, and Hot Springs weren't showing up with a million dollars in fives and tens in the 1950s and '60s. The max bet at the table games in those days was $250 in the toniest Strip casinos; $1 million would be 4,000 max bets — unheard of even today. Baccarat, which didn't arrive until the late 1950s, had a $2,000 max — 500 max bets to the million.

In addition, "money laundering," at least the kind you're referring to, is more of a modern-day phenomenon. In today’s paranoid financial environment where cash is often assumed to come from illegal sources and, thus, is routinely confiscated by authorities, transactions as simple as changing up small bills into hundreds, or changing down hundreds into small bills, can be considered money laundering. But in those days, there were no cash-reporting requirements, so money didn't have to be laundered to avoid them (known as structuring or smurfing), nor were there complex business networks of shell companies and trusts based in tax havens (to promote false accounting and tax evasion), both more common forms of contemporary money laundering.

Besides, as noted, organized crime was much more focused on moving a lot of cash out of Las Vegas than bringing it in.

Nowadays, it's easier to “follow the money,” thanks to the involvement of Wall Street. Most casinos are publicly held and “maximizing shareholder value” is holy writ. This has not been without its downsides and those are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, on a different order of magnitude than skimming cash and coin from the count rooms.

For the most part, we believe that Sin City is in good hands, even if they’re not always ideally clean. It's a good thing there’s plenty of hand sanitizer — and accountability — to go around.

But what do you believe? Was Las Vegas better off when "the boys" were in charge? That's the topic of next week's poll, previewed in tomorrow's QoD.

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Kevin Lewis Jun-16-2020

The good old days

A city run by a gang of criminal enterprises. Routine and blatant thievery and fraud, more than occasional violence, advantage players being dealt with harshly, and the government being puppets of the casino mobsters.

That's the way things are today. Vegas is a traditional kind of town.

Michael Jun-16-2020

Um...

Rosenthal didn't have a metal plate installed on his car.  That model came with the plate from the factory in order to correct a balancing issue.  A cursory glance at Wikipedia yields this info, which makes me wonder who does your research.

Dave Jun-16-2020

Metal plate

Michael is right. 

And that source of the metal plate is even mentioned in Casino!

David Jun-16-2020

Lame question as framed with an even lamer response

The reason people pine for the "good old days" in Las Vegas is because back then everybody made money and customers were treated well. Today casinos are slaves to the quarterly earnings estimate.

Ray Jun-16-2020

couple o' things

1) The steel plate. Nothing in the answer claims anything except that Lefty was saved by the steel plate. So the critics shouldn't rag about the answer. It was true. 2) We always seem to look at things of the past with rose-colored glasses and remember the good more than the bad, yet today we seem to focus on the bad, or at least what in the past is better than what we have today. You know, like the "good old days" when rich baseball players and richer baseball owners refuse to start getting ready to play again. So, you know, good blackjack rules, cheap food and hotels, but no crazy mobsters and murders. Just give us PART of the "good old days".

Dave Jun-16-2020

@Ray

>> 1) The steel plate. Nothing in the answer claims anything except that Lefty was saved by the steel plate. So the critics shouldn't rag about the answer.

The answer was edited. 

Earlier today it said that Lefty had the steel plate installed, as if to say it wasn’t already there when he bought the car.

kennethross Jun-16-2020

Dose of salts

Would a kindly and knowledgeable reader please explain the expression, unfamiliar to me, “send a dose of salts through?” Thanks.

Gene Brown Jun-16-2020

Please Don't Try to Make Vegas GREAT again!

To heck with the good old days. Let us keep it moving forward and not back  to make Vegas Great Again! I just want to be there without any concerns about coronavirus!

Alan Canellis Jun-16-2020

Dose of Salts

Kennethross - think laxative.

jay Jun-16-2020

Skim

I had heard a quote that basically said why steal when they are giving it away. Meaning that the mob had no interest in rigging the casino games as they made so much money from the legit games that they didn't have to steal. Since it was also a cash business they could do the skim in the count room with no oversight. 

The other thing I had heard is that advantage players had free range as they were deemed attractants - basically like shills are given giant teddy bears to walk around carnivals it was good to see the winner. It wasn't until the book beat the dealer came out in the 70s that the casinos took notice of advantage players.

Kevin Lewis Jun-16-2020

Pinch of salt

This phrase--and recommendation--was first mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History" textbook series, published in AD 77. One of the textbooks was on medicine. He used the phrase to refer to an antidote to common poisons, which apparently needed to be taken along with a small quantity of salt to be effective. Thus, the poison was not a danger as long as one had the antidote and a pinch of salt. As the text survived into medieval and modern times, the phrase evolved to mean taking or not taking a threat seriously. Thus, you could say that taking a statement with a pinch of salt means you are treating it skeptically, ready to take the "antitode" to it if you have to.
This could also be interpreted as "taking with a LARGE pinch of salt" to mean you already doubt the statement's truth.

rokgpsman Jun-16-2020

Good old days

When I and some of my travel friends think about the good old days of Vegas we don't yearn for the time when the Mafia was controlling Vegas. I think the Mafia days mostly ended in Las Vegas in the early 1980's and it was during the time right after the Mafia left that there were plenty of great deals on food, show tickets and hotel rooms. No ridiculous fees like parking and resort fees. Casinos still had the real feel of Vegas for adults, single and double-deck blackjack was dealt deeper into the deck, slot machines had better payoffs. You could easily find vp machines with more than 100% return. It was during that transition period after the Mafia but before excessive corporate greed took over. Back then you didn't have most of the casinos owned by just a few owners like we have today so there was more competition for customers. That's the old Vegas I'm nostalgic for, sometime around 1985-2000 before the corporations started maximizing profits for the shareholders.

Mike Jun-16-2020

July 4th Fireworks?

Will there be any must see fireworks displays over July 4th weekend in the Vegas area?  Thanks

IdahoPat Jun-16-2020

rokgpsman ...

... nails it square. If there was a golden age of Vegas without mob rule and violence, it would've been for about 20 years, from 1980 up until the Bellagio was built. I love the B, but that was truly a stakes-raiser for everyone, and the public has been paying for it in different degrees ever since.

IdahoPat Jun-16-2020

$800K in $5 and $10s ...

... would weigh between 170 and 340 pounds, given that $1 million weighs 17 pounds. Gonna say that nobody in the history of the world has ever made a trip like that with that kind of baggage.

VegasROX Jun-16-2020

Weight of a million dollars

Idahopat, while I dont know if anyone in the history (sorry, didnt do the cursory wikipedia's search!), in money, however I'd memory serves me, the Mandalay shooter a couple years ago, brought up MANY luggage carts (with the help of bellmen) to his suite. I dare say all the ammo and weaponry probably weighed many many hundreds of pounds, if not thousands.not arguing, just pointing out.

Ray Jun-16-2020

Thanks Dave

I didn't see the answer earlier, and usually if they make an edit, they will comment in the comments that they DID change it. So I thought what appeared was the original answer. Thanks for clearing it up.

Alan Canellis Jun-17-2020

Old Salt

Kevin Lewis thank you for the great explanation for "pinch of salt", however, the question referenced, "dose of salts".  Completely different concept.  Dose of salts as in "Of food, drink, or medicine, to be rapidly excreted from the body (as urine or feces) very soon after being ingested. A reference to the use of Epsom salts as a laxative." - The Free Dictionary.

IdahoPat Jun-17-2020

VegasROX ...

I was commenting on bringing in that much money, not necessarily the weight of other packed items.

Paddock was unknowingly aided by Mandalay staff, and had access that regular guests didn't. I think there's a big difference between that, and one guy bringing in $800K/$1 million all by himself.

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