Question of the Day - 04 September 2023

Anthony Spilotro was the enforcer for and manager of the business interests of Chicago's mob families, also known as the Outfit. 

Spilotro himself never owned a restaurant in Las Vegas. One of his lieutenants, Frank Cullotta, owned Upper Crust Pizza, where Tony, Frank, the Hole in the Wall Gang of burglars, and armed robbers, extortionists, hitmen, and other characters of ill repute liked to hang out. Spilotro also frequented the Food Factory, a burger and fast-food eatery owned by his brother John, a Las Vegas lawyer. And of course, he liked the Tower of Pizza on the Strip, which is sometimes confused today with the Upper Crust. 

The Upper Crust, along with the My Place bar next door, in which Cullotta had an interest, was located at at 4110 S. Maryland Parkway in the Pioneer Plaza. Our book Cullotta talks all about the pizza place and bar. 

As for Spilotro's pawn shop, the first one he owned was more of a gift shop. It was located at Circus Circus and he owned it under a pseudonym, Anthony Stuart. Indeed, the gift shop was called Anthony Stuart's (Stuart was his wife Nancy's maiden name). It was a risky move to lease Spilotro that space, but it was part of a deal Jay Sarno, who owned and operated Circus, made with the Teamsters when the union loaned Sarno $23 million to build hotel rooms. Spilotro bought the space, located next to the Midway, for $70,000. But Anthony Stuart's didn't last long; state gambling regulators weren't fooled by the ruse, especially since it was a front for the Hole in the Wall Gang. The regulators threatened to revoke Sarno's gambling license, so he had to go to the Outfit's enforcer and tell him he was out. Sarno wound up having to pay Spilotro $700,000 to buy back the shop.

A year later in 1976, Spilotro opened his pawn shop, called the Gold Rush, to help fence all the goods the Hole in the Wall Gang was clipping by the day and night.

The Gold Rush was located at 228 W. Sahara Avenue (see a photo of it here on VintageLasVegas.) That shop lasted a little longer than the one at Circus, but by then Spilotro was on the radar of all kinds of local and federal law enforcement. John Spilotro took over the Gold Rush and ran it for a while, before quietly closing it. 

Today, the site and the address are gone. It was between what's now Allure, the 41-story condo tower that opened in 2007 at 200 W. Sahara, and the Ahern Hotel (formerly Lucky Dragon) at 300 W. Sahara.