Question of the Day - 19 June 2023

We don't have any deep inside information about Mafia activity in Las Vegas, but we can say this, way back in 1983, 40 years ago, the Stardust became the last casino in town to lose its license due to the uncovering of a major skimming operation orchestrated by the Chicago Outfit.

Still, as this question demonstrates, an association between Las Vegas and the mob lives on in people's imaginations. Case in point: The Mob Museum is one of Las Vegas' most popular non-casino attraction. 

Back in the good-old bad-old days (starting in the early '40s and continuing all the way to the mid '80s), gangsters owned parts of or entire casinos and legitimate (i.e., declared and taxed) profits -- along with skimmed cash in brown-paper bags -- made their way to mob bosses in Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, New York, Miami, New Orleans, and elsewhere.

In those days, an organized-crime family could put together $15 million and open a Strip casino (the Tropicana, 1957) or borrow $50 million from the Teamsters Pension Fund to build a megaresort (Caesars Palace, 1966). Today, though, you can barely buy a couple of acres of land in the tourist corridor of Las Vegas for $50 million and you can barely renovate a buffet for $15 million. A half-dozen major U.S. corporations own most of the casinos in Las Vegas, with endless local, state, and federal administrative and legal hoops to jump through to do so.

These days, Mafia involvement tends to be concentrated in businesses like construction, food and beverage, the sex industry, garbage collection, and various forms of vending, but again, not in southern Nevada, at least not in a visible way. (The Italian Mafia was linked specifically to the taxi business in Reno a few decades ago, but no such ties have been uncovered in Las Vegas.)

The Italian Mafia's presence in Las Vegas ended in the mid-1980s. You'll still see some mob-connected guys in Vegas, but they're on vacation. A few might live here. But they're not the street criminals, like in the last days of the Chicago Outfit's involvement in Vegas.  

Instead, the street gangs have taken over that kind of crime. Many of them are from Los Angeles, unemployed kids looking for status. They’re much more dangerous to the general public than the mob ever was.

In addition, while the Italian mob has mostly moved on, other (loosely) organized criminal elements have filled the void on the streets and are now active in southern Nevada -- namely, Mexicans, Russians and other Eastern Europeans, Asians, even Israelis.

The "Mexican Mafia" consists mainly of Hispanic gang members from California who come to Las Vegas to commit street crimes, mostly burglarly and armed robbery, but also murder and, on occasion, casino takeoffs.

The Israelis are involved in loan sharking, extortion, money laundering, and prostitution; they've also cornered the Ecstasy drug market.

The Russian Mafia is active in Las Vegas, mostly in terms of computer cracking, credit-card fraud, and identity theft.

As you can see, hosts of accomplished criminals have been only too eager to step in where the classic Italian Mafia of yesteryear has left off.