From the Las Vegas Adviser question of the day.
http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com
Q:
When I tell friends that Las Vegas hasn't had Mob ties for the last 20-25 years, they laugh and offer to sell me beach-front property in Arizona. I know I'm right, but how do I shut them up?
A:
We originally answered this question in QoD 7/15/05. We wrote, "It may be more than years since the Stardust became the last casino in town to lose its license due to the uncovering of a major skimming operation, but the association with the mob lives on in people's imaginations -- especially with a Las Vegas mayor in office whose claims to fame include not only defending many infamous mobsters."
The Italian Mafia's presence in Las Vegas ended in the mid-1980s, which is chronicled in our new book Cullotta. In fact, we asked Frank Cullotta himself, the last of the old-time gangsters, about it and here's what he said.
"People always want to know if the mob is in Las Vegas today. They're not. At least not the Outfit, and not in the same form as when I was there. And nobody's [organized-crime families] running the casinos. You'll still see some mob-connected guys in Vegas, but they're on vacation. And a few might live there. They aren't the criminals, though. What you’ve got in Vegas today are renegades, bookies and drug dealers mostly. But it's not organized like it used to be. Those days are gone.
"Now, the street gangs have taken over. Most of them are from Los Angeles, unemployed K*ds looking for status. We only killed when we thought it was necessary. These guys will kill a person, any person, just to get recognition, to build a reputation. They’re much more dangerous to the general public than we ever thought of being.
"And today you've got the white-collar criminals. They don’t use guns, but they'll empty your pockets and bank account and put you in the soup line without batting an eye."
So, while the Italian mob has moved on, other 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.
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 well as extorting money from online gambling sites.
Finally, the days of an organized-crime family putting together $15 million and opening a Strip casino (the Tropicana, 1957), or borrowing $50 million from the "legitimate" Teamsters Pension fund to build a megaresort (Caesars Palace, 1966) are long gone. Today, 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.
Bottom line: Give your friends some face by telling them that there are mobsters in Las Vegas. But the old-school Italian "Outfit" families from the East, the South, and the Midwest that had their hands in the casino counting rooms from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s are no more.
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