1946-1947 Alvin J. Paris ingratiated himself with two New York Giants football players by inviting them to parties at his apartment and taking them to nightclubs. He bet on a Giants game and gave them the payout, $500 each ($5,300 today). Then he made his move. He promised them incentives to intentionally lose their upcoming…
1971 Actress Jane Fonda and renowned activists led about 900 people down the Las Vegas Strip on March 6, 1971, a Saturday, in protest of welfare cutbacks. “Today we launched a spring offensive and a national campaign against repression,” said participating civil rights leader Rev. Ralph Abernathy (Reno Evening Gazette, March 8, 1971). Starting…
1967 Ironically, considering the entity’s name, water poured inside the Showboat Hotel (later Castaways) when flash floods hit Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday, August 8. At 2800 E. Fremont Street, east of the city, the gambling room, restaurant, and show and guestrooms were evacuated. Other casinos were forced to do the same, including Caesars Palace,…
1960s-Today The Big Bertha introduced in the 1960s wasn’t a circus lady or a German howitzer; it was a made-in-Nevada slot machine that became iconic. Named for its size, the three-reel device stood 5 to 6 feet tall and weighed about 700 pounds. Along with its ample dimensions, the potential $1,000 (about $7,800 today) jackpot…
1939-1941 Bernard “Bernie” Einstoss was a well-known gambler in Northern Nevada for nearly two decades, between 1947 and 1965.* Prior to that, he masterminded and executed a scheme to fix horse races** in California by bribing and threatening jockeys to “pull” the horses they commandeered, or keep them from winning. Einstoss went by the name…
1970s Caesars Palace in Las Vegas extended $160 million in credit to players in 1977. This was more than the then-considered staggering $106 million cost of the original MGM Grand (early ’70s), also in Sin City, and equals roughly $641 million today. Offering credit to players who were deemed able to repay it was a common practice…
1970-1973 When federal agents arrested Elliot Paul Price, 51, during a massive multi-city raid in 1970 and charged him with illegally transmitting race wire information across state lines via telephone, two dominos fell: • He lost his job as a casino host at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. • The Clark County Sheriff’s Office pulled his…
1974-1975 For many Japan-based businessmen, gambling trips to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas turned nightmarish. Kikumaru Okuda, 46, also a resident of the Land of the Rising Sun, and a film producer with Toho Film Company, organized numerous trips on behalf of the Nevada hotel-casino, at the request of its president, Harry Wald. Caesars Palace paid…
1970-1975 In a massive, coordinated effort, federal agents raided illegal bookmaking operations throughout the U.S. with ties to organized crime. On December 12, 1970, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents struck in 11 states and 26 cities, including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Miami Beach, six in Ohio…
1969-present When executives of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada hosted 12 people from Kansas City in 1969 as part of a gambling junket, it unexpectedly backfired. When their guests, after four days at the resort, boarded the plane to return home, Clark County sheriff’s deputies arrested all of them on charges of vagrancy because…