1962-1969 The Friars Club in Beverly Hills had been a favorite haunt of Hollywood celebrities and the area’s wealthy since 1946, but something underhanded began happening there in the 1960s, unbeknownst to most of its 670 members. Friendly Wagering Card playing for money was a regular activity at the Southern California hangout. Games included…
1936 A man walked into the Greenleaf & Crosby jewelry store in New York’s Rockefeller Center at about 11 a.m. on Monday, January 6. Two others followed through the other entrance. “This is a stickup,” one of them said. He ordered the two salesmen there, Walter Gibson and Robert Mercadal, to sit and not turn…
1947 “The Flamingo Hotel, one of the nation’s most elaborate establishments, was [Benjamin] Siegel’s baby and was set to be the operating headquarters for his syndicate which embarked on a program to control gambling in Nevada as well as Los Angeles, San Francisco and other spots in the west,” read a Nevada State Journal op-ed…
Meyer Lansky, né Maier Suchowljansky (1902-1983), just may be the U.S. icon of 20th century gambling, illegal and legal. After being instrumental in creating the National Crime Syndicate, an amalgam of Italian-American Mafia and Jewish-American Mobsters, he worked his way up to its top position of chairman. His role, self-chosen, was facilitating the development, overseeing…
1968 On Aug. 27, 1968, a dynamite bomb rigged under his Cadillac’s floorboard caused the violent death of Richard “Dick” Louis Chartrand, 42, a co-owner of the Barney’s Club and South Tahoe Nugget casinos in Stateline, Nevada. Also, “a large amount of money” was stolen from his home safe (The Fresno Bee, April 10, 1970).…
1888 It was the “very finest … the world has ever seen … a masterpiece,” wrote John Nevil Maskelyne in his 1894 book, Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. It was the “most complicated, ingenious and successful contraption in the history of crooked gambling,”…
1864-1983 While being plied with endless, free whisky highballs,* Hamilton Buck played roulette for hours at the Texas gambling-saloon** in Goldfield, Nevada. Then, in 1908, the northwestern mining town was nearing the end of its heyday (1904-1908) that had made it the state’s largest metropolis. With Charles Green, a brother of one of the establishment’s…
1933-1972 It was a typical Tuesday at the First National, and only, bank in the small Spring Valley, Minnesota community, population about 2,000, until gunmen burst through the doors and ordered everyone to lie on the floor or get in the criminals’ car outside. One of the three abrupt intruders had gold-capped teeth. He was…
1937 After Florida legalized slot machines in 1935, casino operator Myrton “Mert” Wertheimer, 53, devised a way to also get craps and roulette, unlawful at the time, allowed under the new rule. (Previously, only dog and horse race betting were legal, as of 1931.) Capitalizing on Wording Wertheimer, who ran the gambling at the…
1907-1958 Wertheimer was their name. Three of these four Michigan-born brothers became full-fledged, successful gambling operators in the first half of the 1900s, their reach spanning five states: Michigan, Ohio, Florida, California and Nevada. “As gamblers, Al, Mert and Lou became almost as well-known Detroiters as the automobile pioneers. However, the only thing the Wertheimers…