1953 Theodore “Ted” Donaldson, 31, bought six slot machines from Joe Larango of Pyramid Securities Inc., a company with the devices in several Reno, Nevada locations, including the Oak Room casino. Donaldson paid the $1,825 cost (about $17,000 today) with a check. Each slot was valued at about $900 ($8,000 today). Larango soon discovered the check…
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…
1937-1938 Within a year of becoming the Maricopa County Attorney, John W. Corbin began work to expose the illegal gambling taking place in the Arizona region. He set his sights on busting the game operators and the public officials taking money to ignore their activities. “Gambling houses have been running on a wide-open basis, and slot…
1931-1932 Actors Clara Bow and Rex Bell gambled at the Meadows in Las Vegas in summer 1931 and racked up a $1,100 loss (about $18,000 today), for which they left an IOU. By December, the two hadn’t paid what they owed (Bow had wriggled out of covering a gaming debt the year before). The casino…
1957-1960 In June 1957, a federal grand jury secretly indicted the owners of the Wagon Wheel Saloon and Gambling Hall (Harvey’s today) at Lake Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada — Harvey A. Gross, and his wife, Llewellyn — for failing to pay more than $45,400 (about $395,500 today) in joint income taxes over a three-year period. This…
1941 The man who played roulette in the Palace Club nearly every day for six months was noticeable for his suave appearance. Henry Helmut, age 47, had a bit of gray hair and sported a tasteful, waxed moustache, Pince Nez glasses with ribbon and sharp, tailored attire. “He looked like a college professor out on…
1946-1947 On the third Tuesday of April 1946, after work at the Southern Pacific Shop in Sparks, Nevada, Sam Lemel took the bus to Reno and went to Harolds Club where he played craps. He began by betting two half-dollars, which he lost. He left the casino and returned a bit later, only to lose…
1924-1932 The story of the estate of a long-ago Nevada gambler after his passing is strange and unfortunate. John Quinn was a man who’d lost and made large fortunes in gambling and mining stock deals throughout The Silver State and other parts of the West. He’d opened the first saloon-gambling house in the mining town…
1944-1945 The trial of Andrew Jackson “Jack” Blackman, free on $10,000 bail, began in April 1945, six months after he’d fatally shot James Lannigan in the Bank Club in Reno, Nevada. District Attorney Melvin E. Jepson, in his opening statement, asserted the state would prove the defendant had committed premeditated and deliberate murder. Blackman’s attorney, Harlan L.…
1911-1912 A San Francisco, California ordinance outlawed bucket shopping in 1911 — no longer was running or visiting such an enterprise legal — and one operator didn’t like it. Henry A. Moss, a bucket shop owner and Nevada citizen, vowed to fight the new law, as it prohibited him from running his four San Francisco branches, which…