1961-1966 Early in 1961, Michael Catrone, 60, an apartment complex owner, presented to the Nevada Club in Las Vegas, Nevada a winning keno ticket for $25,000 ($198,000 today). Yet the casino’s general manager didn’t pay it because it was suspicious — the ink on the ticket was lighter than on other ones. An internal inquiry…
1964 The Dunes in Las Vegas, Nevada switched from writing off unpaid IOUs to claiming them as income, allegedly to keep Internal Revenue Service agents from harassing its customers — asking guests in the hotel if they paid what they owed. On its fiscal 1965 income tax return, the hotel-casino reported as income $1.3 million…
1906 A sextet of flimflammers arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada in December, set up at the corner of Main and Fremont Streets and began separating the locals from their money. ” … the spindle was ‘cleaning’ the town — getting away with large sums of ready money, which would otherwise have gone to local merchants…
1968 Howard Hughes, billionaire industrialist, received the Nevada Gaming Commission’s blessing to buy the Stardust hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada for $30.5 million and moved forward with the acquisition. He already owned five such properties on the Strip — the Castaways, Silver Slipper, Frontier, Sands and Desert Inn. (Adding the Stardust would’ve given him control…
1975 In the spring, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, a Las Vegas oddsmaker and bookie, allegedly punched, knocked down and kicked casino magnate, Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson, in a Caesars Palace hallway in a confrontation over a debt he claimed Jacobson owed him, so alleged Jacobson in his battery lawsuit against Snyder. A witness told police…
1948 Mickey Cohen (né Meyer Harris Cohen) — violent Los Angeles, California mobster and gambling kingpin with ties to Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo in Las Vegas, Nevada — suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder that led to him washing his hands 50 to 60 times a day. In fact, the ritual saved his life in 1948.…
1937-1970 Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal. Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance…
1969 Elvis Presley was one of the first headliners at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. His performances began a record-breaking run of 837 sold-out shows at the spot over the ensuing seven years. In his first month at the hotel-casino, Presley gave 58 concerts. The venue booked him for two months a year and paid…
1945-1955 In the late 1940s, three bookies — or commissioners, as they preferred to be called — operated on California’s Sunset Strip in West Hollywood under the name, Golden News Service. Hy Goldbaum, George Capri and Edward Cooke, all in their late 40s or early 50s at the time, specialized in assuming large bets that…
1905 A Las Vegas, Nevada newspaper commented on the increasing popularity of gambling among ladies: “Gambling made fashionable among women is a rather serious matter. It is bad enough among men, but when the mania extends to women, who are held tighter in its grasp, the moralist has special reason to fear the consequences” (Las…