Vegas wouldn’t be Vegas without money, mayhem, and murder. Organized crime figured heavily in the town’s transformation from a dusty train stop into the gaming capital of the world. Some Mob bosses like Meyer Lansky stayed in the background while others like Moe Sedway and Moe Dalitz took to the spotlight.

The film depicts the situation as follows: Chicago mob bosses thought someone was stealing part of the skim money from the fictional Tangiers Casino (based on the Stardust casino) and assigned the Kansas City family to oversee the operation and look into the theft from the skim. In the film, the character Artie Piscano represents Kansas City. If you've ever seen the brilliant Martin Scorsese movie Casino, you were treated to an accurate representation of the mob's casino skim at a fictional hotel called the Tangiers.Today, the Video.

But nobody hit the nation’s frontal lobe as hard as “Bugsy” Siegel when pictures of his murder hit the front pages of newspapers across the country in the summer of ’47.

That was a big year for Las Vegas. Roads into the city had been improved, trains were booked with visitors, and the Mob’s first new casino on the Las Vegas Strip was turning a profit. Six other clubs in town were owned or controlled by organized crime. Still, the new Flamingo was special.

Stardust Casino Sign

It epitomized what Las Vegas wanted to become, famous. The publicity the new casino generated was substantial.

We like to think the tantalizing allure of a city of casinos operated by underworld figures helped make Las Vegas what it is today. But the new casinos would never have been built in the first place if cash wasn’t pumped into the city by the Mob.

Siegel’s crime friends put more than $3 million of their own cash into the Flamingo. Moe Dalitz matched that amount at the Desert Inn. Other men connected to the Mafia also made their mark in Las Vegas.

Stardust Casino Skimming

Behind the men who worked in Vegas, New York, and Chicago bosses had the most influence over early Las Vegas casinos. Lucky Luciano was famous for holding a meeting of crime family bosses in Cuba where “this Bugsy Siegel thing” was discussed. The consensus was that he had to go. He was hit a few months later.

Frank Costello was best known for being shot while holding the daily win records from the Tropicana Casino. He denied any knowledge, but the FBI finally acknowledged that maybe the Mafia was a real thing.

Stardust Casino Slots

Tony Accardo, the boss in Chicago during the 1940s and 1950s had the Outfit’s slot machines humming all over Chicago. He also demanded that casinos in Las Vegas use the same slot machines manufactured by Mills Novelty and Jennings Company in Chicago. Those early casinos where Chicago held a large or controlling interest included the Flamingo, Riviera, Stardust, and Royal Nevada.

In the 1960s, a nondescript furniture provider, Parvin/Dohrmann, took control of the Fremont, Stardust, and Aladdin as a front. A taste of the Sands, Dunes and Sahara was going to Chicago also.

Stardust Casino Skim

At the Tropicana, daily winnings were skimmed until the FBI stepped in with “Operation Strawman” in the late 1970s At the time, Nick Civella in Kansas City and Joseph Aiuppa in Chicago were getting monthly cash distributed by Cleveland front man Milton Rockman. Milwaukee Mob boss Frank Balistrieri also got a piece of the action.

Other Argent Corp. properties found to have been involved in widespread skim operations included the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina. Although the skim was organized by Lefty Rosenthal, he somehow skated and wasn’t indicted. Eventually, nine defendants were sent to jail.

The Courier for the Kansas City Mob was bringing $40,000 a month back from the Tropicana. The Stardust skim was much larger and that is calculated in the millions every year. Despite the fact that Lefty Rosenthal was an informant, the Stardust courier was never intercepted. They did set the FBI up one time to intercept a courier. The problem was the sack contained cookies. The guys from the Bureau laugh about that now. I bet it was not funny that day.

Here is a clip of Carl Thomas (he worked at both the Stardust and the Tropicana during the times skimming was happening) telling Mob boss, Nick Civella about skimming.