Must Know: Chi Ha Davvero Costruito Las Vegas (Who Really Built Las Vegas and the Mafia)
- Dec 1, 2024
- 18 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
Who Really Built Las Vegas?
The Mafia, the Millions, the Murders, and the Hidden Money Behind America's Gambling Capital
For decades, Las Vegas has sold the world a carefully polished fantasy.
Neon.
Champagne.
Blackjack.
Beautiful women.
Frank Sinatra.
Luxury suites.
Cadillacs pulling beneath casino marquees.
High rollers throwing fortunes across green felt tables.
And the promise that in the Nevada desert, normal rules no longer applied.
But underneath the glamour lies a harder history.
Modern Las Vegas was not created by one man.
It was not invented by Bugsy Siegel.
And it was not built exclusively by the Mafia.
But any history that removes organized crime from the transformation of postwar Las Vegas is equally dishonest.
During crucial decades in the development of the Strip, organized-crime figures and their associates supplied capital, controlled or influenced casinos, infiltrated unions, moved money between cities, installed trusted operators and extracted untaxed cash from casino operations.
Italian-American Mafia organizations from Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee and other cities became part of that system.
So did powerful Jewish-American underworld figures including Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Gus Greenbaum and Moe Sedway.
This was not one ethnic organization secretly owning an entire city.
It was something more sophisticated.
Las Vegas became a meeting place between legal gambling and illegal capital.
And for a remarkable period of American history, the casino floor created the perfect machine for converting criminal influence into enormous amounts of cash.
To understand how it happened, we have to destroy the first great myth.
Las Vegas Existed Before the Mafia
Las Vegas was not an empty patch of desert discovered by gangsters.
The city was officially founded in 1905.
Nevada legalized gambling in 1931.
That same decade, construction of what became Hoover Dam brought thousands of workers into southern Nevada and contributed to regional economic growth.
Casinos already operated downtown.
And before Bugsy Siegel became synonymous with Las Vegas, resorts were already appearing on what would become the Strip.
The El Rancho Vegas opened in 1941.
The Last Frontier followed in 1942.
The revolution had begun.
The Mafia did not invent Las Vegas.
What organized crime recognized was its potential.
Legal gambling created an opportunity almost impossible to reproduce elsewhere in America.
In New York, Chicago, Cleveland or Kansas City, gambling operations often existed underground.
In Nevada, gambling could operate legally.
The building could be legal.
The casino license could be legal.
The customers could gamble legally.
The money pouring across the tables could be legal.
And hidden inside that legitimate river of cash, illegal money could become extraordinarily difficult to identify.
That was the opportunity.
The Desert Was Perfect
Las Vegas possessed several characteristics attractive to organized crime.
Nevada had legal gambling.
The city was expanding.
Land was available.
Los Angeles was close enough to provide tourists and entertainment connections.
Government regulation was still developing.
Casinos generated enormous amounts of cash.
And cash businesses offer opportunities that organized crime understands extremely well.
A casino could generate legitimate revenue while also creating opportunities for money to disappear before reaching the official accounting system.
That concept would later become infamous under one word:
Skimming.
But first came the men who understood the opportunity.
Meyer Lansky
No serious history of organized crime in Las Vegas can begin and end with the Italian-American Mafia.
One of the most important figures in the broader national underworld was Meyer Lansky.
Lansky was Jewish-American, not Italian.
That distinction matters because the criminal network that helped shape Las Vegas crossed ethnic boundaries.
Lansky had worked closely with Italian-American Mafia figures including Lucky Luciano.
He understood gambling.
He understood finance.
He understood partnerships.
And above all, he understood that the future of organized crime did not necessarily belong to men shooting one another on street corners.
The real money was in systems.
Casinos offered exactly that.
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel
Then came the man Hollywood would turn into the supposed father of Las Vegas.
Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.
Siegel was born Benjamin Siegelbaum in Brooklyn in 1906.
He was violent, charismatic, ambitious and deeply connected to organized crime.
He had worked with Meyer Lansky and became associated with the national network of criminal figures that emerged from the Prohibition era.
By the 1940s, Siegel was operating extensively on the West Coast.
And Las Vegas caught his attention.
But here history and mythology separate.
Bugsy Siegel Did Not Invent the Flamingo
The Flamingo was not originally Siegel's idea.
The project was conceived by Billy Wilkerson, publisher of The Hollywood Reporter.
Wilkerson envisioned a sophisticated resort that would bring Hollywood glamour into the Nevada desert.
Construction began.
Then money became a problem.
Organized-crime-connected investors entered the picture.
Siegel became increasingly involved and eventually took control of the project.
This distinction is fundamental.
Siegel did not look at empty desert and magically invent the luxury casino resort.
But he became the most famous face of a project that helped define what the Strip could become.
The Flamingo
The Flamingo represented something more sophisticated than the Western-themed resorts that preceded it.
It promised glamour.
Luxury.
Entertainment.
Hollywood.
Gambling wrapped inside an aspirational lifestyle.
But construction costs exploded.
Money disappeared.
Deadlines slipped.
Siegel's investors became increasingly concerned.
The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946.
The opening was disappointing.
Bad weather interfered with travel.
Parts of the hotel were unfinished.
The casino lost money.
The resort temporarily closed.
For men who had invested enormous sums, this was not merely an embarrassing hotel opening.
It was their money.
And these were not ordinary investors.
The Flamingo Reopens
The Flamingo reopened in March 1947.
This time, business improved.
The property began generating profits.
But whatever improvement occurred, Siegel's relationship with his investors had deteriorated.
Rumors circulated that money had been stolen or diverted during construction.
Some stories focused on Siegel's girlfriend Virginia Hill and alleged overseas financial movements.
The exact truth behind every accusation remains difficult to establish.
But what happened next became part of Las Vegas mythology.
Bugsy Siegel Is Murdered
On the night of June 20, 1947, Siegel was sitting inside Virginia Hill's home in Beverly Hills.
A gunman outside fired through the window.
Siegel was struck multiple times.
He died at the scene.
He was 41 years old.
The murder was never officially solved.
No one was convicted.
The timing immediately generated theories that Siegel had been executed because of the Flamingo's cost overruns, missing money or conflicts with organized-crime investors.
That explanation became the dominant legend.
It remains a plausible part of the story.
But without a conviction or definitive documentary proof establishing who ordered the murder and why, responsible history cannot present the theory as courtroom fact.
What is certain is more important.
Siegel died.
The Flamingo survived.
The business was bigger than the gangster.
The Lesson of Bugsy Siegel
Hollywood transformed Siegel into the visionary who built Las Vegas.
That is too simple.
The real lesson is more interesting.
The Flamingo demonstrated that a glamorous, sophisticated resort could attract visitors to the Strip.
Gaming did not have to exist inside a dusty Western saloon.
It could exist beside swimming pools.
Fine restaurants.
Entertainment.
Luxury rooms.
Celebrity.
Sex appeal.
Las Vegas was becoming a destination rather than merely a place to gamble.
Organized crime understood the economic potential immediately.
The Desert Inn and Moe Dalitz
One of the most important figures in the next phase was Morris “Moe” Dalitz.
Dalitz came from Cleveland's underworld and had been associated with bootlegging and gambling.
He was part of the group commonly called the Cleveland Syndicate.
The Desert Inn had been conceived by Wilbur Clark.
But Clark ran into financial difficulty.
Dalitz and his associates supplied the money required to complete the project.
The Desert Inn opened in 1950.
This pattern would become extremely important in Las Vegas.
A legitimate developer had a vision.
Construction required enormous capital.
Traditional financing was difficult or insufficient.
Men with underworld connections had money.
They invested.
And investment created influence.
The Mafia Did Not Need to Own Every Brick
This is one of the most important concepts for understanding mob-era Las Vegas.
Organized crime did not need a Mafia boss's name printed on the deed to control economic activity.
Ownership could be layered.
Front men could hold licenses.
Trusted associates could manage operations.
Loans could create leverage.
Union relationships could provide power.
Hidden investors could remain hidden.
The visible casino might look legitimate.
The real network behind the money could be much more complicated.
That is how sophisticated organized crime works.
Control is often more valuable than ownership.
The Sands
The Sands Hotel and Casino opened in 1952.
It became one of the defining resorts of classic Las Vegas.
The Sands would later become inseparable from the Rat Pack era.
Frank Sinatra.
Dean Martin.
Sammy Davis Jr.
Peter Lawford.
Joey Bishop.
The Copa Room.
The glamour was real.
But behind the entertainment was a business environment in which casino ownership and financing frequently intersected with figures who had underworld associations.
This was the extraordinary duality of Las Vegas.
On stage:
Frank Sinatra.
Behind the scenes:
money, influence, casino operators, unions and criminal relationships.
The tourist saw the show.
Federal investigators increasingly wanted to understand the machinery.
The Stardust
Then came the Stardust.
The Stardust would become one of the most important casinos in the history of organized crime in Las Vegas.
Its history involved complex ownership and financing relationships.
Moe Dalitz and his associates became involved with the property.
Money connected to the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund would become crucial to the broader story of casino financing.
The Stardust eventually became one of the most notorious examples of the casino skimming era.
But to understand why, we need to understand the pension fund.
Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters
One of the most extraordinary financial stories in twentieth-century America concerns the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and its enormous pension assets.
Under Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, the union became one of the most powerful labor organizations in the United States.
Its pension fund controlled enormous amounts of money.
Las Vegas developers needed enormous loans.
Traditional banks were often reluctant to finance casinos.
The Teamsters pension fund could provide capital.
And it did.
Millions of dollars flowed into Las Vegas projects through pension-fund loans.
This financing helped build and expand casino properties.
The brutal irony is obvious.
Money accumulated for the retirement security of American workers became an important source of financing for a city in which organized-crime interests were deeply involved.
Why Pension Money Mattered
Casinos are extraordinarily expensive.
Land.
Construction.
Hotels.
Restaurants.
Showrooms.
Swimming pools.
Gaming equipment.
Payroll.
Entertainment.
Marketing.
Working capital.
A casino can consume millions before the first customer places a bet.
Whoever controls access to financing therefore possesses enormous power.
The Teamsters pension fund became important because it could provide money when conventional financial institutions hesitated.
That opened the door to relationships between labor, developers, casino operators and organized crime.
Las Vegas was being built not simply with concrete.
It was being built with networks.
The Italian-American Mafia Arrives in Force
By the 1950s and 1960s, several major American Mafia organizations had interests connected to Las Vegas gaming.
The Chicago Outfit became especially important.
So did organized-crime groups from Kansas City.
Other Midwestern Mafia organizations became connected to casino investments and skimming operations.
This is where the statement that “the Mafia built Las Vegas” begins to contain a substantial truth—provided we understand what it means.
They did not build every hotel.
They did not create the city.
They did not own every casino.
But organized-crime capital and influence became deeply embedded in an important portion of the casino economy during the decades when Las Vegas became internationally famous.
Chicago
The Chicago Outfit had enormous experience with illegal gambling.
Las Vegas offered something better.
Legal gambling.
The Outfit could maintain interests through associates and hidden relationships while avoiding direct visible ownership by notorious gangsters.
Figures associated with Chicago organized crime became deeply connected to Las Vegas operations.
One of the most famous was Sam Giancana.
Another important name was Anthony “Tony” Accardo.
And later, Las Vegas would become closely associated with two men whose lives inspired one of the greatest Mafia films ever made.
Frank Rosenthal.
And Tony Spilotro.
The Skim
The fundamental criminal mechanism was beautifully simple.
A casino makes cash.
A lot of cash.
Imagine money entering the casino through gambling operations.
Before all of that money is officially recorded as casino revenue, a portion disappears.
It never enters the books.
It is never reported as revenue.
Taxes are never paid on it.
The cash is physically removed.
That money is the skim.
Once skimmed, the cash could be transported to organized-crime bosses and partners in other cities.
Chicago.
Kansas City.
Milwaukee.
Cleveland.
Potentially elsewhere.
No bank transfer.
No corporate dividend.
No official accounting entry.
Cash.
Why Skimming Was So Powerful
Suppose a casino legitimately earns millions of dollars.
If every dollar is recorded, regulators can see the revenue.
Accountants can audit it.
Taxes can be assessed.
Shareholders can trace profits.
But if money disappears before being recorded, it becomes extremely difficult to detect.
That was the genius and criminality of the skim.
The casino did not have to be entirely illegal.
The casino could be legitimate.
The customers could be legitimate.
The games could be legitimate.
The hidden extraction was illegal.
The criminal enterprise lived inside the legitimate one.
The Money Leaves Las Vegas
The image is almost cinematic because sometimes the reality was cinematic.
Cash could be collected.
Counted separately.
Hidden.
Transferred through couriers.
Moved across state lines.
Distributed to criminal organizations that held interests in the casino.
The tourist losing $500 at blackjack had no idea that a portion of the casino's unreported cash might eventually benefit organized-crime figures hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Las Vegas became an ATM for criminal organizations.
But unlike an ATM, the withdrawals were not supposed to exist.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board
Nevada eventually understood that organized crime threatened the legitimacy of its most important industry.
In 1955, the Nevada Legislature created the Gaming Control Board.
Its purpose included removing undesirable elements from gaming and establishing stronger regulatory oversight.
In 1959, the Nevada Gaming Commission was created.
This represented a fundamental change.
Nevada could not build a respectable international gaming industry while allowing notorious criminals to operate openly inside it.
The state needed legitimacy.
The Mafia needed secrecy.
The conflict was inevitable.
The Black Book
Nevada developed another weapon.
The List of Excluded Persons, popularly known as the Black Book.
Individuals considered unsuitable could be prohibited from entering Nevada casinos.
For organized crime, this created an enormous problem.
A notorious Mafia figure could no longer simply walk through a casino he influenced.
The more visible the criminal, the more difficult direct involvement became.
Again, the system adapted.
Trusted associates became more important.
Howard Hughes Changes the Game
In the late 1960s, another kind of money arrived.
Howard Hughes began purchasing Las Vegas casino properties.
Hughes was eccentric, secretive and enormously wealthy.
But most importantly, his money was legitimate corporate-scale capital.
His acquisitions helped accelerate a transformation already underway.
Las Vegas was becoming more acceptable to institutional and corporate investment.
This changed the economics.
The Mafia had flourished partly because casinos had difficulty obtaining conventional financing.
Once large corporations and legitimate investors could enter the gaming business more easily, organized crime lost one of its greatest advantages.
Capital was becoming legal.
Corporate Las Vegas
The arrival of corporations did not instantly eliminate organized crime.
But it changed the direction of the industry.
Public companies could raise enormous amounts of money.
Banks became more comfortable with gaming.
Regulation became stronger.
Accounting became more sophisticated.
Casinos became increasingly difficult to operate as private cash machines for hidden criminal partners.
The Mafia's Las Vegas was beginning to disappear.
But before it disappeared, it produced one final extraordinary chapter.
Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal
Frank Rosenthal was one of the most sophisticated gambling operators of his generation.
He understood sports betting at an extraordinary level.
He became closely associated with several Las Vegas casinos, particularly the Stardust.
Rosenthal was not a made member of the Italian-American Mafia.
He was Jewish-American.
But his career illustrates the multiethnic structure of organized-crime operations in Las Vegas.
He was closely connected to Chicago Outfit interests.
He became the casino expert.
The man who understood operations.
The man who understood odds.
The man who could make the casino perform.
But another man was sent to Las Vegas for a very different reason.
Anthony “Tony” Spilotro
Anthony Spilotro was associated with the Chicago Outfit.
Where Rosenthal represented casino expertise, Spilotro represented enforcement and street-level criminal power.
His reputation became legendary.
Robbery.
Extortion.
Violence.
Burglary.
Intimidation.
Las Vegas law enforcement watched him closely.
Federal investigators watched him.
The relationship between Rosenthal and Spilotro deteriorated.
And Spilotro's increasing visibility became a problem for the Outfit.
This was the old Mafia problem all over again.
Attention is dangerous.
The Hole in the Wall Gang
Spilotro became associated with a group of burglars commonly called the Hole in the Wall Gang, named for their method of entering buildings by cutting through walls and roofs.
Las Vegas was no longer simply about casino money.
Street crime, burglary, fencing stolen property and violence existed alongside the sophisticated casino operations.
The contradiction became unsustainable.
The Mafia wanted Las Vegas to produce quiet money.
Spilotro was producing headlines.
The FBI Moves In
Federal law enforcement increasingly targeted organized crime's influence over Las Vegas casinos.
Wiretaps.
Informants.
Financial investigations.
Surveillance.
Racketeering prosecutions.
The FBI worked across multiple cities because the Las Vegas skim was not simply a Nevada crime.
Money connected Las Vegas to Mafia organizations elsewhere.
Investigators needed to understand the entire network.
That became one of the most significant organized-crime investigations of the era.
Kansas City and the Casino Skim
One of the crucial breakthroughs came through investigations connected to the Kansas City crime family.
Federal investigators uncovered evidence concerning hidden interests and skimmed casino money.
The investigation expanded.
The structure began to emerge.
Casinos in Las Vegas.
Hidden criminal interests.
Money removed before accounting.
Couriers.
Midwestern Mafia organizations.
Union financing.
The glamorous façade was cracking.
The Tropicana Raid
In 1979, FBI agents raided the Tropicana Hotel as part of an investigation into mob influence in gaming.
The investigation was connected to figures associated with the Kansas City crime family.
The resulting cases helped expose organized crime's hidden influence in Las Vegas.
This was not Hollywood mythology.
This was federal prosecution.
The system was being documented.
Strawman
The FBI investigation commonly associated with Operation Strawman became one of the most important attacks on Mafia casino interests.
The investigation exposed skimming and hidden ownership relationships involving Las Vegas casinos and organized-crime families in the Midwest.
Convictions followed.
The Mafia's casino model was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
The government had learned how the machine worked.
Once investigators understood the architecture, secrecy became much harder.
The Stardust Becomes Evidence
The Stardust had once represented everything glamorous about Las Vegas.
Huge casino.
Entertainment.
Tourists.
Lights.
Money.
But to investigators it represented something else.
A cash-generating business from which organized-crime interests could secretly extract profits.
The casino was no longer merely a resort.
It was evidence.
The Murder of the Spilotro Brothers
By the mid-1980s, Tony Spilotro had become a liability.
His relationship with organized crime leadership had deteriorated.
His visibility was enormous.
In June 1986, Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael were murdered.
Their bodies were discovered buried in an Indiana cornfield.
The killings became one of the most infamous events in the final era of mob-controlled Las Vegas.
Popular culture would later recreate the murders dramatically.
The reality required no embellishment.
Two brothers entered a criminal world built on loyalty.
When they became liabilities, that loyalty ended.
Casino
In 1995, director Martin Scorsese released Casino.
The film starred Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone.
De Niro's Sam “Ace” Rothstein was based substantially on Frank Rosenthal.
Pesci's Nicky Santoro was inspired by Tony Spilotro.
The film dramatized events.
Names were changed.
Characters were compressed.
Scenes were altered.
But the underlying architecture was real:
Midwestern organized crime.
Casino control.
Skimming.
Violence.
Federal investigation.
And the eventual collapse of the system.
For millions of people, Casino became their introduction to mob-era Las Vegas.
The true history is even more interesting.
So Who Actually Built Las Vegas?
Now we can answer the question properly.
The Mafia did not build Las Vegas alone.
Workers built it.
Architects designed it.
Developers risked money.
Entertainers made it famous.
Politicians created the legal environment.
Nevada regulators eventually protected the industry's legitimacy.
Jewish-American casino operators and underworld figures played enormous roles.
Italian-American Mafia families supplied criminal capital, influence, protection and hidden ownership.
The Teamsters pension fund supplied crucial financing to multiple projects.
Corporate America eventually supplied vastly larger pools of legitimate capital.
All of these forces built Las Vegas.
But there is another statement that is equally true:
The Las Vegas Strip that became globally famous during the middle of the twentieth century cannot be honestly explained without organized crime.
Remove the mob money.
Remove the underworld investors.
Remove the casino operators connected to criminal networks.
Remove Teamsters financing.
Remove the skim.
Remove Chicago.
Remove Cleveland.
Remove Kansas City.
Remove Lansky, Dalitz, Siegel, Rosenthal and the Mafia-connected infrastructure surrounding them.
And the history of Las Vegas changes dramatically.
The Italian-American Mafia's Real Role
The Italian-American Mafia's contribution was not architectural.
Gangsters did not personally pour the concrete.
Their importance was capital and control.
They provided or facilitated money.
They created partnerships.
They influenced casino operations.
They used unions.
They installed trusted people.
They protected hidden interests.
They extracted cash.
They connected Las Vegas to criminal organizations across America.
That is what “the Mafia built Las Vegas” should mean historically.
Not that Lucky Luciano designed the Strip.
Not that Al Capone founded Nevada casinos.
Not that every casino belonged to Italians.
It means organized crime became one of the engines powering the casino economy during the decades when Las Vegas transformed itself into the gambling capital of the world.
And They Paid for It in Blood
This history is often romanticized.
It should not be.
Bugsy Siegel was shot through a window.
Gus Greenbaum and his wife were murdered in their Phoenix home in 1958.
Tony Spilotro and his brother Michael were beaten to death and buried in a cornfield.
Other men disappeared.
Others went to prison.
Families were destroyed.
Businesses were extorted.
Unions were corrupted.
Workers' pension money became entangled with casino financing.
The beautiful neon signs hid an economy in which violence remained the ultimate enforcement mechanism.
This was not Ocean's Eleven.
It was organized crime.
The Greatest Mafia Business Was the One That Looked Legitimate
Perhaps this is the central lesson.
The most sophisticated organized crime does not always operate in dark alleys.
Sometimes it operates beneath chandeliers.
It wears a suit.
It owns a restaurant.
It sits in an executive office.
It lends money.
It influences a union.
It places a trusted manager inside a casino.
It keeps legitimate books.
And then it creates another stream of money that never reaches those books.
Las Vegas demonstrated how powerful organized crime could become when it stopped operating entirely outside legitimate society and began operating inside it.
Why the Mafia Eventually Lost Las Vegas
Organized crime did not voluntarily surrender Las Vegas.
Its influence was attacked from multiple directions.
Federal investigations.
Nevada gaming regulators.
Wiretaps.
Informants.
Financial prosecutions.
Racketeering laws.
Casino licensing requirements.
Corporate investment.
Institutional financing.
More sophisticated accounting.
Publicly traded gaming companies.
The old model became increasingly dangerous.
If legitimate corporations could raise hundreds of millions—and eventually billions—of dollars, casinos no longer needed underworld financing in the same way.
If regulators could investigate hidden ownership, front men became harder to use.
If the FBI could record conversations, secrecy became fragile.
If RICO could attack an entire criminal enterprise, bosses could no longer easily insulate themselves from crimes committed below them.
The economics had changed.
The Mafia had helped create a monster that eventually became too large, too regulated and too corporate for the Mafia to control.
From the Mafia to Wall Street
That may be the ultimate irony of Las Vegas.
The Mafia helped demonstrate that casino resorts could generate extraordinary wealth.
Then corporate America looked at the numbers.
Wall Street could provide more capital than the mob ever could.
Corporations could build larger resorts.
Thousands of rooms.
Convention centers.
Shopping malls.
Restaurants.
Theaters.
Nightclubs.
Entire artificial cities inside hotels.
The scale became enormous.
The gangster with a suitcase of cash could not compete with billions raised through legitimate capital markets.
Las Vegas had graduated.
What Remains Today
Modern Las Vegas is fundamentally different from the city of Siegel, Dalitz, Giancana, Rosenthal and Spilotro.
The major casino resorts are operated within an intensely regulated corporate environment.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board and Nevada Gaming Commission maintain extensive investigative, licensing and enforcement authority.
The mob era survives primarily through history, museums, books, movies and the mythology tourists still find irresistible.
But walk along the Strip and the ghosts remain.
The names have changed.
Many original buildings have disappeared.
Casinos have been demolished.
New towers have replaced old ones.
Yet beneath the corporate skyline lies an earlier city.
A city built during an era when cash moved quietly.
When casino managers answered to people who were not listed on corporate charts.
When money disappeared before reaching the count room.
When union pension funds could finance enormous projects.
When a casino could simultaneously be a legitimate business and a criminal revenue machine.
The Brutal Truth About Las Vegas
So did the Mafia build Las Vegas?
Not by itself.
That answer is less cinematic.
But it is historically stronger.
The Mafia did something more interesting.
It recognized Las Vegas early enough to become deeply involved during the period when the city was transforming into an international gambling and entertainment capital.
Italian-American organized crime organizations helped finance, influence and profit from important casino operations.
Their Jewish-American underworld partners were equally important to parts of that history.
The Teamsters pension system helped provide capital.
Developers created properties.
Workers physically built them.
Entertainers created the glamour.
Tourists supplied the money.
Politicians created the legal environment.
And eventually regulators and federal investigators helped dismantle organized crime's grip on the casino industry.
Las Vegas was therefore neither purely a Mafia creation nor merely an innocent resort city occasionally visited by gangsters.
For decades, legitimate capitalism and organized crime existed inside the same desert economy.
That is the uncomfortable truth.
The City That Outlived Its Creators
Bugsy Siegel died.
Meyer Lansky died.
Moe Dalitz died.
Sam Giancana was murdered.
Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.
Tony Spilotro was murdered.
Frank Rosenthal eventually left Las Vegas.
The old casino operators disappeared.
The mob's influence declined.
The Teamsters loans ended.
The corporations arrived.
The original resorts were demolished one after another.
But Las Vegas continued growing.
That tells us something important.
Organized crime helped shape a crucial era of Las Vegas.
But once the economic machine existed, it no longer needed the people who had helped power it.
The city became bigger than them.
Final Perspective
The old photographs tell only half the story.
Men in tuxedos.
Women in evening gowns.
Cadillacs beneath neon marquees.
Sinatra on stage.
Champagne in the showroom.
Millions of dollars crossing casino tables.
The other half happened where tourists could not see it.
Closed rooms.
Private meetings.
Hidden investors.
Union loans.
Cash couriers.
Federal wiretaps.
Skimmed money.
Threats.
Disappearances.
Murders.
That was also Las Vegas.
The Mafia did not create the Nevada desert.
It did not invent gambling.
It did not build every casino.
But during the decisive decades when Las Vegas became the gambling capital recognized around the world, organized crime was not standing outside watching the city rise.
It was inside the casinos.
It was inside the financing.
It was inside the unions.
It was inside the count rooms.
It was taking money off the top.
And Italian-American Mafia organizations were a major part of that system.
Eventually the federal government, Nevada regulators and corporate capital forced much of organized crime out of the casino industry.
But by then, the Strip already existed.
The lights were already on.
The money was already flowing.
And Las Vegas had already become Las Vegas.
That is the history behind the neon.
ZAFFERANO & CO. — Italian History & Culture
Servings and Timing
Servings and preparation timing should be adjusted to the quantities and cooking method already specified in this recipe. Organize the mise en place before cooking and allow sufficient time for resting, chilling, marinating, proofing, or finishing whenever those stages are part of the original method.
Chef Tips
Use the best-quality ingredients available and prepare the mise en place completely before beginning. Control heat carefully, season progressively, and judge doneness by texture, aroma, and appearance as well as time. Preserve the character of the original recipe rather than masking it with unnecessary garnishes or excessive seasoning.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Do not rush the principal cooking stage, overcrowd the pan, or compensate for weak flavor with excessive salt. Respect resting and cooling stages when the recipe requires them, and avoid overcooking delicate ingredients. Taste and adjust the final balance before serving.
Serving and Presentation
Serve at the temperature appropriate to the dish and keep the presentation clean and natural. The principal ingredient should remain visually dominant. Use only restrained, edible garnishes that are connected to flavors already present in the recipe.
Comments