Anthony Spilotro - Las Vegas

Las Vegas

In 1971, Spilotro succeeded Marshall Caifano as the Mob's representative in Las Vegas. Spilotro reunited with his boyhood friend Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who ran several Outfit-backed casinos, including the Stardust. Spilotro's legal counsel in Vegas was provided by Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas's recent former mayor.

Spilotro and Rosenthal worked together to embezzle profits from the casinos (i.e., "the skim"), which were then sent back to The Outfit and other Midwestern Mafia families, such as Kansas City, St. Louis and Milwaukee. On his own, Spilotro (under the alias Tony Stuart) took over the gift shop at the Circus-Circus Hotel, a "family" hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. The hotel offered first-class entertainment for children, while their parents gambled in the casino. In 1971, the hotel was owned by Jay Sarno, who had owned the property. In 1974, Circus-Circus was sold; for Spilotro's $70,000 investment, he received $700,000. In the early 1970s Spilotro started a loan shark business with Los Angeles crime family capo, Frank "Bomp" Bompensiero, in Las Vegas. In 1972, Spilotro was indicted in Chicago for the murder of Leo Foreman, a real estate agent/loan shark, who had made the mistake of throwing Sam DeStefano out of his office, in May 1963. Foreman was eventually lured to Sam's home to play cards. There, Foreman was tortured by repeatedly being stabbed with an ice pick and had pieces of his flesh cut out, before being shot and killed.

In November 1975, Spilotro, with the help of Frank Bompensiero, murdered Tamara Rand, a millionaire real estate broker and investor from San Diego. At the time, Rand was suing Allen Glick, a mob front man in Las Vegas, to pay back a $2 million loan that she had made to him. Spilotro sneaked into Rand's house and fatally shot her.

In 1976, Spilotro opened "The Gold Rush, Ltd". with Chicago bookmaker Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein and brother Michael Spilotro. The Gold Rush, located one block from the Las Vegas Strip, was a combination jewelry store and electronics factory. Here Spilotro, brother Michael and Blitzstein gained expertise in fencing stolen goods.

Where Rosenthal was responsible for the actual management of the casinos, Spilotro's primary task was to control casino employees and other personnel involved in the skim/embezzlement scheme. Spilotro's role as enforcer, however, was severely curtailed after he was blacklisted by the Nevada Gaming Commission, in December 1979 (then chaired by future United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), a ruling that legally prevented Spilotro from being physically present in any Nevada casino. He was blacklisted as a direct result of court testimony of Aladena "Jimmy The Weasel" Fratianno, following his arrest, in 1977.