Leonard Tose - After The Eagles

After The Eagles

In 1991, the Sands sued him for $1.23 million in gambling debts. He countersued, contending that the casino got him too drunk to know what he was doing. Eventually, the casino won. There was testimony from a cocktail waitress swearing that her job description was "to keep Mr. Tose's glass filled." A monogrammed glass, courtesy of the casino, which she kept filled with top-shelf scotch.

In the end, he lost it all, by his estimate more than $20 million at Resorts International and $14 million at the Sands. In 1996, on his 81st birthday, Tose was evicted from his seven-bedroom Villanova mansion after losing the house in a U.S. Marshal's sale.

In 1999, he told a congressional hearing on compulsive gambling that his losses totaled between $40 million and $50 million. He spent his last years alone in a downtown hotel room after his home in Philadelphia's upscale Main Line district was confiscated for unpaid taxes. Mr. Tose died in his sleep in the hospice wing of St. Agnes Medical Center in Philadelphia on April 15, 2003. He was 88. No cause of death was released. An obituary by Dan Dunkin captured his life: "To put Leonard Tose's life in football terms, he threw on every down."

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