[Excerpt from about Las Vegas from Chapter about Jewish crime]

Bugsy Siegel was instrumental in creating the legalized crime-laden playground of Las Vegas, starting things off at the Flamingo Hotel. Joseph Sacher headed the nearby Sands Hotel; Sacher "was second only to Lansky in the [crime] Syndicate. Years ... [later] he fled the U.S. and went into exile in Israel." [KELLEY, K., p. 219] Allen Friedman notes another early Jewish criminal influence in Sin City: "The real potential of Las Vegas was not understood until Moe Sedway arrival in 1941." [FRIEDMAN, A., p. 82]

Meyer Lansky eventually "retired" from a successful life of crime with some $150-300 million after corrupt escapades that included Florida's "Gold Coast," the Bahamas, and a gambling resort in pre-Castro Cuba. "At the height of his notoriety," says Robert Lacey, "Meyer Lansky was reckoned to be, and was targeted by the U.S. Justice Department as, the biggest gangster in the United States -- a dangerous lawbreaker of extraordinary power. He was identified as the Mafia's banker, the boss of the National Crime Syndicate, the head of the Combination -- the Chairman of the Board." [LACEY, R., p. 10-11]

Las Vegas has long been a hotbed of underworld influence and a worldwide attraction for gambling and prostitution. The Italian Mafia has also, from the conception of Las Vegas as a leisure Mecca, held great sway in the city, but its most famous underworld personages have always been Jewish mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. The great scope of Jewish contribution to the creation, and dubious ethics, of Las Vegas may be measured by the words of professor Allen Balboni. Here he discusses the development of the desert city as a gambling resort area:

"Most of the [Las Vegas] hotel builders were Jewish Americans.

Jay Sarno and Nate Jacobson were associated with Caesar's Palace

[Sarno later created Circus Circus]; Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman,

and Sam Tucker with the Desert Inn (and, along with Jake Factor,

with the Stardust after [Italian-American Tony] Cornero's death);

Sidney Wyman, Al Gottesman, and Jake Gottleib with the early years

of the Dunes; Gus Greenbaum, Moe Sedway, and Charlie Resnick

with managing the Flamingo after Bugsy Siegel's death; Ben Goffstein,

Willie Alderman, and David Berman with the booking and running of the

Riviera; Milton Prell with the establishment of the Sahara and then with

the transformation of the Tally-Ho into the Aladdin; Hyman Abrams, Carl

Cohen, and Jack Entratter with the ownership and operation of the

Sands; and Ben Jaffe, Phil Kastel, and Jell Houssels (of Anglo-Saxon

background) with the construction and operation of the Tropicana ... A

few Italian-Amerians hold minor ownership shares in casinos."

[BALBONI, p. 27]

Bernie Rothkopf also owned the MGM Hotel. Allen Glick was, between 1974-79, "the mob's front man at the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina hotels." [MORRISON, J.A., p. 1A] "In July, 1979 Allen Glick was stripped of his Nevada gambling license and fined over $500,000 for a variety of improprieties." Glick sold his interests in casinos to Allan Sachs, who was, with a partner, "figureheads for the Chicago mob responsible for providing skim monies" from Las Vegas gambling operations. [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 336] Jerome Mack, past president of the Dunes and Riviera, was a former national chairman of the Israel Bonds Campaign. Jewish entrepreneur Hank Greenspon owned the Las Vegas Sun newspaper and a local TV station. [See his efforts for Israel in the mass media section]

In more recently years, Arthur Goldberg is the CEO of Park Place Entertainment, a conglomeration of 29 hotel-casinos [JENKINS, P., 5-30-99] worldwide (Caesar's Palace, Bally's, etc.) that is twice the size of its nearest competitor. Its Stardust division is the world's largest hotel company. Elsewhere, Sheldon Adelson, chairman of the Sands, is also the owner of Venetian, a new Las Vegas complex built in 1999 at a cost of $1.6 billion. Adelson is "one of richest men in America," in 1998 worth about $600 million. [STOLL, I., 1-7-00, p. 1] Adelson, noted the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "is one of the country's largest donors to Jewish groups and he has influence in the national Jewish community." [RALSTON] Adelson, notes the (Jewish) Forward, "has paid for 75 congressmen to visit Israel with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [the pro-Israel lobbying organization]." [STOLL, I., p. 1] As Joe Gelman noted in 1999, "A number of these sin-palace operators are Jewish and strong supporters of Israel." [GELMAN, p. 15B]

The chairman of the Mirage, Steve Wynn, is also Jewish. (The funds for Wynn's first casino, the Golden Nugget, was in large part raised by convicted Jewish financier Michael Milken). [JOHNSTON, D., p. 74] The Las Vegas mayor, Oscar Goodman, elected in 1999, is the former president of Temple Beth Sholom. He also has a reputation as a "mob lawyer," defending, among others, Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky and Frank Rosenthal. Rosenthal, notes the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "is credited by some with founding the modern day Las Vegas sports book but was repeatedly denied a gambling license because of association with organized crime members." [ZAPLER, p. 1A]

All of this, in more recent years, has its mirror image in Atlantic City and, increasingly, other American gambling Meccas. Kenny Shapiro, for instance, was "the Atlantic investment banker for [Italian American mafioso] Nicky Scarfo, the vicious killer who ruled the Philadelphia Mafia, the most murderous mob family in America." [JOHNSTON, D., 1992, p. 82]

Another influential Jewish gambling mogul today is Sol Kerzner, founder and principal owner of Sun City (also known as "Sin City"), a resort playground created in 1979 in a poverty-stricken area of apartheid South Africa. Kerzner's modern empire has expanded with extravagant casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Bahamas, Mauritus, France, and a Native American site in Connecticut. An alleged bribery scheme involving the Jewish mayor of Capetown, David Bloomberg, in 1986 held up -- for a while -- his United States investments.

"Sun City," notes reporter Jay Clarke, "started out as a 'Sin City,' a place where South Africans could let their hair down because it was located then in the so-called 'independent homeland' of Bophuthatswana. Gambling, show-girl revenues, and prostitution were the lures." [CLARKE, p. TR1] "If ever there was an appropriate setting for corruption it is Sun City," noted the (London) Guardian, "situated as it is in one of nine homelands which represent the cornerstones of that most corrupt of social systems, apartheid." [BERESFORD, p. 18] One of the Israelis who made millions off the immoral socio-political system surrounding Sun City is Shabtai Kalmanovitch; he worked as an "economic advisor" to Bophuthatswana' s dictator. [BERESFORD, p. 18] )

In recent years Sun City has attempted to diversify by creating a family-oriented "Lost City" adventure park adjoining the casino. "The patent reason why the Lost City has been designed as a family playground and entertainment centre," says the (London) Guardian,

"is that it entices the public into gaming. The corridors leading to the

main casino even feature children's versions of slot machines -- game

machines -- which could with some justification be described as

nursery slopes inculcating the joys (or otherwise) of adult addiction

to the one-armed bandits packing the main 'treasure hall.'"

[BERESFORD, p. 18]

Many Jewish (and other) mob figures were also involved in the gambling industry in Cuba until the communist revolution destroyed their operations. "After the loss of Cuba and the clampdown on the Mafia by the Kennedy Justice Department," notes Dan Moldea, "Meyer Lansky and the organized crime syndicate had targeted the Bahamas as its new off-shore gambling and narcotics empire." [MOLDEA, 1989, p. 128]

In the casino/resort/hotel world of the Bahamas, and its criminal underworld, Jews have also been prominent. Among those who find a place in Alan Block's book about organized crime on these islands are

* Louis Arthur Chesler who "served as [mobster] Lansky's point man ...

Among Chesler's criminal specialties was the handling of stolen

securities." [p. 34-35]

* Morris Mac Schwabel, a Manhattan attorney, formerly convicted of

securities fraud. [p. 36]

* Joseph Jacob Frankel, who in the early 1960s "teamed up with Charles

'Ruby' Stein and [Italian mafioso] Nicholas 'Jiggs' Farlano who were

major organized crime figures." [p. 89]

* Arthur Millgram, president of Automated Ticket Systems (it had

contracts with the New York lottery system), who was murdered in

1977. [p. 91]

* Joel Mallin, a lawyer who had "ties to the mob." [p. 91]

* Irving Kahn, partner with "mob attorney Morris Shenker." [p. 95]

* C. Gerald Goldsmith, who "was the Board Chairman of the [Nassau]

Port Authority, DEVCO, and several related firms. This put him in

the middle of one of the largest political payoff scams in the Bahamas.

... One of his duties was the illegal siphoning of company funds into

the hidden bank accounts for political payoffs." [p. 95, 98]

* Ben Novack, owner of Miami's Fountainbleau hotel, who was an

"associate of prominent gangsters Lansky, Coppola, and others

including Max Eder, a loanshark and suspected labor racketeer

with a history of gambling, robbery, narcotics, and homicide

arrests." [p. 115]

* "Cleveland racketeers Morris Kleinman and Moe Dalitz." [p. 116]

* Burt Kanter, a lawyer who had "direct ties to organized crime. [p. 162]

He was a senior member of the law firm Kanter, (Milton) Levenfeld,

(Charles) Lippitz and (Roger) Baskes.

* Allen Dorfman, who was "murdered in 1985 to prevent him from

talking about mob investments ... [He] was in the same league as

Glick, Shenker, and Malnik." [p. 164]


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