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Mafia Casino Skim

Mafia Casino Skim Rating: 4,7/5 1650 reviews

Twentieth Anniversary of Casino By Seth Ferranti December 14, 2015 March 28, 2020 Its the twentieth anniversary of Casino, the seminal mob movie that starred Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro as high profile mob players who ruled the roost in Las Vegas at the height of the casino. The City of Fountains has appeared in The Godfather, Casino, and The Sopranos, but many Midwesterners are not aware that Kansas City has affected the fortunes of the entire underworld. In The Mafia and the Machine, author Frank Hayde ties in every major name in organized crime-Luciano, Bugsy, Lansky-as well as the city's corrupt police force. The Casino Skim This is a story about the Mafia in its heyday. If you have watched the movie Casino then you got a lesson in how the casino skim went down. This is about the real men behind the skim of the Stardust Casino. Of course, every one of those casinos had Mob connections and money being skimmed that went to New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Miami. Other projects managed to be built on money fronted by legitimate businessmen, such as the Stardust, but that didn’t keep gangsters like Marshall Caifano from guarding the skim going out the back.

This is a story about the Mafia in its heyday. If you have watched the movie Casino then you got a lesson in how the casino skim went down. This is about the real men behind the skim of the Stardust Casino.
In the 1970’s a clean cut man in his 30’s, Allen R. Glick, first bought the Hacienda Hotel and Casino for somewhere around 5 million dollars. He did well with it and he showed promise as a casino operator.
Glick controlled the ARGENT company that soon got a Teamster loan for 140 million dollars to purchase the Stardust, Fremont and the Marina Casino’s.
Mafia
He then put Lefty Rosenthal in charge of the Stardust, but he was really the point man for the Chicago Outfit, Kansas City and the Milwaukee families. Lefty had one job and that was to increase the skim and keep it coming.
The Outfit was not happy with the skim coming out of Las vegas because they had been hit hard by the Feds and it had become harder to get cash from their own casinos.
When Bugsy had built the Flamingo a casino owner could just walk into the room where they brought all the cash before it hit the count room and grab stacks of cash.
They could go to a table and sign a marker, play and then cash out. Later they would have the marker disappear.
In the 1970’s a casino owner was not allowed in the count room and all the cash had to be accounted for that came in or went out.
They could no longer gamble at their own casinos.
They had to come up with a better method. Where there is a will, there is a way.
They had to go low. Instead of going for the bills, they went for the coins.
The slots were bringing in so much cash that they could not count it everyday. So they purchased scales that could weigh them in bulk. They then recalibrated the scales to under weigh the coins.
They had the coins from the other three casinos brought to the Stardust everyday. They then had a guy to set the scales so they registered 10% less when they were weighed.
They started to do this with the dollar tokens and silver dollars that the dollar slot machines used back then.
So now they had a steady stream of cash coming in. How did they get it in a form that they could spend? Coins might be legal tender, but nobody is going to walk around with hundreds of dollars in coins.
Casino
The key was the change girls that used to walk around the floor taking customers bills and swapping them out for rolls of coins.
The girls used to get the coins from the cashier's cage, but the Stardust installed coin cabinets along the walls that had coins and a dropbox for the bills.
They also set up a change booth that was not accountable to the gaming control board.
They filled both places with the 10% skim coins and they got back bills!
They were able to steal three hundred thousand dollars a week using this system. It is believed that they had this going for 5 years, with fifteen million dollars a year going to the mob families.
These guys took down seventy five million that they know about.

Mafia Casino Skim Milk

Frank P. Balistrieri (May 27, 1918 – February 7, 1993) also known as 'Mr. Big', 'Frankie Bal', 'Mr. Slick', and 'Mad Bomber', was a powerful Mafia boss of the Milwaukee crime family who was a central figure in casino skimming during the 1970s in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Biography

Balistrieri was college educated and attended law school for six months. His family immigrated to the United States in 1904 along with the Bompensiero family (Frank Bompensiero would eventually lead the San Diego crew of the Los Angeles crime family). As a young man, he started working for the Milwaukee crime family, which owed allegiance to the powerful Chicago Outfit criminal organization in Chicago. Balistrieri soon built a reputation for arrogance, cruelty and ruthlessness. Balistrieri allegedly received the 'Mad Bomber' nickname because he frequently used Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) attached to cars as weapons against his enemies. His father-in-law and Milwaukee boss, John Alioto, was soon grooming Balistrieri as his successor.

In 1961, Alioto retired and Balistrieri took control of the Milwaukee family. By the time Balistrieri succeeded his father-in-law, John Alioto, as the new boss of the Milwaukee LCN family, he had a sizable loan shark book, vast control over illegal sports betting and a tight hold on the vending machine market. Balistrieri eventually referred to himself as, “....the most powerful man in Milwaukee.” After the 'hit' on an acquaintance, August 'Augie' Palmisano, Balistrieri was quoted as saying, 'He called me a name - to my face - and now they can't find his skin!'. Palmisano, was slain by a car bomb on June 30, 1978.

Mafia Casino Skimpy

Balistrieri conducted his business at a table at Snug's restaurant in Milwaukee's Shorecrest Hotel, giving orders over a red telephone. In March 1967, Balistrieri was convicted of income tax evasion and was sent to prison for two years. In June 1971, he was released.

In the late 1970s, with his two sons John and Joseph Balistrieri, he worked with Bonanno crime family capo Michael Sabella and once met Bonanno crime family soldier Benjamin Ruggiero and undercover officer Joseph Pistone at his restaurant, Snug's, to discuss a vending machine operation that was brought to Pistone's attention by another undercover cop working with the Milwaukee Mafia, Clark B. Hall. Ruggiero later admitted to Pistone that he felt threatened while in the presence of Balistrieri. The Bonannos, Milwaukee gangsters and the FBI Agents did reach an agreement over the vending machine rackets. Balistieri, through his sons, made an agreement. His sons, John and Joseph, drew up an agreement which gave Balstrieri overly favorable arrangements and could ultimately give control over the proposed arrangements. Months later, with suspicion looming, Balistrieri cancelled the arrangements and ceased all contact with the Bonanno LCN Family. It was through his sons and their legal expertise that Balistrieri was able to hide controlling interest in many legal businesses.

Casino skimming

On March 20, 1974, Balistrieri met with Kansas City mobsters Nick Civella and Carl DeLuna, in Las Vegas. During the meeting, the mobsters agreed that Balistrieri would meet with the mafia front man in Las Vegas, Allen Glick, to secure an option to purchase part of his Argent Corporation. Glick would agree to sell half of the corporation's ownership to Balistrieri's sons, John Balistrieri and Joseph P. Balistrieri, for $25,000 which, as the mobster later claimed, '...he had an obligation arising from the assistance to Glick in obtaining a pension fund commitment in the amount of $62.75 million.'

Soon Balistrieri and Civella were feuding over each other's share from the skimming operations. Finally, they requested arbitration from The Outfit. The results of the arrangement, as ruled by Outfit leader 'Joey Doves' Joseph Aiuppa and Underboss John Cerone, demanded that The Outfit receive a 25% tax as its cut in skimming operations. The 1982 car bombing of mob associate and the Stardust Casino's Frank Rosenthal, in Las Vegas, was attributed to Balistrieri.

Conviction

In September 1983, Balistrieri and his two sons were indicted on charges of skimming over $400 million in unreported income from the Fremont Hotel and Casino and the Stardust. This was the first case in which federal authorities had successfully connected mobsters from four different states. While awaiting sentencing on extortion and bookmaking charges, Balistrieri claimed to be innocent. He even told the press, 'The first time I heard the word, 'Mafia,' was when I read it in the newspapers.' However, on May 30, 1984, Balistrieri was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined $30,000. His sons were convicted of extorting a vending machine businessman and each received two years in prison.

In September 1985, Balistrieri was tried in Kansas City, Missouri with eight other associates for skimming an estimated $400 million of the gross income of the Argent Corporation from Syndicate casino operations. Federal prosecutors further accused Balistrieri of skimming the unreported income and distributing it to organized crime figures in Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. In failing health, Balistrieri pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy in exchange for dropping federal charges, which included attempting to conceal ownership of a casino to skim profits and interstate travel to aid racketeering. He also attempted to shield his sons from any charges.

Mafia Casino

In December 1985, Balistrieri was sentenced to 10 years in prison (to run concurrently with his 13-year sentence from 1984). Close to achieving a seat on the ruling Mafia Commission in New York, Balistrieri was thwarted by this prison sentence. According to the Bureau of Prisons, Balistrieri was released from prison in 1991.

Frank Balistrieri died of heart-related natural causes in early 1993.

Mafia Casino Skimmer

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