The Skim

Excerpted from The Battle for Laws Vegas – the Law vs. the Mob

The Skim

Much has been written and there have been several documentaries about various organized-crime families taking cash — “skimming” — from Las Vegas casinos. The skim money was removed from the casino prior to it officially being entered into the books as revenue. Taxes weren’t paid on this unreported income, a fact on which the Internal Revenue Service frowned. The casinos involved in these illegal operations became the equivalent of piggy banks for the Midwest crime bosses.

I’d read and seen accounts of how the skims worked, but I never fully appreciated the operation until I researched the subject for this book. Perhaps my lack of interest and understanding was due to looking at it as merely financial crimes, and without realizing the amount of violence and intimidation involved to launch and maintain the scams. Or maybe it was because I’d failed to delve into the immense investigative effort it took to bring the perpetrators before the bar of justice.

Whatever the reason, as I learned that several of the murders attributed to Tony Spilotro involved protecting organized-crime’s casino interests, my attitude changed. This wasn’t just about financial wrongdoing. In fact, if it weren’t for the mob’s hidden ownership of and control over the casinos and the need to protect the status quo, there may never have been a Tony Spilotro and his gang in Las Vegas.

So, although Tony wasn’t one of the inside men in the casinos, the skim operations were part and parcel of the Spilotro era.

Two major investigations, called Strawman 1 and 2 involved the casinos owned by Argent Corporation, as well as the Tropicana. Many of the same players were involved with both, but the courts ruled that these were separate conspiracies. There were separate indictments, trials, and convictions. Some of the participants entered into plea deals and testified against their colleagues. Others gave testimony as unindicted co-conspirators. Several top mobsters from the Midwest went to prison.

A continuation of the Strawman investigations was called Strawman-Trans Sterling. This operation zeroed in on the Trans Sterling Corporation, another mob-controlled company that purchased Argent’s casino holdings and resulted in more gangsters going to prison.

From a law enforcement standpoint, these investigations and subsequent convictions marked the end of organized crime’s influence over the Las Vegas casinos.