Las Vegas Jews, Jewish Las Vegas

Las Vegas Jews, Jewish Las Vegas

Jews and the Gambling Business

Decades after the likes of [Adam] Worth and Cohen, famous Jewish underworld figures like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky made the American scene. 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 [concurrently the president of both the Sands Hotel casino and the Temple Beth Sholam synagogue]; 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]

Jewish singer Eddie Fisher recalls a Las Vegas offer he had at the peak of his career that he now regrets turning down: "When I was working at the Desert Inn I met with a man named Billy Weinberger, who told me, 'We're building a new hotel and we want to give you fifty percent of it.' In return I would perform there permanently and would use my influence to attract other major stars. That sounded interesting. 'What's it going to be called?' I asked. 'Caesar's Palace.'" [FISHER, E., 1999, p. 292]

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] [Author Gelman complains about the use of this citation here].

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]

In 1970 Moe Dalitz, "a leading member of the Cleveland crime syndicate," and controller of the Stardust and Desert Inn Las Vegas casinos, was awarded the City of Peace Award of the State of Israel "in recognition of distinguished service to the people and state of Israel." [ROCKAWAY, p. 227] In 1985 the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith bestowed their "Torch of Liberty" award upon him for his cash support of that group. [ROCKAWAY, p. 227] A gangster associate revealed to a 1947 organized crime commission that Dalitz was in fact the chairman of the Nevada United Jewish Appeal. [ROCKAWAY, p. 227] In 1982, Dalitz was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the 400 wealthiest people in America. [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 37] In terms of the criminal underworld, he was also known as "the godfather of Las Vegas." [ROEMER, p. 52]

Also in Las Vegas, Ze'ev Chafets notes the story of "a local Jewish madam [who] had given a talk to a B'nai B'rith meeting. Prostitution is legal in Nevada, and the madam, a Jewish lady named Beverly Hurel, is a highly regarded businesswoman." [CHAFETS, p. 101]

Herman "Hank" Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, once noted that he was a Zionist "before I could even identify a picture of George Washington." [RAVIV, p. 40] During Israel's "War of Independence" in 1948, Greenspun traveled to "Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Panama, where he organized false documents, bank guarantees, and arms shipments to Israel." [RAVIV, p. 41] "Hank Greenspun," notes Alex Pelle,

      "embarked on an incredible odyssey, plundering a naval depot in

     Hawaii, seizing a private yacht at gunpoint near Wilmington, California,

     and posing in Mexico as a confidential agent of Generalissimo Chiang

     Kai-shek's government. A single driving purpose generated over the

     span of seven months all those seemingly unrelated events: to fill the

     holds of a ship ... with six thousand tons of contraband rifles, machine

     guns, howitzers, cannons, and ammunition, destined for the port of

     Haifa and Israel's beleaguered Jews. In so doing, Hank Greenspun

     had violated the United States' Neutrality Act, the Export Control

     Law, and Presidential Proclamation 2776." Thanks to Jewish lobbying

     pressure, Greenspun was pardoned by President John F. Kennedy in
     1961. [GREENSPUN, H., 1966, p. ix]

Hollywood's "Sin City" entertainment playground, Las Vegas, especially renowned for gambling, prostitution and other vices, must also be added to the list of great questionable Jewish influences upon popular culture. (In Hollywood, Al and Lew Wertheimer founded an illegal gambling den in Hollywood called the Clover Club. The Jewish Hollywood crowd later set up such a resort near Tijuana, Mexico, called Agua Caliente.) [GABLER, N., 1988, p. 261] Las Vegas, as an institution, has been profoundly influential in its efforts to sanitize, normalize, and popularize some of the most troubling expressions of human nature as acceptable recreation in western society. As professor Alan Balboni observes, "The Jews and Italians who made up 'the Boys' [the Mafia] were able to develop the burgeoning gaming industry to the point where it eventually became a significant influence on the American scene." [BALBONI, p. ix] Jewish entrepreneurship was not alone in this, but it was central.

For purposes here, we may wonder about the observations of Jewish commentator James Yaffe: "If Jews can be said to have a characteristic vice, that vice is gambling. Even back in the shtetl they were gamblers. Many psychiatrists have mentioned this phenomena to me, yet nobody has been able to explain it exactly." [YAFFE, J., 1968, p. 268]

We may also note the case of Mike Rose, the Jewish CEO of Holiday Corporation (Holiday Inn, et al), who "steered [the company] into gambling when it bought into Harrah's in 1980, causing Holiday's president and two directors to resign. Rose later sold the namesake motel chain to create a gambling concern called the Promus Corporation." The company's president, L. M. Clyde, retired "because he could not reconcile his Presbyterian religious beliefs with gambling ... Clyman did not go quietly, and two Holiday directors joined him in resigning on moral grounds." [JOHNSTON, D., 1992, p. 49, photo section]

DISCUSSIONS ABOVE EXCERPTED FROM:

WHEN VICTIMS RULE. A CRITIQUE OF JEWISH PRE-EMINENCE IN AMERICA

Links to online articles about Jews in Las Vegas, and other gambling centers:

BILL MILLER (1904- ) Mr. Entertainment Agent extraordinaire, who began his career as a hoofer with chutzpah, virtually invented the lounge show and brought everyone from Mae West to Elvis to Las Vegas,
by Y K.J. EVANS, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1999
"Seductive 1930s screen actress Mae West still looked pretty good by the mid-1950s, enough so that she still was able to pack the guys in just by showing up. They came to see flashy costumes wrapped tightly around her generous hourglass figure. And, of course, to hear her famed witticisms. She would slither up to a front row customer, give him the up-and-down scan, and issue her trademark invitation. "Why don't you come up and see me some time? Make it Tuesday, that's amateur night." But she was a screen star, not a nightclub performer. 'I brought in people nobody believed could do a nightclub act,' says Bill Miller, the man who virtually invented the Las Vegas lounge show ... Miller, a relatively robust 94, allowed that time was on his side when he booked West at the Sahara in 1954. Her last major screen appearance was 11 years behind her, she was 61 years old, and was traveling with a marginally successful stage revue. Miller hired a group of spectacularly buffed-out male bodybuilders. Clad only in bathing trunks, they posed, flexed and strutted. West leered, inspected lats, delts and pects and fluttered her eyelashes in excitement. 'I wrote her a song for the very finish," laughs Miller. 'It went, 'I've got something for the girls: boys, boys, boys' ... William Miller was born in 1904 in Pinsk, Russia, the son of David and Lena, Jews who wanted to get to America ... One of the nightclubs where Miller booked many of his clients was the Riviera, in Fort Lee, N.J. It was a swank joint with an illegal casino upstairs. When World War II commenced, it was closed. Miller bought the club in 1945, renamed it 'Bill Miller's Riviera" and reopened ... ' Every one of the Rat Pack came from the Riviera," says Miller. 'Sinatra played there, so did Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis when nobody knew who they were. I brought in the Will Mastin Trio, starring Sammy Davis Jr. and also Joey Bishop.' When the Copacabana Club closed in New York, one of its employees, Jack Entratter, was sent to Las Vegas to handle entertainment at the new Sands Hotel ... Milton Prell, who had opened the Sahara Hotel in 1952, heard about the closing of Bill Miller's Riviera, and called. 'We'd love for you to come out and take a piece of this place, and be part of our group," said Prell. Miller bought a 10 percent interest in the property and was named entertainment director in 1953 ... But Miller wanted to create a new entertainment venue, one unique to Las Vegas. He thought lounges could produce profits on their own ... In 1955, Miller left the Sahara and bought an interest in the new Dunes Hotel, and signed on as entertainment director."

IRWIN MOLASKY (1927- ) The Developer's Developer From high-rise bank buildings and hospitals to horse racing and motion picture making, the projects of this construction king continue to flourish in Las Vegas and the West,
Las Vegas Review Journal, 1999
"[Irwin] Molasky opens a conversation by establishing immediately the central theme of his life. He builds. He works. He's been doing it since boyhood and is still going strong at 72. Since 1951, he has done it mostly in Las Vegas. Outside those who built the most innovative Strip hotels, he probably has been Las Vegas' most significant developer. He built Las Vegas' first enclosed shopping center, Boulevard Mall; its first modern private hospital, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center; and its best-known office building, the Bank of America Plaza. With Las Vegas partners he built the La Costa resort near San Diego, and started a successful television and motion picture production company ... A few years later he met Merv Adelson. The son of a Beverly Hills grocer, Adelson moved to Las Vegas to start Market Town, a 24-hour foodstore at Oakey and Las Vegas Boulevard South. They founded Paradise Development Co. which remains active today. One of their first projects was Paradise Palms, the neighborhood bounded by Desert Inn and Flamingo Roads and by Maryland Parkway and Eastern Avenue. From 1957 through 1959, said Molasky, it sold a house every day for $30,000 to $40,000 ... The hospital was originally financed by a local savings and loan business, said Molasky, 'But we ran out of money and had to take in some investors.' The investors included Allard Roen and Moe Dalitz, both associated with the Desert Inn. Sunrise opened its doors in December 1958 with 58 rooms; now it has 688, and is the largest private hospital west of Chicago, said Molasky ... After not doing well financially with professional hospital administrators, the hospital hired Nathan Adelson, Merv's father, who had been in the grocery business ... The development loans, more than $100 million, had been made in an era when the pension fund was mob-influenced. After an investigation, Molasky said the federal authorities found nothing wrong with those loans. Although Dalitz had conducted himself respectably since moving to Las Vegas in the 1950s, he was a former bootlegger and illegal gambler who had been publicly grilled in the U.S. Senate. His associate Roen had pleaded guilty to securities violations in a major stock fraud case in 1962. Dalitz and Roen were partners in developing La Costa, but inactive. Neither Merv Adelson nor Molasky, the active partners, had ever been charged with a crime. Nevertheless, Penthouse Magazine published an article asserting the resort had been built and frequented by gangsters. 'Penthouse made allegations that weren't true,' said Molasky. The four partners sued for libel. After years of litigation, they won no money, but Penthouse issued a letter saying it did not mean to imply that Adelson and Molasky 'are or were members of organized crime or criminals.' The statement did not include Dalitz or Roen. Molasky was involved in the development of most of Maryland Parkway from Sahara Avenue to Flamingo Road, including Boulevard Mall. Opened in 1968, it was the first enclosed mall in the valley. He also developed Best on the Boulevard, a smaller shopping center just south of the Boulevard Mall, concentrating on what he calls 'big box' retailers such as Best Buy and Copeland Sports. He used the same concept in 1996 at the 'Best In the West' center at Lake Mead and Rainbow boulevards. About 1966, related Molasky, he and Adelson met Lee Rich, who produced TV shows for ad agencies and dreamed of producing TV specials and scheduled shows. Lorimar was born ... Lorimar also produced "Eight is Enough," and the less wholesome "Dallas," "Knots Landing" and "Falcon Crest." Lorimar's feature films included "Sybil," "Being There" and "An Officer and a Gentleman." Molasky is no longer involved with Lorimar. Adelson, who reportedly had wanted to be in the entertainment industry since his Beverly Hills childhood, became more and more associated with Hollywood; he even married Barbara Walters [like all bold-typed individuals here, also Jewish]. Lorimar eventually merged with Time-Warner, and Adelson became one of its board members ... Parry and Molasky purposely built it as the tallest downtown building, to dominate the skyline ... Molasky and Adelson also were key figures in the development of UNLV ... The Molaskys became mentors to several of [University of Nebraska coach Jerry] Tarkanian's basketball players ... Molasky's interests in sports have been more than casual. He was named as a member of 'The Computer Group,' a ring of sports betters investigated and unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Las Vegas Organized Crime Strike Force. Molasky was given immunity but testified in the 1992 trial that he bet small fortunes ... He owns the horses in partnership with the well-known trainer, Bruce Headley. One of Molasky's horses is Kona Gold, acknowledged the nation's fastest sprinter, though now rehabilitating from an injury."

STEVE WYNN (1942- ) The Winner In a bloodless coup with the help of a banker-turned-mentor, a boy from back East took over a downtown hotel and everything he touched from then on was golden,
Las Vegas Review Journal, 1999
[Wynn is chairman of Mirage Resorts -- holdings include Bellagio]
"Steve Wynn, whose father ran bingo games back East and squandered his profits on the gambling tables of old-time Vegas, has become a tycoon in the business of marketing snob appeal. He's also shown Las Vegas better ways to please the laid-back millions who aren't snobs. He created a new era not only in Nevada resorts but in Nevada politics; although Nevadans have long worried casino interests might dominate state politics, Wynn is one of the few to aggressively pursue political agendas ... Wynn's father opened a bingo parlor here but was unable to obtain a gaming license and was forced to close. He returned to Utica, N.Y., and reared Steve and his brother, Kenneth, who is 10 years younger, in an atmosphere of affluence ... The Wynns moved to Las Vegas in 1967 and Wynn invested in the Frontier Hotel, perhaps the most controversial deal he would ever make. Though Wynn was never accused of wrongdoing, several of his associates in the hotel were mob-connected. And they were not merely people who had formerly been in illegal gambling -- which has always been winked at in Nevada because illegal gambling was once the only way to get experience -- but involved in a hidden ownership and skimming scheme. Wynn had been there less than a year when image-sensitive state authorities persuaded billionaire Howard Hughes to buy the Frontier, hoping his corporate security people could clean up the problems. Wynn has said he made no money on the deal. Hughes brought in his own people, so Wynn was also out of his job as keno and slot manager ... Wynn announced plans to build the world's narrowest casino thereon, forcing the hotel to buy it for $2.25 million. Wynn and a partner had invested only $1.2 million in the deal, borrowing the funds from [Parry] Thomas, so they split a profit of more than $1 million. This gave him enough money to participate with Thomas in the most famous bloodless coup in Las Vegas casino management. Thomas said The Golden Nugget had one of the most desirable locations on Fremont Street, but was managed by a group of old-timers who were content to coast. The stock was undervalued and the managers didn't own much of it. Wynn and a group of new investors bought enough to get elected to the board of directors, then documented mismanagement including employee thefts from the casino. Next, Wynn called on Golden Nugget President Buck Blaine and threatened to sue if Blaine didn't resign ... By August 1973 Wynn ran the company, and in one year he increased the pre-tax profits from $1.1 million to $4.2 million. To a downtown that had become content to live on local business and spillover from the Strip, Wynn in 1977 added 579 rooms, some of them the finest Las Vegas then had to offer, and the Nugget was soon making $12 million a year. He used Golden Nugget profits to buy an aging hotel in Atlantic City, where gambling had just become legal, tore it down, and by 1980 had built another Golden Nugget with 506 rooms ... The published price tag of the new Mirage was $630 million, and $565 million of that was raised by the sale of junk bonds -- bonds rated risky by investment analysts and, therefore, paying a high interest rate. It was an enormous gamble; the new hotel would have to make $1 million a day to service the debt ... Caesars Palace cut a deal to construct the Forum Shops, a mall of quality stores unprecedented in Las Vegas, linking its own resort with The Mirage ... Wynn may project a new, cleaner image of Las Vegas, but has in fact used some of the old-time personalities who continue to tarnish Nevada's image. In 1992 and 1993 casino host Charles Meyerson fought to regain his right to work in the industry after Sheriff John Moran yanked his work card for hosting organized crime figures. He regained the card and subsequently was licensed by the state of Nevada. Meyerson, a former bookmaker from New York City, claimed he did not know the men had mob ties. Both Julie Weintraub and Ash Resnick, casino hosts with unsavory reputations, worked in Wynn-controlled casinos. In 1995 Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith published a biography of Wynn called 'Running Scared.' Wynn sued the author and the publisher, Lyle Stuart. He won a $3.1 million libel judgment against Stuart, not for the book's contents, but for statements made in an ad promoting the book, which Wynn said implied he was connected to organized crime. That verdict is on appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, but Stuart was forced into bankruptcy. Wynn subsequently dropped his suit over the book itself. The 1998 opening of the 3,000-room Bellagio was anti-climactic. Never mind that its $1.6 billion price tag made it the most expensive resort ever built ... Since then Mirage Inc. has opened a similarly European-themed hotel on the Gulf Coast in Biloxi, Miss. With 1,780 hotel rooms, the Beau Rivage is the largest hotel-casino in the United States outside Nevada. And the company has purchased a site in Atlantic City, planning a return to the New Jersey gaming venue. ... . In 1998 Review-Journal political reporter Jane Ann Morrison analyzed campaign donation records and discovered that Wynn was the second-most active gaming executive in donating to politicians. Sheldon Addleson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands and builder of the new Venetian Resort, gave about twice as much as Wynn to state and local campaigns, and nearly as much at the national level. Wynn's donations did not seem to particularly favor either the Democratic or the Republican party, though he is registered as a Democrat."

Las Vegas, Guardian Weekend [London]; [posted here at journalist/novelist Melanie McGrath's web site]
"Everyone knows Vegas is a made-up world, a desert Disneyland, but I had been trying over the weeks to build up a picture of the town beneath the smile and what I had found was troubling me. If there is a single truth about Las Vegas, it is that nowhere on earth so efficiently evades it. In a city whose $5.7bn-a-year gambling business it is to serve up pleasure, reality doesn't sit so well as fantasy. Vegas is a city in denial of the facts. A city where the birds are scared from the trees by ultrasonic bleepers to stop them pooping on passers-by, where prostitution is illegal but there are seventy pages of Yellow Pages ads for private entertainers, where to water a single golf course costs $12m a year ... It wasn't so much the Mob 'n' Mormons who built Las Vegas as the Jews. Bugsy Siegel and his boss, the Mob financier Meyer Lansky, were Jewish. Casino moguls Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn are Jewish too. The town boomed not because gambling was legal but because the railroad ran right through it. And far from being the centre of licence it likes to think itself, Vegas was racially segregated right into the mid-seventies. (Twenty years before Bugsy Siegel booked Lena Horne to perform at the Flamingo but made her sleep elsewhere and instructed the chambermaid to burn her bedlinen.)"

Isle of Capri casinos,
Isle of Capri webiste
"A genuine entrepreneur, Bernard Goldstein has been active in the development of riverboat gaming in a number of states and was instrumental in lobbying for the original legislation for riverboat gaming in Iowa. Currently, Mr. Goldstein serves as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Isle of Capri Casinos, Inc., which operates casinos in Mississippi, Louisiana, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, as well as a harness race track in Pompano Beach, Florida. Often referred to as the Father of Riverboat Gaming, Goldstein was awarded the American Gaming Association’s 'Top Performing C.E.O. of the Year' in 2001. Mr. Goldstein was chairman of the board of the Steamboat Companies which operated the Diamond Lady and Emerald Lady casino riverboats beginning in April 1991. He also served as chairman of the board and president of Casino Cruises, Inc., which managed the gaming operations of the Par-A-Dice Riverboat Casino in Peoria, Illinois through March 1993. An addition to his involvement in the riverboat gaming industry, Mr. Goldstein is chairman of the board of the Alter Companies which are involved in scrap metal recycling, river freight transportation and affiliated businesses ... Mr. Goldstein, active in the community, created a Civilian Search and Rescue Fund and has received the Simon Wiesenthal Distinguished Community Award. In 1993, he was selected Outstanding Business Leader by the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, Florida."

Isle of Capri casinos,
Isle of Capri web site (see above)
"Allan B. Solomon has been an executive officer and a member of Isle of Capri Casinos, Inc. board of directors since its inception in 1992. He presently serves as executive vice president, general counsel and secretary for the Isle of Capri Casinos, Inc. ... He has served as president of the Florida Association of Jewish Federations and as a vice president of the Council of Jewish Federations."

Leonard Steinberg, chairman,
Gaming Magazine,
"Leonard Steinberg, the founder and chairman of sports betting and casino group Stanley Leisure [in Great Britain], has a big smile on his face. He has much to smile about. Next month, the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, is expected in his Budget speech to lift the duty on betting for the first time since the levy was imposed under Stanley Baldwin in 1926. And the bookies are bracing themselves for a bonanza ... There is also good news in the pipeline for Mr Stanley's gaming business. In July, the gaming review body, the betting industry's regulator, is likely to recommend a loosening of restrictions on slot machines - again something Mr Steinberg has been pushing over many years ... Since he started running an illicit betting business from his family-owned Belfast milk bar in the 1950s, legitimacy is something Mr Steinberg - who is from a Jewish family that fled the pogroms of Riga - has striven after with herculean tenacity, and not a small amount of patience. Unable to make a success of the family opticians' business after his father died in 1954, Mr Steinberg found more success in the lower end of the betting shop trade, gradually acquiring 10 shops across Ulster. By the early 1970s, he decided to leave the increasingly violent province behind and expand his business across the Irish Sea - firstly with two shops on the Isle of Man, then four in Yorkshire, followed by 11 in Liverpool and a casino in Stockport. Still mainly focused on areas ignored by the big three - William Hills, Ladbrokes and Coral - Stanley now has an estate of some 645 shops across the UK, and its chairman is regarded as an elder statesman of the industry ... In 1997, he even established a Centre for Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Salford as part of his efforts to bring an air of respectability to the industry. As if to underline Stanley's establishment credentials, in 1999 the company bought Capital Corporation, owner of three prestigious London casinos including Crockfords, the eighteenth century private gaming club in Mayfair."

[Here's the Jewish angle to gambling casinos in Palestine and the implicit degredation of ruined Palestinian culture. Why wouldn't this be so? It's the rape of Palestine. Jews dominate Las Vegas and are instrumental in running many Native American casinos in America, as well as southern Africa.]

PA's partner in the Jericho casino is Sharon's buddy, new report finds,
Ha'aretz (Israel), March 2, 2003
"Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad and the rating company Standard & Poor's have traced $658 million worth of the Palestinian Authority's assets and funds, according to a preliminary report issued recently. Among the more interesting details are the PA's part in the Oasis casino in Jericho. The PA owns 23.08 percent of CAP, the company that owns the Jericho Casino. The Oasis is also partly owned by Jewish Austrian businessman Martin Schlaf - a close friend of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - who also sits on the board of directors. According to the report, CAP is registered in Lichtenstein and most of its owners are not known. Among its registered owners is an Austrian casino company, in which Schlaf is prominently involved. Schlaf last visited Sharon about two weeks ago in Hashikmim farm. The Prime Minister's Office director general, Dov Weisglass, represented CAP in Israel before entering his present office and his former law office still handles the company's business. The Austrian Casino company received, according to the report, a franchise to operate the Jericho casino until 2028, with a 10-year tax exemption from the day it opened, and exclusive rights to operate other casinos in PA territories."

Stop Moskowitz,
A website devoted to activism against Hawaiian Gardens (metropolitan Los Angeles) gambling mogul Irving Moskowitz, a heavy supporter of right-wing activities in Israel.

See also the Jews behind the Native American gambling casinos.

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When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish pre-eminence in America
2,000 page scholarly work featuring approximately 10,000 citations from about 4,000 bibliographic sources.
The most thorough investigation to this day on Jewish power and influence in the USA and the world.