Thursday, May 05, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JANE ANN MORRISON: Organized crime takes different approaches but still likes Las Vegas

The common question Sheriff Bill Young is asked, especially when he travels: Is the mob still in Las Vegas? "I get it all the time," he said.

I get the same question. You probably do, too. The questioner assumes Las Vegas remains "mobbed up."

Here's the sheriff's answer: "The mob has a presence here, but it's minimal compared to the past. It's here in small ways. They're getting into some vendors, and they're in the sex business."

In the 1970s and into the 1980s, Las Vegas was an "open city" for the mob. Organized crime families from Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Detroit and Buffalo all operated here, happily skimming money from casinos including the Tropicana, the Stardust and the Aladdin. Hidden ownership of casinos by mobsters seemed commonplace.

Yesterday's mob loved to skim; today's mob likes a good sex business.

Young recalled that when he was running the vice squad in the 1990s, "I saw a lot of the Kansas City mob try to get into the sex businesses and legitimize themselves."

Loan-sharking used to be a moneymaker for the mob. But loan sharks were driven out by legitimate payday loan businesses, which charge higher rates than the mob, but don't knee-cap you for falling behind in payments.

Las Vegas isn't free of the mob. But it also isn't the habitat for inhumanity, as the city was portrayed 10 years ago in the movie "Casino," the only slightly fictionalized account of mobster Tony Spilotro and his pal, bookmaker Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal.

The recent indictments in Chicago of 14 organized crime types resurrected the recurring question about the mob's presence here today, especially because the indictments included charges involving the murder of Spilotro, the last highly recognizable mob figure in Las Vegas.

The brutal 1986 murders of Spilotro and his brother Michael were among 18 murders attributed to the mob in the indictment.

In a bail hearing in Chicago last week, FBI agent Michael Maseth said cooperating witness Nicholas Calabrese told the bureau something that hadn't been public before: The Spilotro brothers went to a basement in a Chicago suburb believing they were going to be given a higher rank in the mob hierarchy.

Instead, they were beaten, strangled and killed before being dumped in an Indiana cornfield.

When Spilotro was murdered, there was speculation about who would replace him in Las Vegas as the Chicago mob's enforcer.

"I don't think anyone did," said Young. "Fertilizer in a cornfield is not the first job a lot of these guys aspire to."

Nontraditional organized crime groups -- including Asian, Russian, Israeli and those from Eastern bloc countries -- are showing more visibility and are as high profile as the traditional Cosa Nostra, Young said.

The Mexican mafia is here.

But if you live in Las Vegas, the sheriff said, you need to worry more about gangs than organized crime.

"The FBI has done a tremendous job around the country to dismantle the organized crime families, including some of the families in Las Vegas," Young said.

Ellen Knowlton, the head of the FBI in Nevada, was too busy to take my call this week, but Agent David Schrom provided restrained answers.

"It is still here," Schrom said, referring to La Cosa Nostra. "As to whether it's as strong as it once was? No. That I can definitely say."

Though he acknowledged that crime families are still represented in Las Vegas, Schrom said, "I can't give specifics as to what levels or how large a player they are here."

Could he identify the most prevalent Italian group?

"By telling you the most prevalent group, that's saying what group we're focusing on," said Schrom.

Despite his polite nonanswers, Schrom and I both learned something. He began talking about Eurasian organized crime, and I foolishly wondered if he was talking about criminals who were half Caucasian and half Asian. Not so.

The Eurasian organized crime refers to the organized crime groups from Asia and the former Soviet Union. "Everything but the Chinese," Schrom explained.

I asked if the Yakuza would be under the umbrella of Eurasian organized crime.

Rather surprisingly for an FBI agent, Schrom hadn't heard of the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime group. Oh well. Young said the Yakuza don't have a high presence here anyway.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.