‘All I want is a chance’: Black Book inductee Citro seeks removal

It’s sometimes hard to tell where the entertainer, Las Vegas tough guy Frankie Citro, ends and the genuinely emotional family man Frank Citro begins.

The 80-year-old Las Vegan has been a fixture on the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s List of Excluded Persons, also known as the “Black Book,” for 34 years this month.

Earlier this month, Citro made a splash when his attorney delivered a formal request to be removed from the list – something that has never been done before by a living person.

Within the next few months, the Nevada Gaming Commission will have to determine whether there’s enough evidence to consider a hearing for his potential removal and only then could a hearing be set before the commission for consideration.

“All I want is a chance,” Citro said in a recent interview.

If he’s given the opportunity, Citro hopes to explain to commissioners how his life has changed over the years.

“I think basically I would say to all the members of the board, it’s been a tremendous amount of years that I’ve stayed out of trouble,” he said. “I’ve heard of others that have been recurrently doing bad things, selling drugs, getting drunk. I haven’t had a blemish, not even a parking ticket. Am I that bad of a person? Can you show me forgiveness?”

Citro vowed to his wife long ago that he’d never go back to prison and he’s made good on his word.

The 1991 hearing

Citro is hopeful a hearing would go better than the last time he appeared before the commission on Nov. 21, 1991. It was on that day that five commissioners led by Chairman Bill Curran, now senior counsel for the Ballard Spahr law firm in Las Vegas, voted unanimously to ban him from casinos. At the time, he was the 21st person added to the list; now, there are 37 on it, including at least two that have died.

Death usually is the only way a person gets off the list, but Citro hopes to make history by becoming the first to be removed while living.

The commission found several reasons to place him on the list decades ago.

In the 1991 hearing, commissioners cited a guilty plea Aug. 18, 1980, to extortion in U.S. District Court in Nevada; a guilty plea on July 31, 1987, to conspiracy to use counterfeit credit cards, also in Nevada District Court; and a Feb. 3, 1986, conviction for the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in U.S. District Court of the Central District of California. He served a two-year sentence and was placed on probation,

In total, he had six convictions, four of which were felonies.

In the hearing, commissioners considered that the exclusion was based on his “notorious and unsavory reputation as reflected in government crime reports, indictments and newspaper articles.” One article presented as evidence was titled, “Southland Mafia armed and dangerous knuckle therapy and loan sharking, four men convicted.”

At the hearing, Citro argued that he was never convicted of extortion in 1980 because the charges were dropped after he appealed. He also said the counterfeit credit card charge was baseless. He also argued that he had turned his life around and had not re-offended for 10 years as of the date of the hearing.

That argument would be a big part of his presentation if he gets the chance.

But Citro has other things going for him as well.

Friends with Spilotro

As an entertainer, Citro presents as a throwback to Las Vegas’ old days when mob figures ruled in casinos. Citro was a part of that way back when and was friends with notorious gangster Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro.

Today, he’s well-liked and well-connected with some of the city’s entertainment elite.

“He’s a character,” said Review-Journal entertainment columnist John Katsilometes. “It seems as if he’s an actor who’s doing method acting all the time. But he’s authentic. I think people gravitate toward him because he’s kind of a relic of an era that doesn’t exist really in Las Vegas anymore. It’s almost like he went to sleep in the ‘70s and came to last year.”

He’s a frequent entertainer at the Italian American Club in Las Vegas and when onstage sings be-bop and Italian folk songs and tells jokes and stories from his mob past. He’s actually used his notoriety as a member of the Black Book to market his onstage personality.

But Citro has ambitions to entertain before a larger audience and could be a hit in a casino lounge show.

But that’s the rub — he can’t enter a casino to perform because of his exclusion.

Some of the times he has performed locally he’s been enthusiastically embraced because he and his multitude of entertainment friends have raised money in benefits for dozens of charitable causes over the years.

A room in his Las Vegas home is adorned with posters from charity events at which Citro either performed, hosted or emceed.

Fund-raiser

He has letters from the beneficiaries of some of his fund-raising, thanking him for gathering his friends to raise money.

“The Foster Care & Adoption Association of Nevada would like to extend our sincere appreciation for all your effort and hard work on behalf of the children in foster care,” said one letter addressed to Citro in 2001. “As a result of your efforts and the gracious generosity of the people who attended your wonderful event, we were able to provide Christmas presents to many of these children, some of whom would have received little or nothing if not for your compassion.”

Another letter from Clark County’s Department of Family Services Child Haven in 2002 thanks Citro for his efforts.

“It is heartwarming to know that there are people in the community who so graciously support the abandoned, neglected and abused children of Child Haven,” the letter says. “Your friendship and generosity are truly overwhelming.”

One of Citro’s friends is Scotty Waller, who first met Citro and his wife, Cookie, after moving to Las Vegas from Texas in 2019.

He didn’t get a complete read on Citro’s plight until one day when he casually mentioned seeing “Jersey Boys” and asking Citro if he had seen it. He responded by explaining why he couldn’t go to the theater because it was in a casino resort.

“He was unburdening,” Waller explained. “After he started, I realized I had done something we all take for granted.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about how strange it must be to live for 30-40 years in a place and never be able to walk through and see what is going on, what people are talking about … the Bellagio conservatory, the new Fontainebleau, the Circa Sportsbook.”

Waller has enjoyed going to the Italian American Club and watching Citro sing with Nicholas Cole and watching him dance with Cookie.

“Frankie is just an affable, loveable character,” Waller said. “He dotes on Cookie, and when the two of them dance, it’s like watching kids at a ‘50s sock hop.”

Hoping for a hearing

Today, Citro is at a crossroads. Will he get a hearing and have a chance to be removed from the list? He’s hopeful.

The worst thing about being on the list, he said in a recent interview, is that for all these years, it’s been difficult to face his family with the reality of his situation.

“I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I can’t go here, I can’t go there,” he said in an interview. “How would you like to try to raise a family with children and let them grow up and say, ‘Gee, Daddy, can’t you take me to Circus Circus?’ They’re too young to understand. My children are grown now and they have children themselves, so they do understand now.

“How do you come home to the woman who has been with you all these years?” he asked. “For awhile, it was very difficult to put food on the table. My wife stood with me through everything. Now there’s a champion for you.”

Citro is convinced that part of the reason for his inclusion on the list is because he wouldn’t cooperate with police by implicating his friends in past crimes, so Metro officers were overzealous in their testimony against him. He’s also convinced that in that era, there was considerable bias against Italian-Americans, a claim that Anthony Spilotro’s former defense attorney, Oscar Goodman, has made in his past criticism of the establishment of the Black Book.

But even after Citro’s inclusion on the list, he’s made every effort to support himself and his family by taking odd jobs over the years and keeping his entertainment skills sharp.

He hopes if he’s removed from the list, he’d be able to get an entertainment gig at a casino lounge.

“If the Gaming Commission graces me with the blessing of taking me out, I think every casino in the world is going to want me as a host,” he said. “You understand what I’m saying? Because I’m a good guy. And people from all over are going to want to hear stories about Las Vegas’ past.

“All I want is a chance.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.