Fountain Hills, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/02/2013 -- Records released through the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act now prove the FBI knew very well, through wiretaps and microphone surveillance, that US crime families had control of several major casinos like the Flamingo, El Cortez, and Sands, but failed to share the information with any other investigative agencies that might have changed the course of Las Vegas growth.

Highlighted in the newly-released book, Vegas and the Mob, Organized Crime ownership of Las Vegas casinos from the late 1930’s was a known fact, first brought to the public’s attention by the gangland killing of “Bugsy” Siegel in 1947 and the newspaper frenzy that followed. The book’s author, Al W Moe, points out that Siegel was considered a mobster and killer, but was still issued a gaming license to run the Flamingo casino. Las Vegas authorities at the time were extremely accommodating to their casino owners, both crime figures, and business men who fronted for hidden interests. Siegel is still a Nevada gaming icon to this day, and the Flamingo casino even has a $5 chip emblazoned with his picture on it.

After Siegel was rubbed-out, New York’s Frank Costello, head of the nation’s most powerful crime syndicate, was intimately linked to the Tropicana Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in 1957, but virtually nothing was done to stop Nevada from bleeding untaxed “skim” money to hidden owners. The first real “bust” for financial misrepresentation at a Las Vegas casino didn’t happen for another decade, and the “skim” of casinos continued for another 15 years.

Eventually, more than a dozen Las Vegas casinos were found to have hidden ties to crime families located all over the United States. While Howard Hughes’s purchase of several mobbed-up casinos in the 1960’s helped clean-up Nevada’s image, strengthened regulations by the Gaming Control Board eventually made it possible to remove hidden owners from ownership of the State’s casinos.

Ironically, while the Mob may no longer own any casinos, there are two Mob museums in Las Vegas, and the El Cortez proudly entices guests to their hotel with the line “Stay in the original El Cortez rooms from the 1940s when "Bugsy" Siegel owned the joint,” proving Vegas and the Mob will forever be linked together.

For more information, please visit http://nevadacasinohistory.blogspot.com/