The Casino Skim

This is a story about the Mafia in its heyday.  If you have watched the movie Casino then you got a lesson in how the casino skim went down.  This is about the real men behind the skim of the Stardust Casino.

In the 1970’s a clean cut man in his 30’s, Allen R. Glick, first bought the Hacienda Hotel and Casino for somewhere around 5 million dollars.  He did well with it and he showed promise as a casino operator.  

Glick controlled the ARGENT company that soon got a Teamster loan for 140 million dollars to purchase the Stardust, Fremont and the Marina Casino’s.

He then put Lefty Rosenthal in charge of the Stardust, but he was really the point man for the Chicago Outfit, Kansas City and the Milwaukee families. Lefty had one job and that was to increase the skim and keep it coming.

The Outfit was not happy with the skim coming out of Las vegas because they had been hit hard by the Feds and it had become harder to get cash from their own casinos.

When Bugsy had built the Flamingo a casino owner could just walk into the room where they brought all the cash before it hit the count room and grab stacks of cash.

They could go to a table and sign a marker, play and then cash out.  Later they would have the marker disappear.

In the 1970’s a casino owner was not allowed in the count room and all the cash had to be accounted for that came in or went out.  

They could no longer gamble at their own casinos.

They had to come up with a better method.  Where there is a will, there is a way.

They had to go low.  Instead of going for the bills, they went for the coins.

The slots were bringing in so much cash that they could not count it everyday.  So they purchased scales that could weigh them in bulk.  They then recalibrated the scales to under weigh the coins.

They had the coins from the other three casinos brought to the Stardust everyday. They then had a guy to set the scales so they registered 10% less when they were weighed.

They started to do this with the dollar tokens and silver dollars that the dollar slot machines used back then.

So now they had a steady stream of cash coming in.  How did they get it in a form that they could spend?  Coins might be legal tender, but nobody is going to walk around with hundreds of dollars in coins.

The key was the change girls that used to walk around the floor taking customers bills and swapping them out for rolls of coins.

The girls used to get the coins from the cashier's cage, but the Stardust installed coin cabinets along the walls that had coins and a dropbox for the bills.

They also set up a change booth that was not accountable to the gaming control board.  

They filled both places with the 10% skim coins and they got back bills!  

They were able to steal three hundred thousand dollars a week using this system.  It is believed that they had this going for 5 years, with fifteen million dollars a year going to the mob families.

These guys took down seventy five million that they know about.

Rouse Mansion: Murder, Corruption and a Casino

The crime families and crews I write about all provide a vice, and the public is often willing to look the other way while it goes on.  The cash that these rackets bring into the families is used to corrupt both law enforcement and politicians.  The politicians are easy because most of them have never held a job or built anything in the public sector.  Most are not in office to help the people, only to line their own pockets. Law enforcement is another story.  Most of them are in it to serve the public, but there are a few bad apples.   One of those apples was named Tom Brown and he was the Sheriff of Lake County, Illinois during the late 1970s to the early 80s.  The town of Libertyville is located in Lake County and it is an upscale sleepy town with little crime.

When I say crime I am talking about street crime like drug deals, muggings, rapes and murder.

The morning of June 6th, 1980 changed all that because a self made millionaire named Bruce Rouse and his wife Darlene were found brutally murdered in their mansion. Their three kids had been home when they were murdered but they said they had not heard a thing, due to a thunderstorm.  

The Rouse Mansion after a long investigation and no real leads was sold to an Outfit front man. The Outfit would spend thousands turning it into a casino.  The crew behind it was run at first by Joe Ferriola aka Joe Nagell.  He had his man Louis Marino oversee and provide security for the casino.  William Johoda was the guy that the public saw.  Johoda had been a bookie who split profits with the Outfit and now he divided up the cash from the casino.

All the Blackjack and other games were rigged at the casino to maximize profits to the Outfit.

The crew used some of this cash to take care of guys who were locked up and kept their mouths shut.  Guys like mob killer Harry Aleman were sent cash every month to make their time easy.  

Although there was not much of your average street crime going on in Lake County and Libertyville, thanks to Sheriff Tom Brown, Sargent Willie Smith and Organized Crime Sargent Robert Schroeder there was a lot of organized crime going on with the help of law enforcement.  They took payoffs from the Rouse Mansion Casino in order to turn a blind eye to gambling and prostitution.  There were joker poker machines at other bars prostituion also at two stripbars and an adult video store.  Sheriff Tom Brown was given $1500 a month from Rocky Infelice to provide advanced warning using on a hotline installed in the Rouse Casino in case of a raid.  

There were more murders besides the Rouse murders that went unsolved because of Law Enforcement.  Robert Plummer was a bookie in Libertyville until he crossed Rocky Infelice and Rocky decided he was to become trunk music.   He had Johoda bring him to the Rouse Casino and walk him up the stairs.  Once Robert Plummer reached the top of the stairs two Outfit killers grabbed him and began to bludgeon him.  Plummer’s last words were “Oh my God!  What was that!” and 3 seconds later he was dead.  They loaded him up in his wife’s Lincoln Continental  drove him to Mundelein where he would be found in the trunk.  

Joe Ferriola would move on to become the boss of the Outfit for a few years until his health problems would force him out.  He would die at 61 in 1989.  Rocky Infelice would go away for extortion and two murders. Nick Ferriola, Joe’s son, would start working with Frank Calabrese Sr. and his crew.  He helped with the gambling and shaking down a Pizza Parlor.  He was also the guy who was the go between to Ronnie Jarrett who was running the crew for Frank Sr. Ronnie Jarret would be murdered and Nick would get some more time thanks to Operation Family Secrets.

The Rouse Murders would be solved many years later when Billy Rouse, their son, would confess to their murder in 1995.

This is just one example of how law enforcement works with organized crime to mutually benefit each other.