“But she convinced me to go back. And as I got into the industry I began phasing out my sports betting. By the end of the first year, I had reduced all my betting down to the NFL. I even quit college basketball.
“I never entertained the idea of working in a casino until my wife suggested it, but once I started working there I became intrigued. I never saw such a business where people were so anxious to give you their money. Give them a free drink and a dream, and they give you their wallets.
“One night I drove out to Henderson for a quiet dinner with someone. It was small place. It had one craps table and two blackjack tables. I saw a camper pull up and a fellow with a family got out and came inside. They were still thirty miles outside of Vegas, but it was their first stop.
“They stopped because there was a sign outside that said LUNCH, 49 CENTS—24 HOURS A DAY. The guy came in for a cheap lunch and started playing blackjack. He left behind twenty-four hundred dollars while I was sitting there. He never even got to Vegas. He just put his family back in the camper and went home.”
Lefty never forgot it. He became obsessed with learning everything he could about the business. “I had a hundred questions, but no answers,” he said. “The old-timers didn’t want to tell me anything. To them, everything was a secret. I was going to have to learn on my own.
“What I learned was that there were no secrets. It was next to impossible for a casino not to make money. Some casinos had to win their money two or three times, because the people running them were so lazy or crooked.
“I saw casino managers laying back. They lived in a comfort zone. I could never be that way.
“My job was to hang around the pit, but on a busy night I’d walk around on the outside of the pit behind the dealers and look at their backs and see if they were lifting their hole cards too high. Then I’d go over to them and say, ‘That’s a good-looking ten of spades you’ve got there.’
“I found out that it was a very common practice in casinos where they had a weak operation for one hustler to sit behind a weak dealer showing hole cards and signal his compadre playing at the weak dealer’s table. They use head signals, eyes, hands, even impulse transmitters. Some of them were crossroaders—professional casino cheats—and they’d been photographed and listed in the Black Book. They’d come in wearing fake beards, wigs, phony noses. They’d have partners counting cards, spraying the roulette wheel, dropping baloneys onto a craps table, and using special magnets to get slot machine wins. They’d create any kind of diversion so one of them could slide card-dealing shoes onto a blackjack table—they can usually do this only with the help of the dealer and pit boss—and bang you out for a couple of hundred grand, which you never see again.
“I started looking for little signals. Clues. I learned that if a crap shooter’s hands were not open after he tosses the dice, he could be palming baloneys. There are people so fast that it’s not possible to see them put fake dice on the table. They work in teams and specialize. The person who slips in the dice can turn out to be a nice little old lady. It’s usually not the shooter. The person who rolls the fake dice on the table usually leaves soon after. You can’t prevent an expert getting bad dice on the table, but your pit boss or shift boss should be able to pick it up as the play begins.
“After a while you begin to learn all the games. You learn to be careful about distractions. People spilling drinks. Asking a dealer for a cigarette. Starting an argument with a dealer. Stopping a dealer and asking for change. I learned to spot a sub, a long sock sewn into a dealer’s clothes where he can slide the chips he steals off the tables. One clue to a sub is that crooked dealers are constantly touching themselves. I looked to see if a dealer’s boots were extended over his pants. Take off open-topped boots and nine times out of ten you’ll find chips inside. The first week I worked in the casino, I caught a dealer slipping chips under his chronograph wristwatch.
“There were also turns, which is what they call people who help slot cheats. They’re called turns because they turn the floor men away with questions like, ‘Pardon me, can you tell me where the bathroom is?’ while their partners cluster around the machines, blocking the view—and one of the crew opens the machine or places magnets inside that will spin off winners. It doesn’t take long. A good slot man can get inside a machine in seconds.
“A few years later, when I was running the place, I got a call one night from Bobby Stella, Senior, my casino manager, who said we were getting murdered by some guy dressed like a cowboy. The kid was playing all six spots at the hundred-dollar blackjack table, and he’s got about eighty grand in front of him.
“When I got over there I asked Bobby if he knew who the kid was. Was he a guest in the hotel? Did we have his name? Nobody had anything on him. That was very sloppy, very bad casino management. You get a player like that and the pit boss should be over there offering him free rooms, free drinks, free everything. He’s got to be made to feel welcome as hell. He’s the big man in the room at that moment, and you’ve got to stroke the guy so, first, he’ll come back and lose, and, second, to give you time to find out just who the sonofabitch is and if he’s straight.
“Let me tell you right now, there is no casino boss in the country who sees a guy come into his place and win eighty grand and not know, deep, deep down, that the bastard is stealing. I knew he was stealing. Bobby knew he was stealing. We just didn’t know how he was stealing.
“We also knew he was being cute by the way he was betting. He was turning down what should have been good hands, and betting stiffs. He’s throwing lavenders [$500 chips] after dumb plays and winning. He wasn’t making enough normal mistakes to be on the up and up.
“I gave the orders to play him loose. I didn’t want security breathing down his neck or a pit boss standing over the dealer’s shoulder. I was looking for something. The first thing I saw was the way he was cutting his chips and fingering them. Before his bets he would hold a few in his hand and nervously work them in and out of his fingers like a professional dealer. So just from that I knew the sonofabitch was a pro. He was beating us and showing off for the crowd.
“I walked around behind the game and I saw that our dealer was weak. He wasn’t cupping his hands tightly enough. He was lifting his hole card just a little too high when he had to stand pat. And that’s just the kind of weakness crossroaders look for. They prowl up and down the aisles looking for weak dealers the way lions look for antelope. Bobby and I went upstairs to watch it on the Eye, and there we see this other guy hunched over the table behind the winner’s dealer, and he’s reading the dealer’s bottom card and signaling his friend.
“I went back down and saw that the spotter was using some electronic device he had in his pocket. I immediately put through a page for Mr. Armstrong at BJ seventeen, which was a signal for a special security detail to surround the number seventeen blackjack table. I didn’t want these guys to get away with any of that money.
“There was a large crowd gathered around the table, and we didn’t want to have a problem, so we had one of the plainclothes security guys slide in very close to the winner, and while another security guy distracted the crowd for a second, our man pressed a small electronic zapper—a kind of stun gun—against the guy’s chest and he crumbled to the ground.
“We scooped him up shouting, ‘Cardiac seizure! Cardiac seizure!’ and got him into a utility room around back. Security men made a thing about safeguarding his winnings. And the minute we got him off the floor, the games resumed as though he and his winnings had never even been there.
“We ripped his trousers and found the electronic device he was using to receive the signals. That was proof enough for me. I asked if he was a righty or a lefty. When he said ‘righty,’ a couple of the guards grabbed his right hand and held it against the edge of the worktable and another guard smashed it really hard a couple of times with a large yellow rubber mallet. ‘Well, you’re a lefty now,’ I said. Then we brought in his partner and said his partner would get the sa
me thing unless they both walked out of the Stardust and told all of their pals that our casino was now off-limits. They thanked us and apologized and said they’d tell everyone they knew. We took their pictures and got their ID and let them go. They never came back.
“The high rollers come from all facets of life. They’re dentists, lawyers, open-heart surgeons, brokers, businessmen, retailers, manufacturers, all kinds of anonymous people. We didn’t usually get real high rollers and whales like Adnan Khashoggi in the Stardust.
“But we had the Lido Show and Khashoggi liked it. At the time, the Lido was the biggest attraction in Las Vegas. We’d get a call from Caesar’s and we’d get Khashoggi front-row seats. We’d accommodate and comp a celebrity or entertainer, whether they were staying with us or not. Khashoggi would usually come in with a party of twenty or eight and we’d comp him with iced Dom, caviar, everything.
“At the end of the night, he’d give us a laydown bet, a courtesy bet for the hospitality. It could be for a few hundred or a thousand. He was a gambler and he could be beaten for between five thousand dollars and two million dollars. There was nothing like Khashoggi shooting dice. I’d stand there and watch. The man had unlimited credit.
“One time he went to the jewelry shop. Just like we’d go in and buy yogurt. He bought a hundred-thousand-dollar jewel for some girl. When he took out a credit card to pay for it, the poor clerk saw her sale evaporating. But when she checked his Visa card, it turned out that he had a one-million-dollar credit line.
“When Khashoggi would light on a casino, half the good-looking girls in Beverly Hills would get on planes. He was a hell of a player, but there were a few Asians who were right up there with him. Some even bigger. Guys who can come in and drop two, three, four million and then come back in a few months and do it all over again.”
Most of the people who worked at the Stardust felt there was more to Lefty Rosenthal’s sudden appearance as a floor manager than a middle-aged man’s desire to change his life’s habits at his wife’s request. “Lefty never really worked like a regular starting dealer,” says George Hartman, a former Stardust blackjack dealer with whom Lefty began his casino instruction. “He knew all the top bosses in the place. He came in as a floor man. Within a week all kinds of people are treating him like he’s a boss, even though his job title didn’t justify it. The word got around.
“We always knew that Chicago ran the Stardust. Alan Sachs was from Chicago. Bobby Stella, the casino manager, and Gene Cimorelli, the shift boss, were both from Chicago, and so were dozens of pit bosses, floor men, and dealers. The fact that Lefty was a Chicago guy just made it even plainer that he was a connected guy, but who’s going to ask?
“The problem with lots of casinos back then was that no one ever really knew who owned them. I don’t care what the mortgage says, the ownership of most casinos was so tangled and went back so many years with so many silent partners and half partners and fronts and point holders that nobody from the outside could ever figure it out, and lots of people inside never figured it out either.”
Lefty’s prominence and power at the Stardust were so clearly evident that within two or three months the Gaming Control Board agents began questioning whether Lefty should be required to submit an application for a key-employee license.
Rosenthal had a work permit, but the difference between getting a gaming license and a work permit is the difference between a high roller and a nickel slots player. “A work permit and license both require an FBI fingerprint check,” says Shannon Bybee, a member of the Gaming Control Board at the time, “but to get a gaming license to own or run a casino, we want to know everything, including everywhere you’ve worked and lived since you were eighteen years old. We do a net worth on you, check all your bank accounts and stock holdings and loans. We interview the bankers and brokers. We send investigators to check on assets, no matter where they are. We’ve sent investigators all over the world checking on an applicant’s holdings, and the applicant has to pay for his own investigation up front.”
Jeffrey Silver, counsel to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, was sitting in his office about that time when Downey Rice, a retired FBI agent from Miami, dropped by. “Downey was looking for some information that was relevant to some case he was working on in Florida,” Silver said. “We started chatting and he asked me what was up, and I said not much, I was doing a routine workup on a guy named Frank Rosenthal who was coming up for licensing. Downey just sat there for a second and then he said, ‘Oh, you mean Lefty.’ I asked if he knew Frank Rosenthal and he said, ‘I was one of the agents investigating him in Florida.’ We’ve got a lot of material on Lefty.
“I had already received a preliminary workup on Rosenthal from our chief of investigations, but it was limited exclusively to Lefty’s background in Nevada. There was not a mention of any problems in Florida or anywhere else. We’re about to go into public hearings on the licensing and I find out about Lefty’s background by accident.
“Downey then starts telling me how Lefty had been charged with bribing a basketball player in North Carolina and pleaded nolo, and he tells me there was another attempt to bribe a college player, and then he says there were congressional hearings where Lefty was questioned about all this. I’m sitting there numb. He asked if I had copies of the transcript. I said, ‘Not yet.’ He said he thought he had the transcripts in his garage, and I said I’d love to see the transcripts. A week or so later a parcel of those green government Senate hearing books arrived, and in it I find Lefty being questioned and asked very pointed questions about his activities.
“I took that and talked to the board’s chief investigator and said let’s look into Rosenthal some more, and we found that one of the athletes Lefty was supposed to have tried to bribe was now an attorney in San Diego. We got an affidavit from him, and that’s how the Lefty licensing case first got put together.”
“I wasn’t in the pits more than three or four months,” said Rosenthal, “when the Gaming Control Board comes down on me. Wow. Frank Rosenthal’s in the pits. Shannon Bybee puts a full court press on me and tries to get me knocked out of the building. They were insisting that I would have to have a key-employee license if I was going to work at the casino, and my going for a key license in front of their kangaroo court was a waste.
“Meanwhile, I start to dodge and weave. I’m trying to sustain myself in the building any way I can, hoping to wait them out and get past the control board heat. So I changed jobs. I took a job in the hotel that didn’t come under gaming regulations, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the control board. I became an executive for the hotel’s public relations department. I had cards made up. I was working PR, but believe me, I didn’t miss much on the floor or in the pits.
“I wasn’t supposed to be working in the pits. I wasn’t supposed to extend credit. I’m not supposed to have anything to do with the games. But I’m in fact functioning as Bobby Stella’s right-hand man. When people have questions for me, they would come over and we’d talk. You don’t have to be in a pit to run a casino. And little by little, I’m quietly doing most of Bobby’s work.
“Bybee was still trying to nail me. He couldn’t stand it that I had thumbed my nose at the control board. The control board could make life very tough for a casino, and after a while, Alan Sachs, the president of the casino, was ready to fire me. He told people he didn’t want to take any of the heat.”
Sachs saw no reason to keep Lefty Rosenthal around. Rosenthal was smart. He was a good worker. But good workers are a dime a dozen. They’re not worth a minute’s flack from the Gaming Control Board. Eddy Torres, who owned the Riviera across the street, had tried to tell Sachs that Lefty was highly regarded back home in Chicago. But who wasn’t? Sachs himself was the son of one of the outfit’s first skim couriers back in the early days of Vegas. Sachs liked Lefty well enough. It wasn’t personal. He just didn’t need the trouble.
“Right in the middle of all this,” Rosenthal says, “a friend of mine calls up. He’s pl
anning to come into Vegas for a visit. I’m a nobody. I’m trying to hold on to my job. And he’s calling about staying in the hotel kind of incognito. Back then, the arrival in Las Vegas of a top guy like that was like a papal visit.
“Al Sachs knew the name, but he’d never met the man. And I felt an obligation—as a courtesy to Sachs, because of heat on the guy’s name—to at least say: ‘Is it okay if this guy stays at the Stardust?’ If not, the guy himself had said he’d stay somewhere else. No big deal. I said, ‘Al, the purpose of his coming here is just to visit for a few days. And he wants to see me when he can.’
“I remember Sachs kind of hesitated and said the following: ‘No problem. And, Frank, don’t you think I ought to show my respects and meet him privately?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Al, I guess you can. That’s up to you. That’s your call.’
“Al was very conscious of keeping himself very clean, and rightfully so.
“When my friend flew into Las Vegas he checked into the Stardust just like anyone else, except he was under a different name. Then he paged me and I went to his room and we talked and caught up on things for a little bit.
“Then I told him that Al Sachs, the hotel’s president, wanted to say hello to him. He said to me—this was the kind of guy he was—he said, ‘Why the fuck do I want to talk to him? I don’t want to bother him. I don’t want to put the heat on the guy.’ He said, ‘Forget about it, Frank.’
“I said, ‘No, I think he’ll be insulted. I think he feels he owes you that courtesy.’ You’ve got to remember, the man at this time was a top guy in Chicago.
“So I convinced him that it was best for both sides to just shake hands. Sixty seconds and that’s the end of it. I went back to the casino and I tell Sachs. I said, ‘He’s in his room.’ And Al got all excited and made this underground meeting like you wouldn’t believe.
“Here’s Al’s meeting: He went back into the rear of the Aku Aku kitchen, which was closed at these hours. There was no one there. Period. I had to bring my friend from the elevators through the empty Aku Aku dining room so he wouldn’t be seen. I walked him through the swinging doors into the empty kitchen. There’s Sachs waiting for us.
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