In the autobiographical book Cheater, the author Clint Stone (likely an alias), paints himself as a lifelong gambling cheat. His specialty is mucking, using sleight of hand, one hand in his case, to introduce a card into play while removing another. A self-proclaimed crossroader, he’d plied his craft around the world. “I was a cheater.…
1953-1959 Australian-American actor Errol Flynn was going to open one of the world’s largest casinos, one that would rival Monaco’s Monte Carlo, in the Virgin Islands when gambling was legalized there, he said in 1953. Were the enterprise to be successful, he’d move permanently to the Caribbean, where he’d open his own studios and continue…
1950 In the morning, gambler Nelson Harris, 34, telephoned two Fort Worth, Texas criminal attorneys and said he was on his way over to discuss a life and death matter. He and his wife Juanita, 25 and pregnant, due in a week’s time, quickly loaded into the car to drive there, but didn’t get anywhere.…
1949 The Smiths, who owned and operated Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada appropriately named their casino Roaring Camp. Generally, a roaring camp was “a gold-prospecting camp characterized by wild behavior, unrestrained drinking and gambling,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Specifically, Roaring Camp was an actual mining settlement in California’s Amador County, on the Mokelumne…
1934 A man named Hans Brucksmer played about $15 worth of nickels (about $300 today) in a slot machine at a place of business in Seattle, Washington and got only four coins back. He lifted the machine and took it to the local police station. There, holding the device under one arm, he filled out…
1936 A single penny got Los Angeles store owner Ethel Jamison convicted. One day at her shop, Police Officer James Mulligan placed a penny in the slot machine, pulled the lever, received a penny premium and cashed it with her. He arrested her, as slot machines were illegal in California, and the case went to…
1913-1915 Circumstances of a lawsuit in the U.S. led to an unusual occurrence, even for Nevada: the federal government taking over and running a Silver State casino. It was The Big Casino, a combination casino, dance hall, hotel and restaurant, in Tonopah, then one of the state’s few remaining true mining towns. At the time,…
1936 Gambler Leo Barnes and his wife had only been in Denver, Colorado for about six months, having moved from Kansas City, Missouri. On the night of Dec. 8, the couple got in their car to go somewhere. When Barnes stepped on the car’s starter, an explosion blew him through the roof. He suffered lacerations…
1943-1944 Had it not been for a shifty plan Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo and/or his attorney, George Bieber, dreamed up, the Mobster might’ve gone to prison at age 37, in 1944, for illegal gambling. Cigar Store As Front A high-ranking Outfit member, Accardo had been operating a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building…
1935-1965 Tony Accardo, né Antonino Leonardo Accardo (1906-1992), is credited with reviving and expanding the Chicago Outfit’s gambling business in the 1940s after the organization’s head Paul “The Waiter” Ricca named him underboss. Accardo himself had his hand in various gaming enterprises before and after, too. Accardo is the great-grandfather of the National Football League’s…