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The Story of a Mafia Run Casino
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Finlay Williams
September 18, 2024
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Just a quick note from me, Iām in Canada on vacation. So editions are going to be slightly less frequent for the next two weeks. Weāll be back to regularly scheduled programming after the 26th!
Vegas is all glitz and glam, but behind the neon lights and slot machines, some casinos have colourful stories worthy of a book. Flamingo Las Vegas isnāt just another shiny casino - itās where the modern Vegas empire was born.
Source: Google Trends
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The Flamingo opened in 1946 and is often regarded as one of the first luxury hotels on the Strip. Its story begins with Bugsy Siegel, a notorious mobster associated with the Italian-American Mafia, who saw Las Vegas as an opportunity to create a glamorous gambling destination. His vision of the Flamingo was grander than anything seen before in the desert, a hotel and casino that catered to Hollywood stars, gamblers, and high rollers.
Siegel named the casino after his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, whose nickname was āThe Flamingoā due to her long legs. The project, however, was plagued with problems, including massive cost overruns, and Siegel was suspected of skimming money from the mob to fund the construction. By the time it opened, the Flamingo had cost more than $6 million, $5 million over forecasted budgets.
The Flamingo Casino in itās recent remodel
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š° Origin: Started by Bugsy Siegel in 1946, originally a $1 million project turned into a $6 million nightmare of cost overruns. The Mafia, of course, wasnāt thrilled with the negative ROI. Bugsy's untimely death was assumed to be a result of the over spend and the frustration of the mob.
š° Mob Money and Control: The Flamingo was bankrolled by a whoās who of organised crime: Meyer Lansky, Siegelās longtime partner, and other Mafia big shots all poured their illicit earnings from drug trafficking, extortion, and gambling rackets into the project. Although Siegelās real job was actually to make the dirty money clean. The casino wasnāt just a businessāit was the mob's cash cow and money laundering front. The Flamingo was their big legit move into mainstream business.
š° Pivotal Moment: Bugsy Siegel was gunned down in June 1947, just six months after the Flamingo opened. The casino had a disastrous start, running over budget and racking up $5 million in losses. Siegelās backers, frustrated by the mismanagement and suspecting Bugsy had been skimming from the project (a mobster never skimmed, right?), decided enough was enough. His assassination is still one of Vegasā most famous whodunits. Despite Siegelās death, Meyer Lansky and the mob took over and made the Flamingo profitable within a year.
š° The Mobās Casino Blueprint: The Flamingo was so much more than a casino it became the blueprint for the Vegas we know today. With the mob at the helm, they turned it into a moneymaker, ensuring high rollers, celebrities, and tourists all flocked to it. This was a crucial part of the mob's transformation from underworld figures to ārespectableā businessmen. They used the Flamingo to launder money, influence politicians, and cement Las Vegas as a gambling empire. The Flamingoās success attracted even more mobsters to Vegas, kicking off a wave of casino-building by Mafia families across the U.S.
š° Changes of ownership: In the '60s and '70s, the FBIās crackdown on organized crime forced the mob out of direct ownership. In came corporate titans like Kirk Kerkorian, who scooped up the Flamingo as part of his Las Vegas portfolio. Itās now owned by Caesars Entertainment, which took the once mob-run operation and made it part of a massive $18 billion hospitality empire.
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