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Just a quick note from me, I’m in Canada on vacation. So editions are going to be slightly less frequent for the next two weeks. We’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming after the 26th!

Mob Ties and Under Estimated Bills 🧐

What are the nuggets? 💎

🎰 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, wasn’t 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.

🎰 Mob Money and Control: The Flamingo was bankrolled by a who’s who of organised crime: Meyer Lansky, Siegel’s longtime partner, and other Mafia big shots all poured their illicit earnings from drug trafficking, extortion, and gambling rackets into the project. Although Siegel’s real job was actually to make the dirty money clean. The casino wasn’t just a business—it was the mob's cash cow and money laundering front. The Flamingo was their big legit move into mainstream business.

🎰 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. Siegel’s 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 Vegas’ most famous whodunits. Despite Siegel’s death, Meyer Lansky and the mob took over and made the Flamingo profitable within a year.

🎰 The Mob’s 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 “respectable” businessmen. They used the Flamingo to launder money, influence politicians, and cement Las Vegas as a gambling empire. The Flamingo’s success attracted even more mobsters to Vegas, kicking off a wave of casino-building by Mafia families across the U.S.

🎰 Changes of ownership: In the '60s and '70s, the FBI’s 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. It’s 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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Laying Out The Figures 💵