Steve Wynn spent half a century building modern Las Vegas, transforming a desert city into a global entertainment destination with his name on towers across two continents. In 2017, at 75 years old, he sat at the peak of his empire—worth $3. 1 billion, with Wynn Resorts generating over $4 billion in annual revenue and … Read more
Anthony Center and Joseph Testa, known together as the Gemini Twins, were among the most feared figures in the New York underworld before their convictions in 1989 on racketeering charges and ten counts of murder, which brought their criminal careers to an abrupt end with life sentences in federal prison. Before their association with the … Read more
Joel Ortiz was carrying a suitcase containing roughly $250,000 in cash through Los Angeles International Airport when members of the REACT task force closed in. He had just converted stolen cryptocurrency into physical money and was preparing to board a flight to Europe. A short time earlier, the former high school valededictorian had been living … Read more
The Bonanno crime family’s Italian-American members and its Sicilian faction operated in notably different social environments, a distinction rooted in cultural traditions and generational experience. Former Bonanno associate Frank Fiodelino, who grew up around the family with two uncles serving as captains, explained that the American-born faction gravitated toward veterans clubsand social clubs. These venues, … Read more
Johnny Torrio, an Italian-American mobster whose strategic mind helped shape organized crime in the United States, engineered the rise of Al Capone and built one of Chicago’s most powerful criminal empires during the Prohibition era. Born in Italy in1882 and raised in New York City, Torrio started as a street gang leader before being recruited … Read more
Alan Dorfman was killed by two gunshots to the head in a Lincolnwood, Illinois parking lot on January 20, 1983. He was dead before he hit the pavement, just 33 days before he was scheduled to be sentenced on federal corruption charges. The timing of his murder was anything but coincidental. Dorfman, 61, had just … Read more
A former Harvard Business School professor with no casino experience became the most powerful man in the Las Vegas gaming industry, and he openly explained the psychological engineering that underpins every casino floor design. Gary Loveman, who joined Harrah’s Entertainment in 1998 and later became chief executive officer of Caesars Entertainment, turned an industry that … Read more
Albert Anastasia, the boss of what would become the Gambino crime family, was gunned down on October șase, 1957, in a Manhattan barber shop, dying just three minutes after the first bullet hit his chest. Known as the Lord High Executioner, he had ordered hundreds of murders, but his own death came as a direct … Read more
In October 1945, Harlem’s most powerful numbers banker walked into a room where he knew a poisoned glass of wine was waiting for him. For two weeks, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson had known that Raymond Coleman, his closest friend of 15 years, had been paid $30,000 by the Genovese crime family to kill him with arsenic-laced … Read more
My wife grabbed my wrist under the tablecloth the way you grab something you’re about to throw away. She put her mouth three inches from my ear. “Tell him to stop. He’s embarrassing us. ” My father was seventy-two years old, standing at the far end of the table in a blazer he’d ironed himself … Read more