The historical documentary strand continues with an exploration of the events that inspired the Martin Scorsese movie ‘Casino’. The 1995 film was based on the true story of a murderous enforcer who ruled Las Vegas for the Chicago mob. Only a highly organised FBI operation was able to expose the criminal tentacles flowing through the city’s underbelly.
In the 1970s, Las Vegas was ruled by the Chicago mob. Around $1million was siphoned from the top three casinos each month to line the pockets of mob bosses in the Windy City. One of the mafia’s key men in Vegas was a ruthless enforcer named Tony Spilotro, who inspired the Nicky Santoro character played by Joe Pesci in ‘Casino’. Spilotro was sent to protect the mafia’s take – known as the ‘skim’ – from light-fingered employees.
Despite orders to keep a low profile, Spilotro fuelled a wave of violence. In his first three years in Vegas, more people died in gangland murders than in the previous 25. Spilotro also established his own burglary ring – the ‘hole-in-the-wall gang’ – which targeted wealthy homes in the suburbs. By 1979, Spilotro’s activities had come to the attention of the FBI, who were keen to impose law and order on the desert town. “We had to come in here and replant the American flag,” recalls former agent Emmett Michaels.
A huge FBI surveillance operation recorded thousands of hours of illicit conversations. Agents even dressed up as maintenance men in order to infiltrate mob dens and plant bugs. In late 1979, an increasingly paranoid Spilotro learned that one of his underlings, Jerry Linser, had turned informant. He ordered his right-hand man, Frank Cullotta, to deal with Linser. “I went over to Linser’s house that same night, I opened up the door and that’s when I proceeded to kill him,” recalls Cullotta.
By killing a state’s witness, the mobsters had raised the stakes. The FBI redoubled its efforts and began to follow the money flowing from Vegas to Chicago. Agents watched casino employee Phil Ponto deliver a package to a Chicago mobster. Meanwhile, local police turned up the heat on Spilotro by tailing him everywhere he went. This resulted in the fatal shooting of one of Spilotro’s associates by a Las Vegas cop.
Spilotro’s response was to put a contract on the lives of the two cops involved in the shooting. Police commander Kent Clifford, a tough Vietnam veteran, became personally involved. “I’d been in war, I’d been shot at... so I wasn’t afraid of Tony Spilotro,” he says. Clifford flew to Chicago to warn Spilotro’s bosses not to harm the two police officers. Remarkably, the Chicago bosses agreed to his request and overruled their enforcer.
Undeterred, Spilotro plotted a heist on a jewellery store. But the shop was under surveillance and the hole-in-the-wall gang – including Frank Cullotta – was captured by the FBI in one fell swoop. Cullotta subsequently agreed to become a state’s witness when he heard that Spilotro had ordered his death. “I knew then that Tony wasn’t on my side,” he says.
However, the FBI still needed to prove that the money going to Chicago came directly from the casino floor. Agent Michaels went undercover in the casino and proceeded to gamble away thousands of dollars in marked bills. Investigators hoped that some of these bills would show up when the Chicago delivery was intercepted. But on the day of the sting, Phil Ponto was found to be carrying nothing more than a box of cookies and a bottle of wine. Someone had tipped the gang off. “It was a bad day for the FBI,” recalls agent Lynn Ferrin.
The FBI regrouped and turned its attention to the casinos’ paper trail. The strategy paid off spectacularly when agents discovered the mafia had been forging documents to cover up their skim. The mob’s control of Vegas suffered a fatal blow and Tony Spilotro paid the ultimate price. In 1986, he was found buried in an Indiana field. Spilotro’s former nemesis, Kent Clifford, sheds no tears. “He was bad for society,” he says. “He never did one good thing in his lifetime. Should I be unhappy? No.”
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