Posted on: November 20, 2025, 12:21h.
Last updated on: November 20, 2025, 12:20h.
The people who claim that Las Vegas was better when the mob ran it never found themselves escorted to a casino security office for a “conversation” from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Martin Scorsese’s classic film “Casino,” released 30 years ago this coming Saturday, presented a fictionalized version of mobster Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro (Joe Pesci) and the associate who ran his casino/s, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal (Robert De Niro). But much of the lurid violence they engaged in was ripped straight from reality.
One of the most notorious scenes saw a cheater’s hand crushed by multiple hits from a mallet at the Tangiers (Stardust). That really happened, according to Rosenthal, who recalled catching two men using an electronic signaling device to cheat at blackjack.
The men were subdued with a cattle prod and then hauled into a back room — the so‑called “woodshed.”
Mallets were preferred, Rosenthal recalled, because rubber left fewer visible marks than metal.
Mob justice at the Stardust ended when Boyd Gaming bought the property in 1985, severing the Chicago Outfit’s influence. A year later, Spilotro was murdered.
But the brutality didn’t vanish with the mob’s reign.
Garage of Grievances
Downtown at Binion’s Horseshoe, suspected cheaters were still being marched into a hidden office in its Fremont Street parking garage (often called the “back garage” or “the Horsehoe back lot”) for “rehabilitation.”
The practice, which is believed to have started in the 1950s, only came to light in 1986. That’s when engineer Alan Brown and airline pilot Barry Finn had the bravery to testify before a Nevada grand jury. Brown described being beaten so badly, he defecated in his pants.
“They called us cheaters,” he told investigators. “They said, ‘You should never come back here again. You are going to tell your friends not to come back in.’”
Both men later won $675,000 in civil settlements.
Journalist Doug J. Swanson’s book, “Blood Aces,” painted the scene vividly: a ten‑by‑ten, windowless cell with cinderblock walls and a steel door, tucked into the back of Nevada’s first multilevel parking garage, built in 1962.
Cheaters were escorted there through service corridors from the casino floor.
The room eventually disappeared, either during the 1990 renovation when Binion’s absorbed the Mint and Apache Hotel, or in 2004 after Harrah’s — now Caesars Entertainment — acquired the property.
Today, the garage houses only a guard station with windows that does not fit the description.
Probably the most shocking detail in all this is regulatory.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board did not formally close this loophole to lawlessness until October 2023, when it amended Regulation 5.160 to require surveillance coverage of all casino security offices and service corridors.
“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.
