In Casino, there’s a scene you’ve   watched a dozen times. Arty Piscano, the   Kansas City guy, the one with the   grocery store, stands behind his counter   ranting about airfare and hotel expenses   while his mother tells him to calm down.   He’s writing everything in a notebook,    every dollar, every name.

 

 And   upstairs in an apartment the FBI bugged   for an unrelated case, a realto-real   tape recorder is catching all of it.   That’s how the film says the government   found the skim. A loud mouth and a lucky   microphone. A comedy of errors that   handed the FBI a case they    weren’t even looking for.

 

 That scene is   a lie, not a dramatization,    not a simplification,   a fundamental misrepresentation of what   actually    happened. The real man behind Arty   Piscano was Carl Tffy Duna, the   underboss of the Kansas City crime   family. Not a grocery store owner, not a   fool, and not a man who lost control    of his mouth.

 

 Duna was feared,   disciplined, and meticulous.    He kept coded records, but he kept them   hidden in his basement behind   ventilation ducts, not scrolled on a   counter where anyone could read them.   And the FBI didn’t find  the skim   by accident. They found it on June 2nd,   1978 through a hidden microphone they   deliberately    planted at the Villa Capri Pizzeria on   Independence Avenue in Kansas City.

 

 a   booth where Duna and acting boss Carl    Cork Sevela sat down to discuss   a multi-million dollar Las Vegas    casino operation. While the bee’s   staying alive played on the jukebox,   the agents on the other end of that wire      weren’t expecting Las Vegas. They were   investigating mob murders in  the   River Key Entertainment District.

 

 But   what they heard that night launched the    largest organized crime   investigation in Nevada history. An   operation  called Strawman that   would span four cities, deploy more   wiretaps    than any federal case before it, and   produce 19 convictions    across four crime families.

 

 This is the   story of how the FBI actually    dismantled the most profitable criminal   operation in American history. And the   detail  the film left out, the   one that changes everything about who   the real protagonist of this story    was, is something Scorsesei   either didn’t know or chose not to tell   you.

 

  That’s the version  of the Las   Vegas skim most people carry in their   heads. The Scorsesei version    where the mob ate itself alive through   greed and stupidity and the feds swept    up what was left. The court   transcripts, the FBI surveillance logs,   and the trial testimony tell a different   story.

 

 What ended the mob’s 30-year hold   on Las Vegas wasn’t self-destruction.   It was a methodical multi-year   investigation run out of a field office   in Kansas City, Missouri by agents who   built their  case one wiretap at   a time. And at the center of that   operation, hidden in plain sight for   decades, was a secret that reframes the   entire film.

 

    Here’s a number that explains how the   whole machine worked. $15,000.   That’s what it cost to  buy. A   rigged counting room scale at the   Stardust Resort and Casino. The return   on that investment was millions per   year, siphoned out of the largest casino   on the Las Vegas  strip without a   single dollar appearing on any official   ledger.

 

  The skim wasn’t a shakedown.  It   was an engineering project. And it   started with a loan.   In August of 1974,   a 32-year-old San Diego real estate    developer named Allan Glick   received 62.75   million from  the Teamsters   Central States Pension Fund, the largest   single loan the fund had ever made.

 

 The   money bought Glick control of four   casinos, the Stardust, the Fremont, the   Hienda, and the Marina. He called the   holding company Argent Corporation.    A RG for Alan Rlick, E N T for   enterprises.   Glick was a decorated Vietnam helicopter   pilot.  He looked clean on paper.   That was the point.

 

 The loan had been   arranged  by Kansas City boss   Nick Sevela, Milwaukee boss Frank   Balistrieri, and Cleveland’s liaison to   the pension fund,    Milton Rockman, each of whom controlled   a trustee. Total Teamsters    financing would eventually reach   approximately $146 million.   But Glick wasn’t running the casinos.

 

 He   was the name on the license, the man    who actually ran everything. The   pit operations, the sports book, the   entertainment, the hiring, the comps,   the kitchen was Frank Lefty Rosenthal,   installed by the Chicago Outfits top   bosses, Tony Aardo and Joey Aupa, at a   salary of $250,000   a year.

 

 His official title was executive   consultant. His actual authority was   total. When Glick once pushed back on a   decision, Rosenthal told him, “You’re   not my boss, and if you interfere with   what’s going on here, you will never   leave this corporation alive.” Glick   stopped pushing back. The primary   mechanism for the skim at the Stardust   was the hard count room, the room where   slot machine coins were weighed and   recorded.

 

  Bags of nickels of   quarters and dollar tokens came off the   casino floor in steel cages  were   placed on ultra sensitive industrial   scales capable of counting    20,000 nickels with accuracy to within   two coins and the weight was converted   to a dollar figure that became the   casino’s official revenue.   A scale mechanic hired specifically for   this purpose    recalibrated those scales approximately   10% light.

 

 $1,000 in quarters registered   as 900. The missing  10% never   existed on paper. It was recycled   through a system unique to the Stardust.   Locked coin cabinets installed along the   casino walls. Change girls deposited   customers bills into dropboxes    and took rolls of surplus coins from   these cabinets.

 Each evening, the   cabinets could hold up to $10,000 in   untraceable bills. Cash that had entered   the casino through the front door and   was now flowing out through a side   channel  that no auditor would   ever see. Even more brazen was the   unregistered change booth. It looked   identical to every other booth on the   Stardust floor.

 

 Same signage, same   layout, same personnel rotation. It was   not registered with any governmental   authority. 100% of the money that flowed   through that booth went directly to the   Chicago outfit. It operated for nearly 5   years. The man who designed the system,   the rigged scales, the wall cabinets,   the ghost booth was slot department   manager J. Vandermark.

 

  When Nevada gaming  investigators   began closing in on the operation in   1976,   Vandermark disappeared. He was given   what sources describe as an all expense   paid trip to Mazatlan, Mexico, where his   head was bashed in while sunbathing on a   beach. His body was never    recovered.

 

 And the same roots that moved   skimmed cash out of the Stardust would   within 3 years become the subject of the   most extensive wiretap operation in the   history of federal law enforcement. A   parallel skim operated at the Tropicana   run by the atipim Kansas City family   through Joe Agusto a Sicilian immigrant   who’d infiltrated the casino through his   role producing the Foley’s Berser stage   show   there.

 

 Casino manager Carl Thomas and   assistant manager Billy Caldwell used a   crude method. falsified fill slips,   forged signatures, cash stolen directly   from the cashier’s cage. From June   through October of 1978, the Tropicana   crew skimmed over $40,000 a month. The   dollar figures on the overall skim vary   depending on the source and time period.

 

  The Nevada Gaming Control Board    determined approximately 7 million was   taken from slot machines alone between   1974   and 76.   Federal prosecutors proved 2 million at   trial, the minimum they could document   beyond dispute. The broadest published   estimate from gaming historian Steve   Fiser  claims 15 million per year   for 5 years.

 

  The truth is somewhere  in that   range and one person inside this   operation was already  talking to   the FBI. Though it wasn’t who anyone   expected, Carl Caruso made at least 18   round trips between Las Vegas and Kansas   City carrying skimmed cash in a   briefcase on commercial flights dressed   in business attire at a rate of $1,000   per delivery.

 

 He turned the money over   to Charles Moritina, Sevela’s man in   Kansas City. For the Chicago part,   Anthony Chiavala, Senior, a sitting   Chicago police officer who was also   Sevela’s nephew, transported cash to   outfit boss Joey Aupa and under boss   Jackie Cerrone.   For Cleveland, Milton Rockman made the    trip himself.

 

 The split among   the four participating families was not   fixed from the start. Initially, only   Kansas City, Milwaukee,  and   Cleveland shared the Argent, the three   families that had arranged the Teamsters   loan. Chicago entered later. When Kansas   City and Milwaukee began arguing over   percentages, Joey Ayupa  was   called in to mediate.

 

 His solution was   simple. give Chicago 25% of everything.   In October 1977, meeting in Chicago,   later captured on Wiretap, formalized   the arrangement going forward. The   Tropicana skim was separate. Kansas City   kept the bulk because Sevela had set it   up independently, though he sent a   percentage to IUPA out of deference.

 

  Here’s the structural fact that the film   buries entirely. The five families of   New York, the organizations, the public   associates with the mafia, the ones that   dominate every book, every documentary,   every HBO series had virtually no piece   of the Las Vegas ski. The most lucrative   criminal revenue stream in the country   was controlled by four Midwest families   that most Americans couldn’t name.

 

  Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee,   Cleveland. Not Gambino, not Genovves,   not Lucesi.   The geography of the real operation   looked nothing like the mythology.   Before I get to how the FBI actually   cracked this open and the method was   nothing like what the film shows, I’d be   curious what you think.

 

 Why did   Scorsesei reduce four crime families    and a multi-ity conspiracy to   what looks like one disorganized crew   run out of a Kansas City grocery store?   Was it a dramatic economy or was he   protecting someone? Let me know. The FBI   didn’t find the Las Vegas ski by looking   for it.

 

 They found it because two Kansas   City mobsters sat down at a bug table   and couldn’t stop talking. In the spring   of 1978,    agents from the Kansas City Field Office   were investigating a  series of   mob bombings and murders in the River   Key Entertainment District. A turf war   between factions of the TLA organization   that had left buildings in rubble and   bodies in cars.

 They planted a hidden   microphone in a back booth at the Villa   Capri Pizzeria,   2609 Independence Avenue. a restaurant   in Kansas City’s northeast neighborhood   where mob figures gathered regularly.   On the evening of June 2nd, 1978,   Cork Sevela and Tffy Duna walked in and   sat at the bug table. The agents on the   other end expected to hear about River   Key.

 

 Instead, they heard Las Vegas,   casino names, Teamsters loans, hidden   ownership, a deal with Chicago. Duna   referenced being in on $2 million a   month. Then he said a sentence that   changed the direction of the entire   investigation.   I don’t want to call him from here. I   think we ought to just go to a phone.   Billy, the FBI organized crime squad   supervisor who listened to that   recording understood immediately.

 

  [snorts] Duna was using payoneses to   communicate  with Las Vegas. If   the FBI could identify which payones he   used, they could tap them. Lei formed a   dedicated surveillance squad to follow   Duna through Kansas City and map his   communication patterns. The pay phone   wire taps proved, in Uli’s own words,   extraordinarily productive.

 

 From that   single microphone in a pizzeria, the   investigation expanded to wire taps and   bugs in Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Chicago,   and 19 separate wires in Kansas City   alone. Agents tapped phones in lawyers   offices, insurance companies, private   homes, garages, automobiles, and a   Chicago strip club called the Admiral   Theater, where outfit bosses held   meetings.

 

 They set up phony businesses   as cover for surveillance posts. It was   described as the first time in the   14-year history of the Federal Omnibus   Crime Act that government agents had   made such extensive use of courtapproved   clandestine surveillance. The three le   agents, Uli, Lee Floy, and Shea Arie,   worked alongside a Kansas City police   intelligence detective named Gary   Jenkins, who helped track mob members   and identify their routines.

 

  This is worth pausing on. Call it the   inversion principle, the structural   insight the film completely obscures.   The FBI broke the biggest Las Vegas case   in history without ever running the   investigation from Las Vegas. The   critical discovery was in Kansas City.   The wiretaps were in Kansas City. The   raids were in Kansas City.

 

 The trials   would be held in Kansas City. The mob’s   operational security inside the casinos   was irrelevant because the vulnerability   was a thousand miles away in the   restaurants, living rooms, and pay phone   booths where the bosses discuss their   business as if no one could hear. On   November 26th, 1978, the investigation   captured what may have been its most   devastating recording.

 

 Carl Thomas, the   Tropicana casino manager, and Joe   Austoto  flew to Kansas City to   meet the Sevelas in Duna at the home of   Josephine Marlo, a Sevela relative.   The house was bugged. Thomas, apparently   unable to resist showing off, gave the   assembled mobsters a tutorial on casino   skimming.

 

 He explained how the scales   worked, how Philill slips were   falsified,  and how the change   girls moved cash. He even told them how   much his rigged scale had cost, $15,000.   Then came Valentine’s Day, 1979.   FBI agents executed simultaneous raids   across Kansas City. At Duna’s home, the   Ye found what no one expected.

    Hidden in the basement, attic, and   ventilation ducts, Duna had kept   meticulous handwritten ledger notes   documenting the entire skim operation.   Coded records tracking dispersements,   meetings,    courier schedules, payments to each   family, threats delivered to Alen Glick,   and even a welfare system for elderly   mobsters.

 

 The feared under boss had been   running his own accounting department.   Ulley later claimed he had no difficulty   cracking the code. That same day, agents   intercepted courier Carl Caruso at the   Kansas City airport carrying $80,000 in   skim cash. It was the first time ski   money had been physically seized in   transit.

 

 The Tropicana skim ended that   afternoon.   and Duna’s ledger notes, those pages   pulled from behind air ducts in a Kansas   City basement would prove more   devastating at trial than any   informant’s testimony because the   defense couldn’t claim the handwriting   was lying. The investigation produced   two federal prosecutions both tried in   the Western District of Missouri before   Judge Joseph Stevens Jr.

 

 with David   Helfrey of the DOJ Organized Crime   Strike Force as  lead prosecutor.   The first was Strawman One, the   Tropicana case. Its  star witness   was Joe Agusto, who flipped in April of   1983 after being convicted of bank fraud   in Minneapolis.   Agusto plead  guilty to the   $280,000   Tropicana skim conspiracy and testified   in detail about how he had infiltrated    the casino and Savella’s orders,   how the crew operated night by night,   and how Cash  traveled to Kansas   City. The trial concluded in July    of 83 with seven convictions.   Duna received 30 years and $130,000    fine. Cork Sevela received 35   years. Mortina  got 20. Chaveala

 

  got 15. Nick Sevela, the boss who’d   orchestrated everything.    The man who had recited the names and   ages of Alan Glick’s children as a   threat, never faced trial. He died of   lung cancer on March 12th, 1983,   2 weeks after his release from prison.   Then on August 30th, Agusto himself died   of a heart attack in federal custody at   a Kansas City hospital and the   prosecution lost its primary witness for   the upcoming Argent case.

 

 Stman    II, the Stardust and Fremont case, was   indicted September 30th, 1983, charging   15 defendants across  four crime   families. The trial began September   23rd, 1985 and lasted  4 months.   The government’s evidence included over   30 hours of FBI wiretap recordings,   Deluna’s coded ledger notes, and a   lineup of cooperating witnesses that no    defense attorney could   neutralize.

 

  Alan Glick testified under full immunity   in November of 85. He described how   Sevela told him at a 1975 meeting that   if it were his choice,    Glick would never leave the room alive,   then named Glick’s children by name and   age.  When Cella later decided   Glick had to sell the casinos, Duna told   him,    “You might think of your life as   expendable, but you might not think of   your children’s  lives as   expendable.

 

” Angelo Lonardo, the   Cleveland underboss, the highest ranking   mafia member in American history to    testify for the government, took   the stand and described receiving $8,000    to $40,000 per month as his   family’s share.   Roy Williams, the former Teamsters   president,    appeared under heavy marshall guard and   admitted to a 30-year relationship with   the Sevela organization and the $1,500   monthly payments  that had bought   his pension fund vote.

 

 On January 21st,   1986, the jury returned guilty verdicts   on all eight counts. Joey Aayupa    28 1/2 years and 80,000 in fines. Jackie   Cerrone 28 1/2 years. Angelo Leatra 16   years. Joe Lombardo 16 years. Milton   Rockman’s 24 years. The eighth circuit   upheld every conviction on appeal. The   film shows the bosses being arrested as   an afterthought.

 

 a montage of handcuffs   set to voice over narration compressed   into maybe 90 seconds of screen time.   The real trial lasted 4 months. It   featured the most senior mob witnesses   who had ever taken a federal stand and   the sentences guaranteed that every   major defendant would die behind bars.   Here’s what stays with me about the   structure of this case.

 

 The FBI ran the   entire investigation out of Kansas City.   The wiretaps were in Kansas City. The   raids were in Kansas City. The trials   were in Kansas City. The city that   everybody pictures when they think about   the mob in Las Vegas, Las Vegas itself,   was almost incidental to the   prosecution.   Do you think that’s why the film buries   the investigation?   Because a story about patient FBI work   in a Midwest field office doesn’t fit   the mythology Scorsesei was building.

 

  I’d be curious where you land on that.   Tony Spelatro’s case was severed from   the Straw Man trial because of heart   bypass surgery.   He never saw a courtroom. The Chicago   outfit made sure of that. On June 14th,   1986,   5 months after the straw man two   verdicts, Spyotro and his brother   Michael were driven to a house in   Bensonville, Illinois near O’Hare   airport.

 

 Tony had been told he was   attending a ceremony to elevate him   within the organization.   Michael, who had no involvement in the   skim, no role in Las Vegas operations,   no history of violence, had been told   the same thing. He believed he was    about to be made. When they   walked into the basement, approximately   15 outfit members were waiting.

 

 In   casino, Nikki Santoro and his brother    are beaten with baseball bats   and buried alive while still breathing.   The documented testimony    delivered at the 2007 family secrets   trial by cooperating witness Nicholas   Calibrazi, who was present, tells a   different story. There were no bats.

 

 The   brothers were beaten with fists and   feet. Tony reportedly asked, “Can I say   a prayer before the group swarmed him?”   Michael Spelatro died in that basement   believing until the moment the first   blow landed that he was being honored.   The bodies were buried in a 5-ft grave   in an Indiana cornfield near Enos.

 

 A   farmer discovered them 9 days later   while plowing. In 2007, James Marcelo   was convicted of the murders and   sentenced  to life. If this is   the kind of story that keeps you here, a   subscribe means I keep making them.   After Frank Rosenthal died of a heart   attack in Miami  Beach on October   13th, 2008 at the age of 79, the Las    Vegas Review Journal’s Jane Anne   Morrison published a story that had been   waiting decades to be told.

 

 Three former   law enforcement  sources   confirmed to Morrison that Rosenthal had   been a top echelon FBI informant, the   bureau’s highest classification for a    human source, possibly since his   years in Chicago before he ever set foot   in Lassou, Vegas. His code name was   reportedly Achilles.

 

 Morrison’s sources   told her he talked about    everything and everyone whether he had   firstirthand knowledge like he did at   the Stardust    or second and thirdand knowledge like at   the Tropicana.   In Casino, Ace Rothstein is the   narrator. He’s the protagonist.    He’s the man who builds the operation,   watches the empire crumble around him   through the failures of others,    and walks away diminished but alive.

 

 the   last rational man in a world of animals.   Robert Dairo plays him as the smartest    person in every room. The one   who sees everything and controls what he   can until control  becomes   impossible.   That’s the film’s thesis. A competent   man surrounded by incompetence. A   tragedy of environment rather than   character.

 

 The real Frank Rosenthal was   feeding information to the FBI while   running the biggest skim in casino   history. He was never charged in either   Strawman prosecution despite being   identified by multiple sources as the   man who orchestrated the Stardust   operation. The reason it now appears is   that he was the government’s asset the   entire time.

 

 Jerry McGee Rosenthal, his   wife, the woman Sharon Stone played in   the film, was also an FBI informant,   handled by the same agent, neither   spouse knowing about the other.   Joe Austo was caught on a 1978 wiretap   calling Rosenthal a snitch who would   bite the hand that feeds him. Mob   suspicion that turned out to be exactly   right.   The film’s greatest character was the   investigation’s greatest asset.

 

  The story Scorsesei told is a tragedy, a   man who lost everything because the   people around him couldn’t hold the   line, was in fact a story of systematic   betrayal from within. And the man doing   the betraying was the one holding the   microphone for the entire film.   If the fact that the real Ace Rothstein   was an FBI informant the entire time is   the kind of thing that changes how you   watch the film, and I think it should.

 

 A   like tells me to keep going deeper on   the stories behind the stories. Alan   Dorfman never got the chance to testify.   On January 20th, 1983, the Teamsters   pension fund controller, who had   approved $146 million in loans to Alan   Glick, was shot seven times in the head   with a 22 caliber pistol  in the   parking lot of the Hyatt Lincolnwood   Hotel in suburban Chicago.

 

  He had just been convicted in a separate   bribery case and faced 55 years. The mob   killed him because they  believed   correctly that he was about to   cooperate.   His murder has  never been   solved.   Roy Williams resigned as Teamsters   president in April of 83, cooperated   with the government, was parrolled in   August of 88, and died on his farm in   Leon, Missouri in April of 1989 at 74.

 

  Cork Sevela died in a Fort Worth prison   on October 2nd, 1994.   Carl Duna, the man whose coded ledger    notes broke the case open, the   man the film turned into a screaming   grocery store owner, died of natural   causes on July 21st, 2008.    Alan Glick escaped prosecution entirely   through his cooperation, returned to San   Diego real estate and died in La Hoya on   August 2nd,  2021   at 79.

 

  Rosenthal was placed in Nevada’s Black   Book in  1987,   banning him from every casino in the   state. He spent his final years in   Florida running a sports handicapping    website, watching the film that   made him famous, and telling   interviewers that Dairo had captured   about 70% of who he was.

 

 He never   mentioned the other 30%.   The Stardust Resort and Casino, the   flagship of the skim operation, where   the rigged scales measured  10%   light and the unregistered change booth   sent every dollar to Chicago for nearly   5 years, was demolished  by   implosion on March 13th, 2007.   The site on the north end of the strip   is now  Resort’s World Loss.

 

  Vegas, a $4.3 billion mega resort    that opened in 2021.   The Stardust’s original neon sign, the   massive electric purple and blue   starburst  that once marked the   entrance to the most profitable mob   operation in American history, sits in   the neon museum’s outdoor boneyard on   Las Vegas  Boulevard North,   unlit, facing a parking lot.

 

 The   tourists who stop to photograph it    do so because the sign is   beautiful, not because they know what   happened inside the building it    used to advertise. eyes.