[Mob Files] [Forensic Intelligence Hub-Page] [Jhéön & Associates, Stephen P. Dresch, Chairman]
By David Mygoya and Jeff Taylor
Free Press Staff Writers
Laughlin, Nev. -- Buried deep in the federal government's case against
reputed Detroit mob boss Jack W. Tocco and his associates is a reference
to a casino in this secluded desert town.
Surrounded by the jagged rock peaks of Laughlin, the Edgewater Hotel and Casino is a small-time house compared to Nevada's gambling palaces. But it soon will play a big-time role in the government's efforts to crush the men accused of being Detroit's organized elite.
The Free Press has discovered through interviews and public records that federal authorities will try to tie Tocco, 69, to a 1980 scheme that fooled even Nevada gaming regulators and left Detroit and New York mob factions with a brief four-year stake in the Edgewater. That may explain why, instead of being a profitable casino in a boomtown, the Edgewater ended up more than $7 million in debt before the reputed mob figures got out.
In highly publicized cases in the 1970s, federal authorities successfully prosecuted several Detroiters, but not Tocco, for orchestrating hidden interests in two of the first casinos to occupy the famed Las Vegas strip - the Frontier and Aladdin hotels and casinos.
But the Edgewater, which opened in 1981, was another story. No grand juries were ever impaneled, no one was ever prosecuted. In fact, several former federal agents thought the investigation - kept under wraps for 16 years in government files and memories - was long forgotten.
Tocco's lawyer, David DuMouchel, said any allegation of Tocco's involvement is without substance or merit.
"Mr. Tocco just categorically denies he is or was involved in any of the wrongdoings alleged in this indictment," DuMouchel said. "He doesn't direct or influence or implement anything, except with regard to his own family."
Federal prosecutors won't discuss their case against Tocco and 16 others who were indicted in March on charges ranging from racketeering and extortion to plotting murder. But a 57-page grand jury indictment makes it clear that authorities are aiming to demolish what they say is a mob regime that has reigned for three decades over illegal gambling, loan-sharking and other old-time underworld dealings.
Prosecutors contend that Tocco has run the syndicate since 1979, overseeing a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise that flourished in Michigan and Ohio, and sank its clutches into the Nevada gaming industry.
The Edgewater is the first real link the government says it has ever made between a casino and the customarily cautious Tocco, whose only criminal conviction was 27 years ago for attending a cockfight. And it's a key link in the prosecution's case.
The Free Press pieced together a portrait of the Laughlin gambit from a review of Nevada Gaming Control Board records, real estate and court documents and other records, as well as interviews with people once associated with the hotel. Former and current federal agents and prosecutors, scattered across the country, also provided interviews on the condition that they not be identified.
In the March indictment, prosecutors devoted a single sentence to Laughlin. And few public records help unravel what happened. But those close to the investigation and others say Tocco was behind the enterprise with the aid of others, including his brother Anthony J. Tocco and a longtime associate, Anthony J. Corrado.
All the government indictment provides is the name of the mob's alleged front man: William Pompili, whose dream was to build the casino. Now the mystery gambler - dead for nearly 10 years - may be the man who helps bring down the Detroit mob.
An overlooked player
Pompili was a small-time gambler, restaurateur and bar owner from Toledo who, federal investigators say, had strong ties to the Toccos and other reputed Detroit mobsters.
A tall, dapper man with a finely trimmed mustache and a penchant for cards and golf, he was practically ignored by undercover federal agents when he arrived in Las Vegas in 1975, according to former members of the FBI's covert squads there.
At the time, federal agents were wrapping up a long investigation into the Aladdin, focusing almost exclusively on mob ties emanating from New York City and St. Louis. Pompili was hardly the type of big fish they were after.
"He was there and we had no idea who he was," one former agent said. "At first we didn't pay any attention to him, but then it became clear we should get someone in there close to him."
With little knowledge of his origins or associates, the FBI in Las Vegas didn't become friendly with Pompili until about 1980, as plans for the Laughlin casino progressed. Two years later the bureau would have enough evidence to end its investigation into the Edgewater, but the government would not bring the case to a Detroit court until now.
The difficulty in charging Tocco with having a hidden interest in the Edgewater, former prosecutors assigned to the case said, was that he and his top associates were never seen near Laughlin.
But they didn't need to be, informants said - Pompili was doing just fine on their behalf.
Born in 1927 and reared in Toledo, Pompili was known for running backroom numbers games under the watchful, coaxing eye of friend Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, the alleged caretaker of the mob's gambling operations in Michigan and Ohio and one of the 17 men indicted in March.
Among Toledo's vice cops and the federal agents who monitored illegal gambling, Pompili was considered a low-level operative best known for the Roman Gardens Cocktail Lounge and Bath House, a restaurant and health club.
"He always had a game going," said Officer Richard Orlowski, a 25-year Toledo police veteran who was a rookie when Pompili's games became prominent. "He was strictly a nickel-and-dime type of guy, though. Not a major force."
A former Toledo police investigator who worked undercover tracking organized crime for seven years said Pompili was the type the mob liked to have on its team - someone who stayed out of the spotlight.
"If you had black and white wallpaper on the wall, he'd be like a fly on the black," the investigator said. "He was that hard to notice."
A former federal agent who tracked the connection between Detroit and Toledo mob activities said Pompili "was just one of their minions down there" and noted that Giacalone, his brother, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone, and Anthony J. Zerilli, considered some of the highest-placed men in Detroit, "had meetings with him."
For a man so connected, Pompili had an amazingly clean record - only one conviction.
It was May 1975 when he was caught running illegal dice and blackjack games under the guise of a charity called Harry Hughes Horseman's Haven out of a Toledo shopping center storefront.
The alleged charity hired Pompili to run the table games at $50 a night and paid him an additional $950 a month in rent for the equipment and building space, according to arrest records. Two months later, Pompili was convicted with three others and fined.
The arrest marked the end of Pompili's tenure in Toledo and, according to his widow, Shirley Pompili, "the end to years of scrutiny by the IRS."
"We were targets," said Shirley Pompili. "And my husband's name was associated and they picked up on him."
The association that drew IRS scrutiny, she acknowledged, was with organized crime figures whom she said she saw with her husband but knew little about.
"I learned not to ask any questions," the 65-year-old said of life with her husband. "Maybe married to somebody else you could ask questions, but not with my Bill."
A month after his arrest in 1975 and a month before he would be convicted, William Pompili came home and told his wife and adopted daughter they were moving to Las Vegas.
"Just like that. He left in July and I followed in December," said Shirley Pompili, who would not move back to Toledo until 1987.
When William Pompili left Toledo, police quickly learned where he was headed. "Someone told me he got taken care of big-time in Vegas," said Orlowski, the Toledo police officer.
Secret meetings
Once in Las Vegas, Pompili went to work at the Aladdin as a "box man," the person who exchanges cash for casino chips, stuffs the bills into the cash boxes at each table and helps collect the money at the end of a shift.
"I would say that it was unusual for someone to come directly into a casino with no experience and work the box," said Bobby Mills, a second-generation Las Vegas casino worker who befriended Pompili at the Aladdin and worked for him at the Edgewater. "Usually you work as a dealer for a few years."
Mills said he didn't know how or why his former golf partner got the job, but former investigators said it was Pompili's Detroit connections that set him up. Mills expressed surprise over Pompili's Toledo history and the government's assertions about him.
"I have no idea what they're talking about," Mills said. "I don't know who or what he was. I only knew that he was my friend."
Shirley Pompili also was surprised to hear that her husband is a focal point of the government's prosecution, or even that he is mentioned in the indictment.
Married to him for 38 years until his death from cancer in 1987, Pompili described her husband as caring, devoted and "quiet, very much in the background," certainly not the Mafia front man described by the federal government.
Mills agreed: "He never had two quarters to rub together, much less be a mob guy."
Investigators who first noticed William Pompili while he was at the Aladdin were equally unsuspecting. During an investigation into alleged mob ties there between 1976 and 1978, Pompili was quickly dismissed as another casino employee, former agents said.
But agents who unsuccessfully tried to track money allegedly making its way from Las Vegas to Detroit failed to see the one person who moved between the two cities: Pompili.
People familiar with Pompili's actions while he lived in Las Vegas said he frequently hopped a plane from Nevada to Detroit, sometimes just long enough to board a return flight.
From 1975 when he left Toledo until 1983, Pompili would meet with the Toccos, Corrado or the Giacalones, according to people who knew Pompili and federal agents in Detroit who routinely tracked the mob's movements.
Those meetings were secretly watched in Toledo and Romulus by federal agents; references to them are mentioned briefly in the government's current case. Some of the meetings, it turned out, occurred in the months preceding the alleged decision to expand the mob's casino interests into Laughlin.
Prosecutors would not comment on what was discussed, but others familiar with the surveillance said that in the earliest of the meetings, Pompili and Detroit's mob leaders were discussing plans to build the Edgewater.
Lure of Nevada
For organized crime figures, Las Vegas always has been an irresistible target: the ultimate gambling haven.
In an effort to avoid prosecution, mobsters and their associates have hidden behind front men who pass themselves off as legitimate investors or high-level employees with ready access to the millions that can flow through a casino.
And that is the role Pompili played, according to the indictment.
Once in, mobsters often used their front men to skim money from casino profits before the cash was counted, sometimes with schemes as simple as stuffing slot machine coins into hidden sport coat pockets.
Some crime figures called on friends in control of Teamsters pension funds and dipped into those multibillion-dollar reserves to build casinos. Federal agents say they believe the Aladdin and Frontier were built by pension fund money; the Edgewater almost was, too, people familiar with the investigation said.
And because the Teamsters leaders of the era and Detroit's mob families were well acquainted - Jimmy Hoffa and Frank Fitzsimmons were close associates of the Giacalone brothers - it was a perfect fit to move into Nevada.
It was no secret that Las Vegas was a favorite playground for years for reputed leaders of the Detroit mob.
Throughout the 1970s, Jack Tocco and his wife, Maria, were observed by federal agents as frequent visitors to the Aladdin and often were granted exclusive privileges by its management, state gaming documents show. Corrado also was granted red-carpet treatment there.
Front-row seats to top-name performers - nearly impossible to obtain by the average casinogoer - were common not only for the Toccos and Corrado, but Pompili and others in their circle.
"We saw Sinatra, you know, all the top names," Shirley Pompili said. "Front-row booths, all the time, I don't know how he got them, but we were there."
But it wouldn't be the better-known mobster haunts in Las Vegas that would cost Tocco. Instead, it was a place no one was looking - at least not at first.
Edgewater's beginnings
While law enforcement was focused on Las Vegas throughout the 1960s and 1970s, tiny Laughlin, secluded south of Las Vegas in a serene valley of the Mohave Desert, escaped intense scrutiny.
With barely a trickle of tourists, it was just a stopping point on a steep dusty road in the late 1970s. In the early '80s, changes in tax laws made casino ownership more attractive and Laughlin became a casino boomtown almost overnight, town officials say. The population exploded from 80 to about 8,000 in a decade.
"They all came in the '80s," recalled Don Laughlin, a developer for whom the town is named. He built Laughlin's first casino, the Riverside, in the 1960s and owns many of the vacant lots awaiting other developers.
Laughlin said he does not recall mention of Tocco's name, or those of any associates, when the Edgewater was being built.
Although the names Tocco and Corrado don't appear on any official record associated with the casino, federal, state and gaming control investigators said it was clear that Detroit's organized crime families had close ties to would-be investors, associations that were too close for the comfort of Nevada gaming officials.
Some investors couldn't directly account for the source of their buy-in, including one man who claimed his father left $250,000 cash in a shoe box when he died.
"There was no doubt in our minds it was the Detroit family," said Fred Balmer, a retired gaming control investigator and now chief of security at the El Cortez Casino in Las Vegas. "It was pretty clear to us that the money was questionable and many of the initial investors couldn't document the source of their money."
Corrado's lawyer, James Bellanca Jr., said he knows little about the Edgewater but said that if a hidden investment by Corrado existed, it may not be illegal.
"What would be wrong with anybody making an investment, if in fact that's what happened?" Bellanca said. "The laws regarding investments would have to be examined to see if it was proper."
Anthony Tocco's lawyer, Constanzo Lijoi, did not return messages left at his office for comment.
Nevada gaming records credit the idea for building the Edgewater - a $6.5-million, six-story, 153-room hotel and casino on 8 1/2 acres - to the Freebee Corp. and its owner, James Roberts, a casino manager at the Aladdin and Pompili's boss. But while Roberts was credited as the apparent mastermind, it was Pompili who spent nights in his Las Vegas condominium sketching the layout of the hotel and casino.
"He spent a lot of time on those drawings," Shirley Pompili said. "He took me down there once to show me the property. There was nothing there. He wanted to build a casino and he said he was going to do it."
While federal agents in Michigan were familiar with William Pompili's tie to the Detroit mob, agents in Nevada were just beginning to find out what he was up to and who was behind it.
"I asked around but no one knew him," said a former agent who watched Pompili's star begin to rise in Laughlin. "So, we decided to get close to him and find out what he was about."
Carefully, the FBI moved one of its top undercover agents from his assignment tracking New York City's Gambino crime family to following Pompili. The agent, who infiltrated the mob, soon found himself becoming friendly with Pompili, according to several agents who knew of the assignment.
But because mobsters in Las Vegas often don't trust one another, Pompili's specific association with the Detroit organization remained veiled. Then one day, a Gambino associate who was responsible for that family's slot machine take became upset with Pompili and his Edgewater plans.
"The Gambino guy wanted to know where Pompili came off building a casino and not offering some tribute to New York," said an FBI agent who was part of the Gambino investigation.
"There was trouble. That's when Pompili said he was Detroit and gave a few names for the Gambino group to call and confirm."
To keep the Gambinos happy, they were allowed to fill the Edgewater with their slot machines. They eventually skimmed thousands of dollars a week when the casino opened, according to federal agents.
But opening the Edgewater required licensing by state regulators, a problem Detroit mobsters had encountered before. This time, however, they were so prepared they even fooled state regulators.
Story behind skimming
Although Pompili was Detroit's man in the Edgewater, he had a problem: His gambling conviction in Toledo and his alleged mob ties to Detroit would prevent him from getting a license from the Nevada Gaming Control Board if he were in a key casino position, such as general manager.
Although originally slated to become casino manager, Pompili took a lower profile position and newcomers were brought in to take the lead in getting Edgewater off the ground. The most visible player was Emmett Munley.
Munley was shift supervisor at the Aladdin with a wealth of management experience. munley rounded up a team of Edgewater investors, including a pair of Detroit-area businessmen with alleged links to the Toccos and other organized crime figures, Nevada gaming records show.
Even with Pompili keeping a low profile, during a licensing hearing in 1981 regulators expressed blunt concerns and wondered about the backgrounds of investors.
After two days of the hearing, the questionable investors - including Munley - withdrew their applications and deferred to an obscure group of Canadian investors and Pompili's buddy, James Roberts. In the end, the Edgewater was licensed and Pompili was still inside.
Roberts could not be located for comment. Munley did not respond to messages left on an answering machine or to notes left at his home.
Pompili ran the food and beverage services of the casino's hotel, a job that required little, if any, scrutiny by the board. Because it seemed low-key, it was a good spot for a front man to operate without detection or distraction. Former FBI agents said none of their information about Pompili was shared with regulators. The reason: They didn't want to jeopardize their investigation.
So while Pompili may have appeared to only handle the hotel's lunch menu while Roberts ran the casino, Pompili friend Mills said, "If Billy snapped his fingers, Jimmy jumped."
Federal prosecutors would not talk about Pompili, but former agents said straw men who work as food and beverage directors ensure the casino is run as the mob wants, including the skimming of profits.
One of the ways straw men moved money out of casinos was by recording that customers had won substantial jackpots - typically $2,000 to $5,000 - that they hadn't won. The casino would pocket the money instead and slip it to the mob, according to agents who were part of the investigation.
Getting the money out of the casino was as easy. According to three people, including two former FBI agents who tracked the Edgewater deal, Pompili had two relatives working there - one in the cashier's station where the money was kept and another repairing slot machines.
But John Pilkington, a Las Vegas lawyer and one of the casino's original investors, scoffed at the idea that Pompili was the inside man.
"He had no stake in the casino; he was never an owner," Pilkington said. "He was just a fella, a guy around town who worked there for a while."
FBI agents say Pompili, however, helped siphon at least $10 million from the Edgewater. losing money, investors brought in new managers to salvage the operation. But even after Pompili packed his bags, it was too late. The Edgewater had leaked too much money and the investors couldn't keep it afloat.
When the casino and hotel were sold in June 1983 to Circus Circus Enterprises, the Edgewater was more than $7 million in debt, according to several of the project's investors.
"All I know is I lost a lot of money down there and I never understood why," said one investor who, now in Canada, spoke only if his name was withheld. "That place should have worked, but it didn't and we got out asking the same question: How did we lose so much money?"
Pompili spent the remainder of his years in Las Vegas cutting one deal or another, never involved in management of a casino or hotel again. He and Roberts ere partners in a souvenir shop on the strip, and on that income Pompili lived out his life.
Now the government hopes this gambler with royal flush dreams may finger his old friends from the grave.
Free Press librarians Shelly Lavey, Alice Pepper, Chris Schmuckal and Victoria Turk contributed to this report.