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Allen R. Glick (born April 11, 1942 ) is a former American casino owner in Las Vegas , who was best known in Germany for the film Casino , which deals with the infiltration of Las Vegas by organized crime.

The film character Philip Greene acts as a front man to mobsters of La Cosa Nostra and is said to be based on the person of Glick. Glick is believed to be one of the key figures in infiltrating and skimming the Las Vegas casinos in the 1970s. Glick claimed to have been ignorant of the mafia background and had no control over what was going on. He finally made himself available as a key witness from 1982 .

Life

Early years

Glick was educated at Ohio State University and was a classmate of Joseph Balistrieri , son of the boss of La Cosa Nostra in Milwaukee Frank Peter Balistrieri , who later served as his father as a lawyer.

Glick later moved to the Case Western Reserve Law School and worked as an intelligence officer during the Vietnam War , was a trained helicopter pilot and was honorably discharged from the army . Glick then worked in the real estate industry from 1971 and specialized in condominiums . That way he was already making an income of $ 800 a month.

Las Vegas

In 1972 Allen Glick met Edward Buccieri and offered him the King's Castle Casino in Lake Tahoe . Buccieri was a distant relative of Fiore "Fifi" Buccieri and one of the bosses at Caesars Palace . Buccieri introduced Glick to Al Baron and Frank Ranney ; In 1973 Glick went to Las Vegas with three partners and acquired the insolvent casino hotel Hacienda for three million US dollars.

In 1974 the Stardust and the Fremont , which belonged to the same company as the Stardust , were up for sale because the shareholders of both casinos were under great financial pressure. The same financing should be used as with the hacienda ; d. H. the funds came from the Central States Pension Fund of the Teamsters -Gewerkschaft. And so bought Glick in 1974 for 65 million US dollars from union means both objects and incorporated them into its Argent Cooperation ( A cases R . G lick Ent erprises).

The contact was directed via official Teamsters channels to Frank Balistrieri , the boss of Milwaukee , who then contacted Nick Civella and the fund manager Roy Williams then practically only had to sign. Allen Dorfman , whose stepfather Paul Dorfmann had been a close ally of Jimmy Hoffa , was the managing director of the fund . In particular, this form of funding applies to the Aladdin , Circus Circus , The Sands , Dunes and Tropicana casinos .

In return, bosses like Joseph Aiuppa , boss of the Chicago outfit, or Frank Balistrieri installed their men and so Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal in particular represented the actual “ Chief Executive Officer ” (CEO) of the casino and not Glick, who was instructed by Frank Balistrieri, To appoint Rosenthal as CEO of Nevada operations and all Argent casinos. For the bosses of La Cosa Nostra , Rosenthal should get all the freedom he needed to run the casinos according to his ideas and thus to maximize the income, which could then be skimmed off the tax (American "skimming").

Problems and murders

In 1975 Buccieri began to harass Glick with money claims; he asked for a " finder's fee " for the hacienda of 30 to 50,000 US dollars for his placement . Buccieri even tried to enforce his demand by force and grabbed Glick at a meeting in the hacienda and beat him. A week later, Buccieri was found dead with five gunshot wounds ; Frank Balistieri had commissioned Anthony Spilotro with the murder , since he had already taken Buccieri for an informant .

Glick was the focus of the press, who attacked him for his lack of experience and excessive seriousness. He was suspected of using his contacts with the Central States Pension Fund to procure unpaid loans to third parties or even to divert payments from the fund into his own pocket. From such an action went z. B. also a partnership with Tamara Rand, which tried to pull 100,000 US dollars annually from the hacienda and thus became a problem for the Cosa Nostra.

She was murdered on November 9, 1975 also by Spilotro with the help of the killer Frank Bompensiero in the kitchen of her house in Mission Hills . Rand himself had received funding from the union's pension fund and was apparently ready to testify as Pentito before the authorities . A week before her death she had an argument with Glick; It is unclear whether she refused to give Glick a two million US dollar “ kick-back ” (American for illegal money payments that are made covertly “under the table”) or even to repay the entire loan. Glick himself is said to have informed Joseph Aiuppa of the Chicago Outfit about Rand's willingness to testify, and he then gave the order to kill to eliminate the problem.

Glick's role as a front man became public when Frank Rosenthal said in an interview with the US business newspaper Business Week in 1975 : “Glick is the financial end, but policy comes from my office” (“Glick is responsible for the finances, but the orders come from my office ”).

The problem with this statement was that the Las Vegas gambling authority had been trying for years to convict Rosenthal that he was running the Stardust without the necessary license . It was through this interview that they had obtained evidence of their suspicion. It was now clear to them that Rosenthal should actually have applied for a license. At the beginning of 1976 Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal therefore had to undergo a licensing hearing, which he initially failed. The Argent Cooperation of Glick was therefore temporarily forced to forward the video surveillance of the casino into the home of Rosenthal so that it lost from there control of the casino not quite.

The end of the Argent Cooperation

Glick has been linked to the Rand murder; In addition, since the end of 1976 a police investigation was running, which investigated the “skimming” exposed in the Stardust in revenue from the slot machines ( one-armed bandits ). The bosses of the Cosa Nostra commissioned Frank Rosenthal to make Glick an offer in which either Glick should pay the bosses a million dollar settlement or he himself should leave as a partner. Rosenthal should then be made "Chairman of the Board". At first Glick refused both.

When the Nevada Gaming Control Board discovered anomalies in the Argent Cooperation's books , Glick's Las Vegas ended. Glick lost his license and in 1979 sold his casino stake to Allen D. Sachs ; a longtime partner of Kosher Nostras Moe Dalitz .

However, the end for the Argent Cooperation and casino skimming came from another side. In 1978 one was bug in the pizzeria "Villa Capri Pizzeria" in Kansas City advisable to get information about a murder from the year 1973rd The store acted as a meeting place for Nick Civella , the Kansas City boss, and his underboss Carl DeLuna . But instead of getting information about the murder, local FBI agents overheard Civella, DeLuna, and other senior members of the La Cosa Nostra families discussing which casino to buy next, or what to do with Allen R. Glick.

Glick became a Pentito and made himself available as a key witness . In 1982 David Helfrey, head of the "Organized Crime Strike Force", moved him to testify against numerous mobsters .

Glick's testimony before the court in 1984 confirmed the FBI's tape recordings , which were recorded by the leading bullies in Chicago , Cleveland , Kansas City and Milwaukee . It could be demonstrated in which way it was possible to withdraw two million US dollars from 1974 to 1979. Before the trial could be completed, the defendants Carl DeLuna and Frank Peter Balistrieri pleaded guilty to a conspiracy; however, in the absence of evidence of the entire complex, they were acquitted on January 6, 1986.

However, Frank Balistrieri was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 1984.

Joseph Aiuppa , John Cerone , Angelo Pietra , Joseph Lombardo, and Milton Rockman followed on January 6, 1986, and found guilty.

End of the casino era

The end of Argent also marks the end of the “Golden Era” in Las Vegas and the end of Teamsters' credits and the influence of the Cosa Nostra in general.

Allen Glick went back to California and is again in the real estate business. He is also said to be involved again in some casinos in the Philippines and Costa Rica .

Adaptations

  • 1995: In the US film Casino , his role flowed into the character Philip Green , played by Kevin Pollak .
  • 2000: Glick also appeared in episode 52: Vegas and the Mob of the American Justice documentary series by A&E Network .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d biography ( memento from January 15, 2008 in the web archive archive.today ) on www.kevo.com (English)
  2. ↑ UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff Appellee, v. Roy L. WILLIAMS, Thomas F. O'Malley, Andrew G. Massa, Joseph Lombardo, Defendants-Appellants ( April 3, 2008 memento on the Internet Archive ) United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, July 12, 1984; 15 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1296; 737 F.2d 594 on www.altlaw.org
  3. ↑ Denny Griffin: The Spilotro Era in Vegas - Part II . (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on June 4, 2020 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / incoldblogger.blogspot.com
  4. ↑ klas-tv.com: The Hoffa Files: How This Tough Guy Made Las Vegas ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  5. ↑ a b sandiegoreader.com: With Friends Like These ( Memento from April 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ a b www.time.com “Blood Threat” of February 3, 1986

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Glick everyone
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Glick, Allen R.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American casino owner
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH United States