Ask most people how the mob got to Las Vegas and you will hear one name. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel rolls into the desert, opens the Flamingo in 1946 and turns a sleepy railroad town into a gangster’s playground.
It is a good story. It just is not the whole one.
Siegel did shape casino history. But by the time the Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946, organized crime figures were already running casinos in town, and Siegel himself had been doing business there for years.
It starts with a signature
That signature came on March 19, 1931, when Governor Fred Balzar signed a bill legalizing “wide open gambling” in Nevada, The Mob Museum notes…