KVIG Informative

A federal appeals court upheld convictions in 1985 against five men for skimming cash from the Tropicana Hotel and Country Club on behalf of Kansas City organized crime figures, based on wiretap evidence, seized cash and testimony from an inside operative who could never have qualified for a Nevada gaming license himself. Four decades later, the same regulatory principle those cases helped cement — that anyone with real influence over a casino has to pass state scrutiny — still governs every change of casino ownership in Nevada, while the Strip corner where the Tropicana once stood is now under construction for a Major League Baseball stadium.

Joseph Agosto, a convicted felon who could never be licensed by Nevada gaming authorities, gained physical control over the Tropicana’s casino operations after acquiring an interest in the resort’s Folies Bergere floor show, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit’s 1985 opinion in United States v. DeLuna. Acting as the front man for Kansas City organized crime figures Nick Civella and Carl James Civella, Agosto ran the Tropicana while reporting to Kansas City leadership through Carl Angelo DeLuna, the appeals court found.

Carl Wesley Thomas supervised the mechanics of the theft, according to the Eighth Circuit’s separate 1985 opinion in United States v. Thomas. Casino employees under his direction presented fraudulent fill slips to the cashier’s cage, causing chips to be issued and then secretly passed to outside patrons who cashed them in, while cashier Jay Gould falsified the casino’s own records to cover the shortfall, the court found in United States v. DeLuna. Kansas City figures gained control of Tropicana operations in a conspiracy the courts dated to Jan. 1, 1975, but the actual skimming of cash began in 1978: $11,500 was skimmed in April of that year alone, and the take grew to roughly $40,000 a month between June and October, according to the court’s findings.

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Carl Caruso carried the skimmed cash from Las Vegas to Kansas City on roughly 18 separate trips, collecting $1,000 for each delivery, the Eighth Circuit found in United States v. DeLuna. Once in Kansas City, DeLuna and Charles David Moretina distributed the money, sending a share on to Chicago organized crime figures Joseph Aiuppa and Jackie Cerone through Anthony Chiavola Sr., according to the same opinion. Nick Civella ordered a two-month moratorium on the skimming in November and December 1978 after Kansas City leadership suspected an unauthorized skim was underway, the court found, assigning Thomas to investigate before the operation resumed.

Federal investigators built the case on court-authorized electronic surveillance conducted from June 1978 through March 1979, according to the Eighth Circuit’s opinion in United States v. DeLuna. On Feb. 14, 1979, agents seized $80,000 in skimmed cash that Caruso was transporting, the opinion states. The FBI’s Kansas City field office has separately described its investigation into Mafia control of Nevada gaming, code-named Strawman, as a Las Vegas Division inquiry that used wiretaps to document a large-scale conspiracy among mob families in Kansas City and three other cities and that led to indictments of members of the Civella family in 1981, according to the bureau’s own field-office history.

Nevada regulators were separately fighting to keep organized crime figures out of casino jobs during the same years. The Nevada Gaming Commission denied Frank Rosenthal a license to work as a casino key employee at the Stardust, finding he lacked the good character and integrity the law required, according to the Nevada Supreme Court’s Dec. 31, 1980 opinion in Rosenthal v. State ex rel. Nevada Gaming Commission. The court upheld that denial, though it reversed a broader effort to strip Rosenthal of every gaming job, ruling that automatically revoking his work permit in non-key positions violated procedural due process.

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The Eighth Circuit’s May 10, 1985 opinion in United States v. DeLuna affirmed the underlying convictions of five men in the Tropicana skimming conspiracy: Thomas and Chiavola each received 15-year prison sentences, Moretina received 20 years plus five years’ probation, and DeLuna and Civella each received 30-year sentences, with DeLuna also serving five years’ probation. All five were ordered to pay restitution to the Tropicana Hotel and Country Club, and prosecutors cited violations of the Nevada Gaming Control Act, including NRS 463.160 and NRS 463.170, alongside the federal conspiracy and interstate-transportation charges, according to the opinion.

The Tropicana Hotel and Country Club that Kansas City’s crew skimmed for four years closed and was imploded on Oct. 9, 2024, according to Bally’s Corporation’s own announcement of the demolition. In its place, on the same southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, Major League Baseball says construction is underway on a ballpark intended to open for the Athletics’ 2028 season. The licensing test Nevada’s courts upheld against Rosenthal, and the standard federal prosecutors used to convict the men who ran the Tropicana skim, is still what Nevada’s gaming regulators apply to every ownership change on the Strip today.