KVIG Informative

Nevada’s Tax Commission was already screening casino owners for fitness by the time Benny Binion applied for a Las Vegas gaming license in 1951. Regulators approved a license for his casino in other men’s names, and Binion ran the place without one of his own for the rest of his life — the same suitability-finding authority Nevada still uses today to decide whether an unlicensed person controls a casino in fact, not just on paper.

Benny Binion purchased the Eldorado Club on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas in 1951 and renamed it the Horseshoe Club, according to a finding aid for the Binion’s Horseshoe Club Photograph Collection held by UNLV Special Collections. The property reopened under the Horseshoe name on Aug. 14, 1951, according to a historical account published by The Mob Museum, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement in Las Vegas.

Binion did not hold a Nevada gaming license when the Horseshoe opened. The state Tax Commission had already rejected his license application twice, in May and July of 1951, according to the same Mob Museum account, which ties the early rejections in part to scrutiny arising from U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver’s congressional investigation into organized crime and to an outstanding Dallas warrant connecting Binion to policy-racketeering charges.

The commission reversed course on Dec. 1, 1951, voting 7-0 to approve a license for the Horseshoe issued to people other than Binion himself, according to the same account. Robbins Cahill, the Tax Commission’s executive officer, and state Sen. E.L. Nores, who testified on Binion’s behalf, both took part in the proceedings; William Moore, a state tax commissioner who separately co-owned the Hotel Last Frontier, sat on the panel that cast the approving vote, the account states. Gov. Charles Russell chaired the commission at the time.

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Binion’s Nevada license did not survive the decade. He pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion in a Dallas court and was sentenced to five years in federal prison, serving his time at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, before returning to Las Vegas in 1957, according to the same Mob Museum account and the UNLV finding aid, which separately confirms a 1953 conviction. Binion sold his majority interest in the Horseshoe following the conviction, then later regained ownership, the UNLV finding aid states.

Nevada never licensed Binion again. He remained listed on the Horseshoe’s payroll for decades as a consultant despite holding no gaming license, according to the UNLV finding aid. His older son, Jack Binion, born in 1937, became the Horseshoe’s president and the family’s licensed operator; his younger son, Lonnie “Ted” Binion, served as casino manager, the finding aid states.

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The unlicensed Binion still shaped the property that made the Horseshoe famous. He helped arrange a widely documented 1949 poker match between Nick Dandolos and Johnny Moss two years before he owned the building outright, then purchased the rights to what became the World Series of Poker from a Reno casino owner in 1970, according to the UNLV finding aid. The tournament added a separate women’s event in 1977, the finding aid states.

Nevada’s gaming regulators still rely on that same suitability-finding authority today to determine whether someone unlicensed is controlling a casino in fact rather than on paper. The Tax Commission that Gov. Charles Russell chaired in 1951 answered that question by licensing the Horseshoe to people other than Binion, while Binion ran the casino, unlicensed, for the next 38 years.