KVIG Informative

Nevada’s gambling regulators froze the Stardust’s gaming licenses in December 1983 after state examiners caught casino employees skimming cash from the count room. The casino that eventually replaced the Stardust on that same stretch of the Strip paid the same regulatory body a $10.5 million fine in March 2025, over a different kind of compliance failure.

The Nevada Gaming Commission issued an ex parte emergency order on Dec. 4, 1983, suspending the gaming licenses held by Trans-Sterling, Inc., which then operated the Stardust, the Fremont Hotel & Casino and the Sundance, according to an account of the case written by Paul Bible, who chaired the commission from April 1983 to February 1987, and published in the Nevada State Bar’s Nevada Gaming Lawyer. The Nevada Gaming Control Board began round-the-clock surveillance of the properties the next day, and the Nevada Supreme Court convened an extraordinary evening session on Dec. 13, 1983, Bible wrote.

Four Stardust employees, including the casino manager and assistant casino manager, used fill slips written for chips that were never delivered to the gaming tables to pull cash out of the count room undetected, according to Bible’s account. The commission approved a settlement fining Trans-Sterling $3 million and revoking its gaming licenses, with the revocation stayed to allow a sale of the properties. Trans-Sterling sued over the outcome, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of its complaint on Sept. 30, 1986, in Trans-Sterling v. Bible.

A federal grand jury brought a parallel case the same year, indicting 15 people on charges of conspiring to skim at least $1.6 million from the Stardust, according to a finding aid for the Stardust Resort and Casino Records held by UNLV Special Collections. The finding aid traces the property’s ownership from Tony Cornero’s 1954 land purchase and lease to Moe Dalitz through Jake Factor’s 1958 opening, Allen Glick’s Argent Corporation taking control in 1974 and Boyd Group’s purchase in 1985.

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Glick’s Argent Corporation had its own skimming problem a decade earlier. Argent took control of Recrion Corporation, the Stardust and Fremont’s prior owner, on Aug. 14, 1974, financed with a loan from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund, according to the UNLV finding aid and a documented corporate history of Argent. Glick installed Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal to run the casinos at the direction of Chicago organized-crime figures Tony Accardo and Joey Aiuppa, according to a digital archive of court and FBI records published by the Mob Museum.

Stardust slot manager Jay Vandermark orchestrated a coin-counting scheme that skimmed an estimated $7 million to $15 million between 1974 and 1976, with proceeds divided among organized-crime factions in Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Cleveland, according to the Mob Museum archive. Vandermark disappeared before investigators could question him further; the archive states investigators suspected he was killed to keep him from testifying. Tony Spilotro, the Chicago organization’s man in Las Vegas, addressed threats to the operation while running separate robbery, burglary and loansharking rings, the same archive states.

The FBI and Justice Department’s Operation Strawman investigation, led by organized-crime Strike Force prosecutor David Helfrey, produced two federal trials; the second, in 1985, resulted in convictions and guilty pleas from Chicago organized-crime figures Joey Aiuppa and Joey “the Clown” Lombardo, according to the Mob Museum archive. Rosenthal was never charged in either case. His own gaming license applications were denied by the commission in 1977 and 1980, and the Gaming Control Board nominated him for the state’s List of Excluded Persons, known as the Black Book, in 1979, though no action followed, according to the Nevada Supreme Court’s 1991 opinion in State v. Rosenthal.

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The board renominated Rosenthal in 1988, and the commission approved his placement on the excluded list in January 1989. A district court later ordered his name expunged, but the Nevada Supreme Court reversed that order on Oct. 30, 1991, citing his 1963 North Carolina conviction for attempting to bribe college basketball players, his documented organized-crime associations and his ban from Florida racetracks, according to the court’s opinion.

Boyd Group operated the Stardust until its closure in 2006; the resort was demolished by implosion on March 13, 2007, according to the UNLV finding aid. Boyd Gaming broke ground on a replacement project, Echelon Place, on the same site on June 19, 2007, then halted construction on Aug. 1, 2008, citing the economic conditions of the recession. Genting Group bought the unfinished site for $350 million in March 2013 and built Resorts World Las Vegas, which opened June 24, 2021, according to the resort’s own property fact sheet.

The Nevada Gaming Commission approved a $10.5 million settlement with Resorts World Las Vegas on March 27, 2025, resolving a Nevada Gaming Control Board complaint that found the casino allowed known illegal bookmakers to gamble on dozens of occasions without filing the anti-money-laundering reports federal law requires, according to the stipulated settlement agreement the commission voted to accept. Forty-two years after the commission froze the Stardust’s licenses over a hidden skim, it is still opening the books on whichever company happens to be operating that stretch of the Strip.