The fall of Mob in Las Vegas

[aleksandrored]

Guys I found this article that speaks of one of the last (if not the last) big attack on Mafia in Las Vegas and Los Angeles Crime Family.

The Vegas sting

To the mafia mobsters they hung out with, they were simply tough guys running rackets. But Charlie Maurer was an undercover FBI agent and John Branco a gangster turned informant. In a year, their remarkable friendship led to one of Las Vegas's biggest ever clean-up operations. Clare Longrigg hears their stories
Clare Longrigg

On a searing hot July day in Las Vegas in 1996, Charlie Marone pulled up in his Corvette outside a backstreet mob hang-out. Unlike the mafia social clubs on the east coast, deep in the traditional Italian neighbourhoods, this one was in an anonymous-looking strip mall, flanked by bail bondsmen and car-part marts. Marone, tall and broad-shouldered, pushed open the door and found more than a dozen mobsters and hangers-on sitting around, smoking, watching TV and swapping stories about the last time they cheated a bad guy out of a few thousand dollars.

Marone was new in town, a businessman on the lookout for opportunities. His contact was Tony Angioletti, the short, obese crook who ran the social club, a gambler who fancied himself as a cook and would serve up linguine with clam sauce for any mobsters who wanted to hang out. Fat Tony's place was popular: mobsters were always looking for a free lunch.

As Marone walked in, a tough guy by the name of John Branco introduced himself as the leader of the crew. He had been the muscle for some powerful mafia men - although he had never wanted to be initiated into a family himself. Now in his 60s, he was running with this unruly, disorganised and violent gang, taking a cut of their scams.

Fat Tony had told Marone someone was bringing in guns for sale. When, after a few hours, none appeared, Marone gave the fat man a piece of his mind. Branco stepped in and insisted Marone be reimbursed for the trip. He was given $200, which he split with Branco. It was the beginning of a remarkable friendship.

The newcomer in town was not who he claimed to be. His real name was Charlie Maurer and he was an undercover agent for the FBI. Fat Tony was his informer: after his gambling debts had got him into trouble with loan sharks and the law, he had begun working for the FBI. The two of them were part of an investigation, code-named Operation Thin Crust, that aimed to wipe out the mafia's presence in Las Vegas.

The desert gambling town was built with mafia money in the 1940s and the mafia continued to reap the rewards, skimming millions from the casinos until the 1980s, when tight gaming licences made it impossible for anyone with questionable connections to operate. The last of the Chicago mobsters with free access to the counting rooms, Tony Spilotro (played by Joe Pesci in the 1995 film Casino), was murdered in 1986. After that, mobsters from New York, Buffalo and Los Angeles concentrated on street crime, dealing drugs and guns, loan sharking and extortion. The FBI wanted to eradicate this violent underworld from the glittering metropolis, which was now building its dazzling resorts with Wall Street dollars, bringing in tourists and high-rollers from all over the world.

The investigation had been mired in problems: one agent had gone undercover, posing as a wealthy businessman, but his mob associates plotted to kill and rob him, so he was pulled out. Another had become a little too fond of his undercover role and gone over to the other side. Special Agent Maurer, at 45 a veteran of 24 years' deep undercover work, was brought in to rescue the investigation. A level-headed professional, he blended in with his mafia targets without getting too close, always on the lookout for ways to pick up evidence on the tape recorder strapped to his body.

Nine years later, Maurer, recently retired from the FBI, is now able to talk about his undercover work. I met him in Las Vegas, where our conversations were punctuated with the pinging of slot machines.

After Maurer had insinuated himself into the Las Vegas mob, Fat Tony became a liability. He was giving the FBI false information and, when Maurer caught him in a lie, tried to discredit him with the other mobsters. Undermining an undercover agent's credibility is a lethal game, and Maurer realised he was going to need a new informant.

Branco was one of the major targets of the investigation. A convicted counterfeiter, he was doing jobs for the Los Angeles mafia, which usually involved leaning on someone who owed money to the Las Vegas loan shark Herbie Blitzstein. Branco's reputation as a leg-breaker ensured that most of Blitzstein's debtors paid up on time, but occasionally he would have to "bust a face". He was also extorting the town's escort services - agencies that sent girls to hotel rooms to "dance nude". "Branco had a reputation for being a very, very violent person," says Maurer. "He was strong, and he had no fear."

Sitting in his home, behind a security fence at a secret location, Branco, now nearly 70, is starting to look his age. He has a deeply lined face, dark brown eyes and a grey widow's peak. He has recently recovered from cancer and a motorcycle accident; both have taken their toll. But if he no longer looks like a fighter, he still talks tough. "I'm not trying to impress you," he says, "but these people were afraid of me. They knew if they pushed me, they weren't going to be around any more. It was that simple."

Branco was making a lot of money from extortion; things were going well. Then a job went wrong and he realised he was facing a rebellion from his own men.

A dispute between Branco and one of the escort service owners escalated into a brawl in a crowded Las Vegas steakhouse. Of the several people involved, only Branco was arrested. While his wife frantically sought help to bail him out, both his mafia friends and his loan shark associate Blitzstein made their excuses, telling him to sit tight. Branco smelled betrayal. He was in danger of taking the fall for the whole crew. "They wanted to set me up because I was a little demanding with them," he says quietly. "When all these things were going on, I told my wife, I said, 'I gotta get out of this shit. These guys are all punks.'"

Branco had always held the Vegas mob in low regard. "Compared with the stuff I did before, the Vegas thing was just cheap. The guys I was doing things with, they were punks. They were nothing."

Faced with charges of kidnapping and aggravated assault, and hung out to dry by people he didn't respect, Branco took the only option open to him. He contacted the FBI and offered to become an informant.

At first, agents were cautious - he was simply asked to keep his handlers abreast of all crimes committed by the crew. Branco would feed them bits and pieces, enough to show he could be useful, but he kept a lot to himself. He was not told Fat Tony was an informant. He gave the FBI information about a businessman called Charlie Marone, who had bought fake ID papers from him and was looking to buy counterfeit traveller's cheques. At first, the relationship with his handlers was uneasy. "The agents didn't trust me, and they were right. I'm a bad guy. And I used to tell 'em, just let me prove myself and we'll go from there."

Eventually he was told he would be working with an undercover agent. To his surprise, the agent was "Marone". Branco immediately knew this was someone he could work with. "I liked Charlie. When he was first introduced, I liked him. I never figured he was a cop, I just thought he was a nice guy. It sounds kind of silly, a guy like me saying he's honest, but I'm honest in some ways ... I felt he would be talking to me the right way. He would be honest with me."

Maurer and Branco went to work together, setting up deals with the LA mob, trying to catch them on tape making illegal transactions. They were very different types - Maurer smooth-talking and cool under pressure; Branco street-smart and with a fearsome temper. Their working relationship was based on mutual respect and, as a blunder by either would put them both in mortal danger, trust. Branco introduced Maurer to his mafia connections and Maurer put up the money for a series of would-be deals, all recorded on body wires worn by one or both men.

Their principal target was the Los Angeles mob and they started setting up a deal with Rocky Zangari, a major mob figure who was dealing in counterfeit money. At their first major meeting, Maurer discovered what it meant to have Branco as his mob "guarantor". "I went to the meeting and when John went to look at the counterfeit traveller's cheques, I was left with Rocky Zangari, an acting capo in the LA mob and a well-known mafia-made guy, and he didn't ask me one question, nothing. Just because I was with John. It would have disrespected John to ask me questions about who I was. At that point, I knew John could take me wherever I wanted to go."

Branco was similarly impressed with Maurer. "I liked the way he handled himself. He's got a good brain. He would have made a good crook."

Zangari was one of the investigation's prime targets. The secret services had tracked the counterfeit money from Colombia to Germany, to Canada, to the US. The LA mob was planning to sell counterfeit cheques to mafia families all over the country, and Branco and Maurer were right in the middle of it.

After that meeting, Maurer was sky high: he knew he had the beginnings of a case against Zangari. But as they drove back to Vegas, Branco was in crisis; he knew he had taken an irrevocable step. "Charlie was happy," he recalls, "but I was thinking, Jesus Christ, how could I do that? I felt like a rat. I was saying to myself, Jesus, I used to hate rats. What was I doing? These people had done things for me. I felt bad."

It was a tense, four-hour drive back to Las Vegas, Maurer recalls. "John was a wreck. He was squeezing the steering wheel like he was going to break it off. He didn't say anything, but I could tell he knew at that point there was no turning back."

Though a bond of respect grew between FBI agent and mobster, it took weeks of spending every day together before the partnership really took off. The early days were not without problems. On one occasion they nearly came to blows, with Maurerfeeling the full force of Branco's infamous rage and the demand for respect that lies at the heart of every mafioso. "In the beginning, he wasn't doing what I thought he should and I threatened him with jail," Maurer says. "He got really angry. Insulting John was not the way to make him come round to your way of thinking. If you're trying to develop someone as a source, someone like him who's been in the rackets for 40 years, he's not going to come in overnight and tell you everything. It takes time to build trust."

If Branco had reservations about being a "rat", he soon realised his chances of survival would be greatly improved if he did the job well. "After a while, his thought was, 'The more of them I put away, the safer it's going to be for me when it's over'," says Maurer. "So he wanted to do the best he could to build cases."

There was some power play between the two men, each schooling the other in how to operate in his world. Branco taught Maurer subordination. "He always had a habit, because he was a cop and I'm a mug, he's going to walk in front of me, go through the door ahead of me. He did it a couple of times and I said, 'Don't do that. You're a nobody, remember that. You think I walk in behind you? You follow me.'"

The pair got involved, or pretended to, in a number of scams, including burglary and buying guns. They spent one happy afternoon in the garage of a local hoodlum, buying hand grenades and testing his home-made silencers.

Another of the FBI's targets was Louis Caruso, a capo in the Los Angeles mafia who, at 40, was younger and less experienced than most of his associates. He liked to party, took cocaine, went to sex clubs in Vegas and generally earned the scorn and disrespect of other men of honour. He was a weightlifter, but not a tough guy. He was very taken with the mafia image and would often complain how much "heat" was on him. "Goddammit, Lou, you're a gangster," Branco would say. "There's supposed to be heat on you."

Caruso had ambitions to start his own crew in Las Vegas. One night he called Maurer and Branco to a meeting. The pair were on alert after Caruso changed the venue at the last minute, from a restaurant to his sister's house. They ditched their tape recorders, in case they were searched. (In the event, they weren't.)

At this meeting Caruso revealed his plan to take over Blitzstein's loan sharking business. He had targeted Blitzstein after the two men had a run-in at a Las Vegas topless bar called the Paradise. Blitzstein, who had been Tony Spilotro's right-hand man, had lost his mafia connections when Spilotro was killed, but still made plenty of money on his own account, despite deteriorating health and a weakness for strippers. Unable to sleep, he used to go to the Paradise. One night, he found Caruso sitting at his regular table and the two got into an argument. It was the sort of childish, macho face-off that can cost a mobster his life. Branco was with Blitzstein that night and took his side. He was called to a sit-down with mafia bosses. There, to his surprise, they shrugged off the trouble with Blitzstein and told Branco they had heard there was money being made in Vegas and they wanted a part of it.

Caruso asked Branco to become a member of the mafia, as part of his new Vegas-based crew. Branco had turned down a previous invitation to join, years ago in Chicago, because he couldn't see himself obeying an order to kill his best friend, the kind of self-annihilating loyalty the mafia demands. "I'll go and hurt somebody, yeah, if the money's right," he says, "but I'm not going to whack some guy like that. I was always against that." Branco, who despised the loudmouth, inexpert Caruso, now saw that getting made could be useful to the investigation, and accepted. "Louis took a liking to me - out of fear, I guess. They wanted me to be in that group."

If Branco were a made guy - an initiated member of a mafia family - he and Maurer could infiltrate every other mafia family in the country. Their investigation could lead them anywhere, to the highest levels of organised crime.

"Lou Caruso was a senior mafia guy," says Maurer. "At that meeting, I gave him a tribute of some jewellery, which I pretended was from a score, and he really liked that. He outlined his plan to take over the loan sharking business; we came away from that meeting knowing we had a good case against Lou. And he had already proposed John for membership. It was great. What could go wrong? But it did."

What went wrong was that, instead of simply squeezing Blitzstein out of his business and taking his money, Los Angeles and Las Vegas mafiosi set up a hit. Blitzstein was resented because he was making money, and because he was Jewish. A partner in his loan shark business was involved in the original plot to rob Blitzstein and run him out of town; he became frightened that Blitzstein would seek revenge and, out of cowardice, the decision was taken to shoot him.

The murder changed all the rules. The FBI is meant to prevent violence when an undercover operation is in progress. Now a prime target was dead.

Maurer was driving over to meet Branco on the morning, in early January 1997, when he got the call. "Johnny [Branco] had just met with one of his crew, who told him Blitzstein's lawyer was on his way over to Herbie's house to find the body. I said, 'What do you mean? He's dead?' Johnny said, 'Yeah, he's dead.' He was very, very upset. So was I. We had done everything we could to make sure no harm came to him."

The pair's detail abruptly changed: they forgot their plans of getting John made, of infiltrating Cosa Nostra; they had to catch the murderers. For his own safety and the sake of the investigation, Branco had to pretend he wasn't bothered by the murder, even though it was a worrying break with protocol that he, as de facto leader of the Vegas crew, had not been informed of the plan to murder Blitzstein, which was carried out against his wishes. Alarmed that there might be a plot against him, the FBI moved Branco and his wife to an apartment in a secret location. Mobsters would never discuss a murder with an outsider such as Maurer, so Branco was on his own now. He started wearing a wire every time he saw his Las Vegas friends, hoping they would admit to the murder. Three months later, he managed to get on tape one of the crew admitting to ordering the hit, and the name of the shooter. He and Maurer arranged to meet the hitman at the Sahara casino on Las Vegas Boulevard. Inside, below a painted sky and glittering chandeliers, Maurer wandered off between the craps tables while Branco spoke to the hit-man privately. Minutes later, Branco walked over to Maurer and said he had everything on tape. Maurer gave a signal and FBI agents who had been posing as gamblers moved quickly out and made the arrest.

That night, as Branco and Maurer prepared to leave town, 39 arrest warrants were drawn up, covering all the cases they had been investigating. Charges ranged from racketeering and murder (Blitzstein's killing) to counterfeiting, loan sharking, conspiracy and fraud.

Before dawn, as police teams were assembling to kick in doors across Las Vegas, Branco and Maurer picked up Branco's wife and their few possessions, and drove off into the desert. They were all relieved the operation had finally come to an end. It was time to move on. The FBI had rented a house for Branco and his wife in Sun City, Arizona. They had rejected the witness protection programme, since it required them to sever contact with family and to leave behind their pets - both of which were unthinkable.

Of the 39 arrested, 37 pleaded guilty; two claimed their innocence and went to trial. This was hard for Branco: he was required to testify at the trial of his former friends, submitting to the ordeal of being cross-examined by aggressive defence lawyers. The two were convicted of racketeering and extortion. Maurer and Branco had succeeded in putting behind bars all the Los Angeles and Buffalo mobsters operating in Las Vegas. Only the LA boss, Pete Milano, escaped prosecution. Sentences ranged from two years for the counterfeiter Rocky Zangari to 25 years for one of the men who killed Blitzstein. Caruso died of heart failure while awaiting trial for murder.

The Brancos had to move house every time they thought someone might have spotted them. They are still struggling to make ends meet and constantly watching their backs, aware that, sooner or later, the people he helped put away are going to be released. Branco admits to having a "little guilt feeling" about turning informer. The best thing to come out of it all was his friendship with Maurer. It's unusual that a partnership between a gangster and an FBI man should work so effectively at clearing up crime, let alone that they should remain close when the job's done. But their situations are very different. These days, Maurer is regarded as a hero and has an FBI pension, as well as a new job with a federal security organisation set up after 9/11. Branco has a tiny home behind an 8ft fence and does whatever work he can get. Now it's his turn to learn subordination.

His wife Carolyn says, "Afterwards, when everything was all over, Charlie came to where we were living and we all went out to eat. And Charlie opened the door for John, out of habit. John said, 'You know, you don't have to do that any more.'"

[Wiseguy]

It was one of the last. In 1998, there was a case involving the Gambinos trying to move in on the escort business in Vegas.
https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/1998/oct ... out-of-lv/

https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailyn ... e-1.811833


There was also the Crazy Horse Too raid in 2003.
https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2003/feb ... club-raid/

[aleksandrored]

It was one of the last. In 1998, there was a case involving the Gambinos trying to move in on the escort business in Vegas.
https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/1998/oct ... out-of-lv/

https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailyn ... e-1.811833


There was also the Crazy Horse Too raid in 2003.
https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2003/feb ... club-raid/

I did not know this case, thanks wiseguy.