Bill - Celebs
At the Robbie Knievel jump - Caesars Palace - The Jump link
Charles Coveney
- SFAN reunion - Cook E. Jarr -
Harlan & Bonnnie Murray (Aunt and Uncle)
Former Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier
On the radio in Las Vegas with Joe
Former Heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes
Boxing promoter Lou Duva
Opening of Lucky Lucy's Casino in downtown Las Vegas
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Boxing Legend Max Schmeling, the German fighter who beat Joe Louis in 1936
On the right is Henry Lewin, president of the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Schmeling hid Lewin and his brothers from the Nazis in Germany during WWII.
I was fortunate to attend a private celebration of Schmeling given by Lewin at the Sands Hotel.
--------------------------------
SportsFan Radio with Bruce Schein and Pete Rose
Former boxing champion Roberto Duran
With Las Vegas legend Sam Angel
Super Dave Osborne at the Robbie Knievel jump - Caesars Palace
Binion's media poker tournament
New York media figure Ugly George
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https://special.library.unlv.edu/sites/default/files/finding-aids/MS-00907.pdf
---------------------------------------------
New York Mob crime family moves into the call girl racket.
Starting in the late 1990s, a New York organized crime family begins an attempt
to take over the call girl/escort service racket in Las Vegas. Immediately the
Mob-controlled escort service starts losing calls. Suspicion quickly points to a
computer hacker infiltrating their phone lines.
Small-time computer hacker starts his own racket.
The Mob suspects Charles Coveney, a middle-aged, freelance wire-tap and phone
systems expert who is connected with Binion’s Horseshoe casino, of using the
computer to steal calls and divert them to other escort services. Some
speculation even refers to Coveney as “Robin Hood” because it was thought he was
stealing the calls from the Mob and diverting them to mom-and-pop operations.
The Mob brings in a hitman.
The New York Mafia decides enough is enough and brings in hitman, Vinnie
“Aspirins” Conguisti. Conguisti is known as “Aspirins” because he allegedly
“takes care of anyone who gives the Mob a headache.”
Meanwhile, even the FBI is involved.
The FBI has wiretaps planted as well as an undercover agent and an informer
inside the escort service racket, feeding information to the feds about the
escorts and the huge sums of cash they generate.
What breaks everything open.
When the FBI hears the Mob tell Conguisti to take care of the problem, they step
in and make arrests. In the end, everyone takes the plea deal, leaving the case
unsolved with no absolute proof existing that the phone hacking ever happened.
Mob Linked to Adult Entertainment Thefts
In a case of oldest profession meets newest technology, a Federal indictment
handed up last Friday suggests that the mob is muscling its way into cyberspace.
Federal agents arrested six men here on Oct. 9 after surveillance indicated that
the men intended to harm several operators of adult entertainment businesses
that openly front for prostitution. Agents stumbled on the plot, the indictment
says, because the intended victims were themselves targets of a Federal
investigation.
According to the indictment, the men are members of the Gambino crime family who
were pressuring a computer expert to divert telephone calls systematically from
one or more adult entertainment enterprises to competing companies affiliated
with the mob.
Since the mid-1990's, operators of adult entertainment companies known as
out-call services have attributed a mysterious decline in business to computer
criminals who gain access to the local phone company's switches and illegally
reroute calls to competitors.
Although prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, nude
dancing services in which a male or female entertainer is sent to a hotel room
are legal. (In some counties in Nevada, prostitution is legal.) Although there
are no reliable estimates of the size of the sex industry in this city, the
Yellow Pages carry 134 pages of advertising in the category of ''adult
entertainers,'' one of the directory's largest categories.
Federal officials said that among the six men who were arrested were two mob
enforcers who had flown to Las Vegas from Tampa, Fla. They said that the arrests
were made after agents became convinced that the lives of several people were at
risk.
The two men accused of being enforcers, Vincent Congiusti and Anton Nelsen, came
to Las Vegas to threaten three operators of out-call nude dancing services,
according to the indictment. The men were arrested when they began looking for
Charles Coveney, who is described in the indictment as a computer expert who
worked for one of the adult entertainment services.
Mr. Coveney did not return repeated calls requesting comment.
In addition to Mr. Congiusti, 48, and Mr. Nelsen, whose age was not given,
agents arrested Christiano DeCarlo, the 27-year-old owner of the DeCarlo Group,
an adult entertainment business in Las Vegas; Kenneth Byrnes, 38, described as
an enforcer from New Jersey; and Joshua Snellings, 20, of Las Vegas, a driver
for Mr. DeCarlo. A sixth man, Mario Stefano, believed to be a Gambino operative,
was arrested in New York City on Monday.
The indictment quotes Mr. Stefano as telling an undercover agent that he was
irritated by several of the out-call services that compete with Mr. DeCarlo, and
that ''a couple of aspirins will be sent to Las Vegas to deal with those
headaches.'' Mr. Congiusti's mob name is Vinnie Aspirins.
The indictment also quotes Mr. Stefano as stating that on one occasion Mr.
Congiusti used a cordless drill to bore holes in the head of a man who had
crossed the mob. According to the indictment, the F.B.I. agents who arrested Mr.
Congiusti found a power drill in the Ford Expedition he was traveling in at the
time of the arrest.
The other alleged enforcer, Mr. Nelsen, is described in the indictment as a
former mercenary soldier who is an expert in explosives. F.B.I. agents said that
they had observed Mr. Nelson buying carburetor cleaner in an automobile parts
store and that they believed he intended to use it to build a fire bomb.
Last year, Hilda Brauer, an owner of the Perfect Body's and the Young and Sexy
Bodies nude-dancing services, sued the Sprint Corporation and R. H. Donnelley,
publisher of the Las Vegas Yellow Pages, charging that they had conspired to
divert telephone calls from her business.
Although the suit was dismissed, the accusations appear to have drawn the
attention of Federal agencies. Several adult services operators who spoke on the
condition of anonymity said that in the last year Federal agents had created an
interagency computer crimes task force based in Reno to investigate call
diversion. One of the service operators said he believed that call diversions
had spread beyond the adult entertainment business and were becoming a growing
problem for other Las Vegas businesses.
Federal officials in Las Vegas said they were familiar with the reports of
electronic telephone call diversion but for the time being were focusing on
other charges, including suspected payoffs to local law enforcement officials.
''This is a super big business here,'' Eric Johnson, an assistant United States
attorney, said of sex services. ''These operators generate a lot of money and a
lot of cash.''
The indictment charges that a significant portion of the Las Vegas out-call
industry is a front for money laundering, robbery, narcotics distribution and
other criminal activities, in addition to prostitution.
Federal agents believe that the mob is trying to grab control of the sex
industry through illegal means, including sophisticated rerouting of calls from
competitors' businesses.
The defendants face charges of conspiracy, extortion and interstate travel in
aid of racketeering.
Vinnie "Aspirins" and his power drill
It happened in 1998: An FBI investigation into police corruption in Vegas turned
up a six-man organized crime plot to muscle in on a handful of successful Las
Vegas outcall services, which had been trouncing a mob-backed venture headed by
one of the men, Christiano DeCarlo.
According to court documents, the conspirators, allegedly affiliated with the
Gambino crime family, were particularly interesting in moving in on Richard
Soranno, the owner of one of the town's largest services, Vegas Girls. They
believed Soranno had been diverting phone calls from competitors, including
DeCarlo, with the help of a mysterious computer expert named Charles Coveney.
"Coveney has contacts in the
Sprint Telephone Company and is able to have telephone calls diverted from one
number to another," the gangsters believed, according to an FBI affidavit. The
men expected to "persuade" Coveney to leave Serrano "and assist DeCarlo in his
out call business by diverting telephone calls to DeCarlo." Among the persuasive
tools at the gang's disposal, an enforcer named Vinnie "Aspirins" Congiusti,
flown in from Tampa, who reputedly earned his nickname by once using a cordless
power tool to drill holes in someone's head.
When the mobsters began scouring Las Vegas for Coveney, the FBI was forced to
swoop in, prematurely pulling the plug on a massive undercover operation. All
six men later plead guilty to conspiracy. Vinnie "Aspirins" died in jail from
apparent heart failure last year.
------------------------------------------
https://themobmuseum.org/events/past-events/
August 31: The Vegas Call Girl Racket
Discover the bizarre details of the double and triple
dealing going on behind closed doors
Hear wiretaps of alleged mobsters discussing the sting
and hit
Watch an exclusive interview with phone hacker Charles
Coveney who died shortly after the filming
Learn the inside story from the original FBI agent in
charge of the case in an interview with Meek
For an overview of what happened, read below. To find out the extraordinary
twists of this tale, come to our Wiseguy Speaker Series event.
New York Mob crime family moves into the call girl racket. Starting in the late
1990s, a New York organized crime family begins an attempt to take over the call
girl/escort service racket in Las Vegas. Immediately the Mob-controlled escort
service starts losing calls. Suspicion quickly points to a computer hacker
infiltrating their phone lines.
Small-time computer hacker starts his own racket. The Mob suspects Charles
Coveney, a middle-aged, freelance wire-tap and phone systems expert who is
connected with Binion’s Horseshoe casino, of using the computer to steal calls
and divert them to other escort services. Some speculation even refers to
Coveney as “Robin Hood” because it was thought he was stealing the calls from
the Mob and diverting them to mom-and-pop operations.
The Mob brings in a hitman. The New York Mafia decides enough is enough and
brings in hitman, Vinnie “Aspirins” Conguisti. Conguisti is known as “Aspirins”
because he allegedly “takes care of anyone who gives the Mob a headache.”
Meanwhile, even the FBI is involved. The FBI has wiretaps planted as well as an
undercover agent and an informer inside the escort service racket, feeding
information to the feds about the escorts and the huge sums of cash they
generate.
What breaks everything open. When the FBI hears the Mob tell Conguisti to take
care of the problem, they step in and make arrests. In the end, everyone takes
the plea deal, leaving the case unsolved with no absolute proof existing that
the phone hacking ever happened.
---------------------------------------
Chevalier
Frontier eye in the sky - Art Bell - Jim Olsen. Calendar. Newsletter
TC Martin
KVEG
Tim Neverett
Larry Cotler
Ken ???
Larry Grossman radio show.
SportsFan - Winning Line. Pete Rose.
Todd Callahan
Chuck Powell
Rob Fisher
John Rabe
Howard Balzer
John Hadley
Winners
Winners Weekly
Western Gambler
Sid Lewis - Las Vegas Casino Times MacIntosh
Binions
My columns
190,000,000. Software. UNSOM.
Gamblers Book Club
Modern Millionaire
Vegas Women?
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