How a Beverly Hills Card Game EXPOSED the Mafia's Vegas Casino

In July 1967 the Frontier casino opened on the Las Vegas Strip with a clean name on the gaming license and Detroit mob money hidden behind it. That same month, FBI agents following a mobster walked into a card room in Beverly Hills and found a rigged gin rummy ring run by the Frontier's own front man. Within five years the secret owners were in a federal courtroom. In this video we follow the story from the Detroit River and the Hazel Park Raceway, through the Nevada gaming rules, the Friars Club card room and the Los Angeles trial, to the Machus Red Fox restaurant and a field in Oakland Township where the FBI dug for Jimmy Hoffa, and to the empty lot where the Frontier once stood.

Chapters
0:00 The Frontier's secret owners
1:15 The river
2:37 Hazel Park
3:33 The license
4:18 The Strip
6:32 Beverly Hills
8:46 The top floor
9:32 The courtroom
11:39 The Red Fox
13:16 Oakland Township
14:04 The Frontier

Where are you watching from? If you grew up around Detroit, from Grosse Pointe to Hazel Park, tell us your town. Did your parents go to the races at Hazel Park, eat at the Machus Red Fox, or ever stay at the Frontier? Tell us which one, what year, and who you were with in the comments. We read every comment, and some of our best details come from you.

Every event in this video is told from court records, newspaper archives, FBI files and historians. Where accounts differ, the video says so. The federal appeals court found that Tony Zerilli and Michael Polizzi held hidden interests in the Frontier that were never disclosed to Nevada; the video does not claim more than the court record shows. Maurice Friedman's role as the front man, the Friars Club card-cheating ring and the trial are told from court and newspaper accounts. The sale of the Frontier to Howard Hughes, the price of $23 million, and Johnny Roselli's role in it come from one history of the hotel and are told as that account. Stories about skimming and about fixed races at Hazel Park come from the columnist John L. Smith and are told as his account. Tony Zerilli's 2013 claim about Jimmy Hoffa's grave was never confirmed: the FBI dug in Oakland Township and found nothing. Nothing in the record says Steve Wynn knew where the rest of the Frontier's money came from. Some figures, such as the Hazel Park track's yearly income and the amount taken from Friars Club members, are estimates from the sources and are given as such.

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Sources:
Federal appeals court decision upholding the 1972 Los Angeles convictions in the Frontier hidden-ownership case (1974)
FBI records on Maurice Friedman, Johnny Roselli and the Friars Club case (FBI Vault and the JFK Records Collection, National Archives)
Los Angeles Times, 1968-69: coverage of the Friars Club card-cheating trial ("5 Found Guilty in Friars Club Card-Cheating Conspiracy Trial")
Senate McClellan Committee hearings, 1963: "The Mafia Organization in the Detroit Area" chart
John L. Smith, Las Vegas Review-Journal columns and books on the Detroit Partnership and Hazel Park
Detroit Free Press: coverage of the 2013 FBI dig in Oakland Township and of the 1975 Hoffa disappearance
The Mob Museum: biographies of Johnny Roselli and Angelo Lonardo
Wikipedia: Frontier Hotel and Casino; Joseph Zerilli; Anthony Zerilli; Johnny Roselli; Friars Club of Beverly Hills; Jimmy Hoffa
Labor History Today and Las Vegas newspaper coverage of the 1991-1998 Frontier strike

Images and film: archival photographs, postcards, FBI documents and newspaper pages from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the New York Public Library, Wikimedia Commons, the Las Vegas Historical Society and other public sources, credited on screen where required. Moving pictures: "Detroit: City on the Move" (1965, City of Detroit promotional film, public domain, via the Internet Archive).

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