Interference (36 page)

After a trip to Las Vegas later that year to negotiate a land deal, he, along with four partners, purchased the Hacienda hotel/casino for $4 million. Glick's four partners were Columbus, Ohio, businessman Gene Fresch; Paul Lowden, and entertainment and real estate executive; Dr. Joe Ingersol, a prominent Las Vegas dentist; and gaming executive Gene Neely. “Fresch found the deal,” Glick told me, “and presented it to me for a recreational-vehicle park and the use of its fifty-plus acres on the Strip. The real estate was the key. It was decided later to renovate and operate the hotel for revenue to help the real estate development. The partners later felt the revised numbers on maintaining the hotel and holding the real estate were a more viable approach to obtain a profit on the real estate.”

Glick then attempted to buy King's Castle, another hotel/ casino near Lake Tahoe, along with Marty Buccieri, who worked at Caesars Palace and was an associate of Meyer Lansky. According to published reports, the deal didn't go through because of Buccieri's background.
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However, Glick insists there was another reason and told me, “The submitted proposal for financing was deemed not adequate … and I was never aware of any other basis for the denial.”

In March 1974, Glick was approached by Los Angeles businessman Todd Derlachter,
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who asked him if he wanted to buy Recrion, formerly known as the Parvin-Dohrmann Company, which had been wracked by problems with the federal government.
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Among other holdings, Recrion owned the Stardust and the Fremont hotels/casinos in Las Vegas.

Glick indicated that he was interested, so Derlachter introduced him to Delbert Coleman and Recrion's principal stockholders. However, Morris Shenker, a St. Louis criminal attorney who had represented Jimmy Hoffa, was also interested in the purchase.

Nevertheless, Glick, who did not make his offer contingent on being licensed, outbid Shenker, offering $62.5 million for Recrion. Glick managed to pull together $2 million as the down payment. Derlachter was promised and received a $1.26 million
finder's fee in return for introducing Glick to Coleman. The fee included a $10,000-a-month consultant's salary for doing little or nothing else.

A federal prosecutor familiar with the sale said, “Allen Glick very much wanted to buy these two hotels and casinos from Del Coleman, so much that in a weekend of hard and fast negotiations a deal was struck between Glick and Coleman for the sale. Glick put up in escrow two million dollars that was based on a pledge backed by [one of Glick's other companies] and a line of credit for the sale, but this was more than sixty million dollars shy of the purchase price.”

With less than two months to come up with the rest of the money, Glick went to Frank Balistrieri to discuss his purchase of Recrion. Balistrieri told Glick to hire his two sons, ostensibly as house counsels, and to grant them the first right of refusal to buy a half interest in the multimillion-dollar company for a mere $25,000. Glick was also told to purchase his hotel insurance from Allen Dorfman's Amalgamated Insurance Company
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and to retain Lefty Rosenthal as a top executive with his casino operations. Glick was under the clear impression that if he did not agree to Balistrieri's conditions, he would not be helped.

In return, Glick, as he understood it, would get a $62.5 million loan from the Teamsters' Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund. Insurance executive Dorfman, the former fiduciary manager of the fund, had been indicted in 1972 for accepting kickbacks from the recipients of pension-fund loans.

Glick did as Balistrieri suggested and received the purchase price for Recrion and loans for other investments from the Teamsters. The process had been handled by Dorfman and pension-fund trustees Bill Presser, Roy Williams, and Frank Ranney. A Dorfman puppet, Al Baron, who had replaced Dorfman as the fund's manager, was simply rubber-stamping Dorfman's behind-the-scenes decisions. However, Glick was under the impression that Frank Balistrieri, the father of his friend, had made the arrangements for the loan.

Glick then created Argent—a word he selected because it is both French for “money” and “silver” and an acronym for Allen R. Glick Enterprises.

Glick told me, “The time [for obtaining the loan] was over a hundred and twenty days from the start of the paperwork given
the fund. There was a $62.5 million loan for Argent on the acquisition, and $25 million for a high rise that was built. There was a $25 million loan for Eastmont Mall Shopping Center, and $7 million at Beverly Summitt for a real estate project in Los Angeles. Many of these loans were partial assumptions of existing debts the fund already had. There also was a $13 million loan on the GSA [General Services Administration] real estate project in Texas that I was ultimately involved in.” The latter deal involved several NFL players.

Click officially took over the Stardust and the Fremont in August 1974.
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As part of the quid pro quo, Lefty Rosenthal became Glick's process man. Rosenthal, who was named by Glick as his $250,000-a-year “assistant to the president,” became the caretaker for the Chicago Mafia's interests in Las Vegas, particularly within Argent.

According to Glick, he was unaware that his project had already become tied to intricate Mafia deals, including an elaborate skimming operation at his casinos. Cleveland Mafia chief Angelo Lonardo later said, “[Organized-crime figure Moshe] Rockman told me that the skim started when Allen Glick approached Frank Balistrieri about Glick's obtaining a Teamsters pension fund loan so that Glick could purchase a Las Vegas casino … Balistrieri talked to Nick Civella, boss of the Kansas City family, since he controlled Roy Williams, who was a high official with the Teamsters. Civella told Balistrieri that he would find someone in Cleveland who could talk to Bill Presser. Civella got ahold of Rockman and asked him to talk to Bill Presser about getting a pension loan for Glick. Glick told Balistrieri that in return for the pension loan he, Glick, would give the Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland families a piece of the casinos.”

Nick Civella, who had been convicted in 1970 of operating a sports-bookmaking network, had allegedly made payoffs to members of the Kansas City Chiefs during the 1960s. He was indicted and convicted again in July 1975 for illegal sports bookmaking.

Lonardo continued, “Rockman also told me that Glick received the Teamsters' pension loan and purchased the Stardust [and] Fremont … casinos. Lefty Rosenthal ran the skim operation in Las Vegas. Kansas City would get the money from Las Vegas, and cut it up between themselves.”

In this way, Glick says, he was kept unaware that the Mafia
had become his silent partner. “Glick did not understand there would be obligations,” a federal prosecutor explained. “He didn't understand at the time he got the loan that the partners came with it. The partners understood this, and they understood there were obligations to be paid and dues to be paid.”

Nevertheless, there was immediate suspicion about Glick because of his sudden and dominant entry into the Nevada gaming scene. There were also concerns that penetrating questions about Glick's background and associates could kill his chances to be licensed by Nevada gaming authorities. But, against his attorney's advice, Glick agreed to take a polygraph test. The examination took over four hours and was conducted by Chuck Lee, one of the top polygraph operators in the country.

When Glick completed the test—during which he was asked all the major questions that troubled law-enforcement officials—he passed with such flying colors that Lee offered to be a witness for him at his licensing hearing. Soon after, Glick's license was approved.

Quickly, with Rosenthal running the show from behind the scenes, the Stardust became the world's largest legal sports-bookmaking operation when it opened its own sports and race book in September 1975. “The Sports Book was Rosenthal's suggestion,” Glick told me, “and he conceived of this before I acquired Recrion and already had outlines and sketches. He handled this project and worked out guidelines with the state for its operation. I can't take any credit for its creation.”
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With a $2 million project which created a nine-thousand-square-foot wing to the hotel, the Stardust Sports Book seated 250 bettors and featured a twenty-five-foot computerized reader board and a forty-eight-square-foot television screen, which, along with the smaller televisions on the front wall of the lounge, allowed gamblers to watch a variety of sporting events.

In addition to his salary as the chief of Glick's casino operations, Rosenthal also hosted a weekly local television program from the Stardust, “The Frank Rosenthal Show,” in which he discussed the upcoming line on NFL football games and other sporting events.

The Stardust became the center for gambling on NFL games. It became the home of the outlaw line. The nation's leading oddsmaker, Bobby Martin, had left the Churchill Downs Sports Book to become the chief oddsmaker at the Union Plaza,
which had created the first hotel sports book earlier in 1975. Martin's weekly line served as the basis for the numbers used by legal and illegal bookmakers through the country. The Stardust became among the first casinos to post Martin's line and take action on his prices.

Managing the Stardust Sports Book for Rosenthal was his longtime associate Marty Kane, who had been indicted with Gil Beckley for bookmaking in 1967 and was later convicted. Kane, who served in the Army during World War II and graduated from the University of Alabama, had started gambling during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., and then moved to Miami where he worked with Beckley during the early 1960s.

Kane told me, “I spent two years in jail from 1972 to 1974 for the conviction with Beckley. When I got out, I laid around for a few months. And then I got a call from the Union Plaza. They wanted me to come to work in their sports book. While I was thinking about it, Rosenthal called me and told me to forget about the Union Plaza. He wanted me to come to work at the Stardust and run their sports book. And so I took that job.”

Glick's contacts within the NFL were numerous. For example, prior to his purchase of Recrion, he—along with his partner, Dennis Wittman—had operated a variety of partnerships with active NFL players, including Lance Alworth of the San Diego Chargers and later the Dallas Cowboys; Steve DeLong, Sam Gruneisen, John Hadl, Ron Mix, and Walt Sweeney, all of the Chargers; and Jim Hudson of the New York Jets.

Hudson told me, “I never really knew Allen Glick. I met him through Dennis Wittman, who ran Saratoga. I met Wittman through John Hadl. Hadl and I played golf every year with De-Long and Joe Namath. Hadl knew I was building apartments and office buildings in Austin, and Hadl came down and said, ‘I have this guy I want you to meet. I'm working for him.' And that's how I met Wittman. So they came down and did some deals with my entity, Hudson Properties.”

During my interview with Hadl, he explained, “It was Lance Alworth who introduced me to Wittman for a real estate deal in San Diego. We had a couple of partnerships, and we bought some land there. Glick wasn't even involved at that time. He came later.”

Alworth told me, “I was retiring from football. I didn't know
what was going on. I was looking for a second career. And I was trying to learn something to make a living. Saratoga had everything I needed. And Allen gave me free rein to run around and learn. I have nothing but good things to say about Allen. He's a friend of mine, and I respect him.

“I really didn't bring anybody into the business. I went to the Dallas Cowboys for a couple of years [for the 1971 and 1972 seasons] and when I returned to California, Hadl and Hudson were working with Dennis [Wittman]. Now, Dennis was a friend of mine, and I had introduced him to Hadl. I met Dennis through a coach on the Chargers, who told me that Dennis had helped him with his financial difficulties. So I went to see him, and he let me hang around.

“Dennis kind of helped me on the side. I never was really involved in the company. I was never on its payroll. I was an investor in one little deal and lost money like everyone else. I probably would've lost a whole lot more—but I had lost everything earlier. I really didn't have any money. I had just gone through a bankruptcy.”

Explaining how he was introduced to those sports figures involved, Glick told me, “Wittman hired Lance Alworth and then John Hadl. He gave them assignments at Saratoga. He also met Ron Mix and put together an investment with him in which football people were investors. Wittman did not like gambling at all and always had a fondness for football and football people. He would have liked to have been an owner of a [professional football] team. It was a passion for him. Because of this and a religious disliking for gambling, he would never be involved in Las Vegas.

“Alworth introduced Davis to Wittman and Davis introduced some of the coaches to Wittman for a real estate investment. I had no role in this area as it was Wittman's special area. I never met the coaches and only met Davis when problems came up at Saratoga and in their investment in a project. When I met him [Davis] at this late date, I found him very intelligent and honest to work with.”

Later, Mix filed a fraud-and-breach-of-contract suit against Glick and others, claiming that they failed to pay him a $105,000 finder's fee for introducing Al Davis, the managing partner of the Oakland Raiders, to their investment group. The case was later dismissed.

Besides Davis, other business partners in a variety of ventures
included Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson, Chuck Knox, the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams; John Ralston, the head coach of the Denver Broncos; Don Shula, the head coach of the Miami Dolphins; Sid Gillman, the general partner and general manager of the Houston Oilers; and even Jay Malkoff, the team doctor of the San Diego Chargers.

Glick insists that Wittman's ties with Carroll Rosenbloom were exclusive, and that he did not share in them. Glick also told me that he was not personally acquainted with all those involved, and that there were never any efforts to compromise the on-field integrity of any NFL personnel.