Frank Rosenthal

Illinois

Rosenthal, born in Chicago, grew up in the city's West Side. As a youth, Rosenthal learned sports betting in the bleachers of Wrigley Field and would often skip classes to attend Chicago sporting events. By the mid-1950s, he was working with the Chicago Outfit. Chosen for his expert odds making ability, Rosenthal ran the biggest illegal bookmaking office in the U.S. on behalf of the American Mafia. Based in Cicero, Illinois, under the guise of the Cicero Home Improvement company, the Outfit and Rosenthal bought "contracts" from sports bribers to fix sporting events.

Miami

After being indicted as a conspirator on multiple sports bribery charges, Rosenthal moved the operation to North Bay Village in Miami, to avoid attention.

By 1961, Rosenthal had acquired a national reputation as a sports bettor, oddsmaker, and handicapper, and was frequently seen in the company of prominent Chicago Outfit members Jackie Cerone and Fiore Buccieri while living in Miami. At this time Rosenthal was issued with a subpoena to appear before U.S. Senator John McClellan's subcommittee on Gambling and Organized Crime, accused of match fixing. He invoked the Fifth Amendment 37 times and was never charged. Due to this, he was barred from racing establishments in Florida.

Despite his frequent arrests for illegal gambling and bookmaking, Rosenthal was convicted only once, after pleading no contest in 1963 to allegedly bribing a New York University player to shave points for a college basketball game in North Carolina. Rosenthal was also a suspect in multiple business and car bombings in the greater Miami area during the 1960s. It was at this time the FBI opened an ongoing case file on Rosenthal which amassed 300 pages. Once again to escape police attention, Rosenthal moved to Las Vegas in 1968.

Las Vegas career

A pioneer of sports gambling, Rosenthal secretly ran the Stardust, Fremont, Marina, and Hacienda casinos when they were controlled by the Chicago Outfit. He also created the first sports book that operated from within a casino, making the Stardust one of the world's leading centers for sports gambling. Another Rosenthal innovation was to allow female blackjack dealers, which in one year doubled the Stardust's income.

In 1976, when authorities discovered that Rosenthal was secretly running casinos without a Nevada gaming license, they held a hearing to determine his legal ability to obtain one, headed by Nevada Gaming Board Chairman (and future U.S. Senator) Harry Reid. Rosenthal was quickly denied a license because of his unsavory reputation as an organized crime associate, particularly because of his boyhood friendship with Chicago mobster Anthony Spilotro.

Rosenthal married Geri McGee on May 4, 1969. She'd had a daughter, Robin L. Marmor, prior to their marriage (fathered by Lenny Marmor), and Rosenthal and McGee had two children together, Steven and Stephanie. The marriage ended in divorce, with Rosenthal's attributing the failure primarily to McGee's inability to escape her alcohol and drug addictions. After leaving Rosenthal and stealing a significant portion of his savings, McGee was found extremely intoxicated in the lobby of a motel in Los Angeles, and died several days later on November 9, 1982, at age 46, of an apparent drug overdose from a combination of Valium, cocaine, and alcohol. It is said, after rumors arose that he had Geri killed, that Rosenthal paid as much as $50,000 for an independent autopsy to verify that her death was accidental. Rosenthal had Geri buried in the Jewish Mt. Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Later years and death

Rosenthal survived an October 4, 1982 assassination attempt in Las Vegas at the Tony Roma's restaurant located at 602 East Sahara Ave, in which a car bomb (attached to the gasoline tank) was detonated when he started his car. Rosenthal probably survived only because of a manufacturing device unique to his particular car (a 1981 Cadillac Eldorado): a stout metal plate added under the driver's seat (which General Motors installed on all El Dorado models to correct a balancing problem), which shielded Rosenthal's body from most of the explosion's force. Although no one was ever charged for this assassination attempt, Milwaukee mob boss Frank Balistrieri was most likely responsible. Balistrieri, who was known as the "Mad Bomber" to law enforcement, was heard (via wiretap) blaming Rosenthal for the legal problems the mob-controlled casinos were suffering. Similarly, just weeks before the bombing, Balistrieri told his sons he intended to get "full satisfaction" for Rosenthal's perceived wrongdoing. Other suspects included Spilotro (either acting alone or on behalf of the Chicago Outfit), and outlaw bikers who were friends of Rosenthal's ex-wife, Geri.

Rosenthal left Las Vegas six months later and moved to Laguna Niguel, California. Rosenthal focused on raising his children, who were both accomplished youth swimmers. He was later formally banned from Las Vegas in 1987, when he was placed in "the Black Book," making him persona non grata – unable to work in, or even enter, any Nevada casino because of his alleged ties to organized crime. Rosenthal later moved from Laguna Niguel, Calif. to Boca Raton, Florida, and finally, Miami Beach, where he ran a sports betting website (still exists: see external links) and worked as a consultant for several offshore sports betting companies.

Rosenthal died on October 13, 2008, at the age of 79, of an apparent heart attack.

In popular culture

While some artistic license was taken, the film Casino (1995), screenplay co-written by Nicholas Pileggi from his novel "Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas", is largely based on Rosenthal's time in Las Vegas and his relationship with Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro, on which the character Nicky Santoro (played by Joe Pesci) is based. Rosenthal is represented by the character Sam "Ace" Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro). The character of Ginger McKenna Rothstein, his wife in the film (played by Sharon Stone), is based on Geri McGee, Rosenthal's wife in real life. In an interview about the movie, Rosenthal stated that his character portrayed by Robert De Niro was quite but not fully similar to him, namely "7 on a scale of 1 to 10", and that he would neither "dispute" nor "confirm" whether Sharon Stone accurately portrayed his wife because he found that aspect of the movie to be "distasteful" and bringing back "bad memories".