The museum presents a bold and authentic view of organized crime’s impact on Las Vegas’ history and its unique imprint on America and the world.The mission is to provide fresh insights and information, provoke debate and dialogue and reveal the truth. The exhibits, programs and interactive experiences will offer multiple perspectives and provide a contemporary, engaging, challenging and educational experience. Countless myths have grown with Las Vegas. Not the least of which being that Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was the visionary behind the city’s transition from dusty rural community to jewel of the Southwestern Nevada desert. In truth, Siegel’s most lasting contributions to Las Vegas were his involvement with the Flamingo — one of Vegas’ most iconic hotels — and, ironically, the mystique created by his violent death in Beverly Hills at the hands of an unknown assailant. The Flamingo opened in December, 1946, and within weeks closed its doors. Just months after a profitable reopening, with questions still looming about where the profits were going, Siegel would be dead. When, in June of 1986, Vegas mobster and strongman Tony “The Ant” Spilotro and his brother Michael were found buried in a cornfield just off of Highway 14 in Enos, Indiana, it was a stark indication that organized crime wasn’t just a problem found within Las Vegas’ city limits or in major cities back east. What used to be considered purely as fodder for the next Hollywood gangster movie was now very real. The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement will engage visitors by taking the romance out of mob stories, not just from Vegas but throughout the nation. The skim. Everyone was doing it. Removing money from a casino’s profits prior to being officially entered into the books as revenue was a practice on which the IRS frowned. But as wrong as it was, the skim enabled Las Vegas casinos — and in turn, early Las Vegas — to thrive. On certain topics, the histories of organized crime and of Las Vegas cannot be extricated from one another. One part history lesson, one part cautionary tale, The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement will tell the whole truth about their relationship to one another. For a change of pace. This tape is the only known FBI recording of an actual mob induction ceremony and is now in the hands of The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement. It stands as a document of the 40-year battle that, while best suited for Sisyphus, was taken on by both local law enforcement and federal authorities. Their tireless efforts have gone largely overlooked, but as the museum’s collection of artifacts and evidence grows, but their story will soon be heard loud and clear. And it all starts with a single cassette tape. It was May of 1950, and the hearings by the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce. While suspected organized crime leaders were being scrutinized, the hearings’ lead Senator, Estes Kefauver, could have been accused of using the proceedings to boost his political prospects. Before it was over, organized crime kingpins including Frank Costello, Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Vito Genovese would be brought in to testify. And Senator Kefauver would garner enough attention to make a presidential run against Harry Truman. These historic hearings focused the nation’s attention on Las Vegas’ federal courthouse and United States post office. The future home of The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement is located at 300 Stewart Avenue, Las Vegas Nevada, 89101, in the heart of downtown’s urban core. Completed in 1933, the former post office and courthouse, known for its association with the Kefauver Committee hearings on organized crime, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places fifty years later, on February 10th, 1983, and its Neo Classical architectural style alone is a significant landmark of the city’s past. A great museum isn’t made from brick and mortar. It’s made from the stories it tells. Telling the complete story of the struggle between organized crime and law enforcement will require artifacts and evidence from individuals all around the nation. Because it’s more than just the story of “cops and robbers.” It’s the story of Las Vegas and America. Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel was an American gangster behind large-scale development of Las Vegas. He used $5 million of syndicate money to construct the city’s first super-casino/hotel, the Flamingo.Vegas mobster Tony 'The Ant' Spilotro and his brother Michael were called by Sam 'Wings' Carlisi to a meeting at a hunting lodge owned by Spilotro’s former mob boss, Joey Aiuppa. Police reported that the Spilotros were savagely beaten and buried alive in a cornfield in Enos, Indiana.The skim refers to money removed from a casino prior to it officially being entered into the books as revenue. Taxes weren’t paid on this unreported income, a fact on which the Internal Revenue Service frowned. The casinos involved in these illegal operations became the equivalent of piggy banks for the Midwest crime bosses.This tape is the only known FBI recording of an actual mob induction ceremony and is now in the hands of The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement. It stands as a document of the 40-year battle that, while best suited for Sisyphus, was taken on by both local law enforcement and federal authorities. Their tireless efforts have gone largely overlooked, but as the museum’s collection of artifacts and evidence grows, their story will soon be heard loud and clear. And it all starts with a single cassette tape.It was May of 1950, and the hearings by the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce. While suspected organized crime leaders were being scrutinized, the hearings’ lead Senator, Estes Kefauver, could have been accused of using the proceedings to boost his political prospects. Before it was over, organized crime kingpins including Frank Costello, Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Vito Genovese would be brought in to testify. And Senator Kefauver would garner enough attention to make a presidential run against Harry Truman. These historic hearings focused the nation’s attention on Las Vegas’ federal courthouse and United States post office.The future home of The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement is located at 300 Stewart Avenue, Las Vegas Nevada, 89101, in the heart of downtown’s urban core. Completed in 1933, the former post office and courthouse, known for its association with the Kefauver Committee hearings on organized crime, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places fifty years later, on February 10th, 1983, and its Neo Classical architectural style alone is a significant landmark of the city’s past.A great museum isn’t made from brick and mortar. It’s made from the stories it tells. Telling the complete story of the struggle between organized crime and law enforcement will require artifacts and evidence from individuals all around the nation. Because it’s more than just the story of “cops and robbers.” It’s the story of Las Vegas and America.
  
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