Las Vegas NowGeorge Knapp Speaks With Yablonsky, Goodman

George Knapp Speaks With Yablonsky, Goodman

(Feb. 4) -- He went after the Mafia, as well as politicians who were on the take. Now he's writing a new book that won't be popular reading with some of our town's prominent citizens.

The name Joe Yablonsky still generates radically different opinions among those who lived here in the early '80s. Depending on whom you talk to, he was either a white knight here to clean up our town, or an out-of control G-man who would cut any legal corner. Yablonsky's No. 1 priority was to root out organized crime. He says he found that a lot of people didn't want it rooted out.

When tough Tony Spilotro issued warnings, people listened. In Las Vegas of the '70s and '80s, Spilotro was a feared presence, the Mob ambassador to Nevada, suspected in nearly two dozen gangland hits, the leader of a burglary and extortion ring later known as the "Hole in the Wall" gang, and the man who protected the flow of the skim from Mob-tainted casinos back to the Mafia bosses in the Midwest.

During the '70s, Spilotro's muscle protected the skim as it poured out of casinos owned by Mob frontman Allen Glick and operated by Spilotro's pal, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. Glick and Rosenthal were forced out of gaming but the skimming continued. And that's when Joe Yablonsky came to town, hand-picked for the job of finally cleaning the Mob out of Las Vegas.

"I certainly didn't think everybody was a crook in Las Vegas. That's ridiculous," Yablonsky said. Retired and living in Florida, Yablonsky remains sensitive to the charge that he came to town with an agenda. Going after organized crime was a top priority back then, he says, but in Las Vegas, he found there remained a lot of loyalty to Mobsters. The town revered such men as Moe Dalitz and Benny Binion, despite their status as longtime organized crime associates. It was tough to get a handle on Las Vegas.

"I thought being an FBI agent was a noble cause until I got to Las Vegas and found out I was the enemy," Yablonsky said, adding: "You could be scorned for having lunch with an FBI agent, but your prestige is enhanced by having lunch with a Spilotro type."

Yablonsky was a cigar-chomping bureau hotshot with a reputation for undercover street operations. His nickname: the King of Sting. He was sent to Las Vegas, in part, because the local office was underperforming.

"There was a certain mistrust of the Las Vegas office," Yablonksy said. "I think many of the agents assigned to Las Vegas became assimilated and didn't see things they might in other cities. They may have believed Moe Dalitz was a patron saint of the community, when in fact he was one of the founding fathers of the organized crime syndicate."

When Nevada gave a gaming license to Al Sachs to take over Allen Glick's casinos, the FBI was amazed. Yablonsky's men began a new skimming investigation. They snapped photos of the skim in progress and made a case that bounced Sachs from gaming and put Mafia bosses behind bars. They also busted Spilotro's "Hole in the Wall" gang during a burglary, turned one of Spilotro's men into a government witness, and pressed indictments against tough Tony himself.

Spilotro was eventually murdered, but was never convicted -- in part because witnesses against him kept dying, and in part because of his lawyer, Oscar Goodman, now the current mayor of Las Vegas.

Goodman says he never lost a case put together by Yablonsky. He suspects the FBI wanted to get him, too.

"Put it this way: They took plenty of shots, but I never crossed the line," Goodman said. "I was tough, represented my clients as vigorously as I could, but never violated the law. In Yablonsky's mind, he had me as some sort of consiglieri instead of a defense attorney."

Yablonsky countered: "He was coming on this CNBC program; he had this little plastic rat, and he twisted the head off and said, 'This is what we do to rats.' What 'we' do to rats. Why this pronoun 'we'? Here he is, educated in the law, and he has this overpowering need for adulation by sociopaths, Mob types who rob cheat steal and kill."

Yablonsky and Goodman would clash many times during the years Yablonsky was here, especially after the FBI started looking into corruption among Nevada officials.

To contact George Knapp, click here.