Danielle Gomes and Jay Bonansinga. Hit Me: Fighting the Las Vegas Mob by the Numbers. Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 2013. 301 pages.
One of the most-asked questions for people who study Las Vegas history is “How did the mob get kicked out of the casino industry?” This book tells you a major part of that story from a man who was a key part of that process.
Full disclosure: I worked for Dennis Gomes in 1994/95 at the Trump Taj Mahal casino, though since I was a line employee and he was the property president, we didn’t interact much. I also gave the author, Danielle Gomes, some (free) research assistance with the book at UNLV.
HIT ME is a very personal story. Danielle based the book on her father’s notes, investigations, and recollections of his time as audit chief of the Nevada Gaming Control Board in the 1970s. These were crucial years, when the pressure to remove organized crime from the casino industry was building, yet many in the state preferred a “business as usual” policy. By the end of the decade, federal action, in particular the Strawman investigation, would do a great deal to banish the mob from the industry, and Gomes’ work at audit provides a glimpse into just how entrenched mob-related figures were at certain casinos and just how difficult it was for state investigators to pry them out.
The book’s most valuable quality, for me, is that it provides an insider’s look into the regulators-vs-mob struggle in a way that few other accounts have. Often you get the impression that the forces confronting the mob were brilliantly organized and had unlimited resources, but Gomes’s account of the GCB in those years seems anything but. Obviously, this is based on one man’s story, and those at other places in the organization may have something different to say (more on that later), but the inside look into one entrepreneurial division of the GCB provides a unique perspective. In some ways, Gomes and his crew seem more like a regulatory start-up—under-funded and constantly scrambling—than part of the oldest casino regulatory regime in the United States.
In the past few weeks, HIT ME has been in the news in Las Vegas. One of the figures mentioned in the book, a former governor, took issue with the impression given in the book that he was less than diligent in prosecuting those Gomes alleged to be associated with organized crime. That’s a reminder that this isn’t ancient history, and that, while everyone agrees that the industry is better off for having put its mob days behind it (well, expect for the people who think Las Vegas was better “when the mob ran the town”), this is still a very touchy subject.
The key to reading this book is to understanding it as the story of Dennis Gomes’s part in the fight against organized crime in Nevada gaming. You are seeing things through his eyes. I’ve been studying this stuff for a long time now, and I learned more than a few things reading HIT ME. Personally, I found the material on Jay Vandermark and several slot skimming investigations fascinating. It’s rare that a book like this handles the subject in so much detail, and Gomes really gives you a sense of just how ingenious the skimmers could be.
Overall, I found this an honest and gripping account of Gomes’s years with the audit division and his struggle to clean up Nevada casinos. Is this the last word on the topic? Likely not, and I’m sure there are many other people active in those years and later who could offer their own perspective on that time. For now, HIT ME has added a great deal of depth to our understanding of Nevada casino regulation in the 1970s. This is a book that anyone who is interested in Las Vegas casino history should read.
Go here to see Hit Me on Amazon.