Take one look at Nevada’s Black Book, and you’d understandably conclude that casino cheating is almost exclusively a man’s game.
With a single exception, it’s a frat house filled with mob associates and muckers. Of the cross-roaders and hoodlums who inhabit the state’s infamous “List of Excluded Persons,” Sandra Vaccaro remains the only woman in the notorious club.
She was included in no small part because she was married to mobbed-up casino cheat Johnny Vaccaro. When Mr. Vaccaro died in 2015, I strongly suggested the state’s gaming regulators move to drop Mrs. Vaccaro from the list.
They’ve yet to get back to me on that.
The real queen of Nevada casino cheats was the late Patty Lane, a woman whose face never graced the slender pages of the Black Book.
Lane was part of a generation of Kentucky-born gamblers and dealers characters who made their way to Las Vegas in the wake of state and federal investigations of the illicit-but-accepted casino racket in Covington and Newport. Lane was born on the edge of Newport into a poor family of hard-drinkers. A teen-age beauty, she gravitated toward the bright lights and big spenders in an era in which the Levinson brothers, Moe Dalitz, and Meyer Lansky controlled much of the action behind the scenes. She got wise in a hurry.
In her early days, she cheated for and against the house. By the time she graduated to Las Vegas, she was accomplished in all phases of separating a casino from the money. Cards or slots, she wasn’t particular.
Before her run of fortune was interrupted by an FBI and Gaming Control investigation, Lane and the crews she partnered with, including the Vaccaro outfit, were responsible for millions in illicit jackpots won by rigging the machines in a variety of ways. From stopping the reels to opening the doors, and even using magnets and to manipulate the machines, they were a create bunch.
“She grew up in an era where it was male dominated,” a friend of Lane’s from those days once said. “People in that activity are not going to acquiesce to a woman – even if she proved to be right, then would never admit it. She may have input, but they made the decision. She was like the consiglieri.”
Eventually, her profile became so great that she was one of the control board’s most-wanted cheats. One admiring journalist once described Lane as an “Elizabeth Taylor look alike” and “a criminal genius of almost unrivaled proportions.” Gaming Control Board investigators and the FBI had less kind ways of describing her.
“She was a major target of the Gaming Control Board,” the GCB’s former chief investigator Ron MacAllister recalled in an interview with Spy magazine. “I would say her reputation was that as being involved in a group of the best slot cheats in the world. She was known as one of the elite that made a living from cheating casinos. She was very clever and very cool. And you have to have respect for a crook you’re trying to catch.”
For her part, Lane enjoyed the chase.
“It was like acting,” she once recalled in an interview. “We all sat down. And we did a part. We all had a role. We all played out a role. And my acting may be just as convincing as any Academy Award actor, because I did win money.”
Piles of it. But the thing about easy money is, it never seems to last. When she was caught in a federal criminal investigation, she knew she was down to her last roll. A mother with four children, she cut a deal.
Instead of entering the Black Book, she wound up with a life-saving opportunity. Lane was introduced to Jim Golden, the security specialist and former Richard Nixon security aide who had played an early role in the development of Intertel. Golden, who was comfortable in the world of corporate and political intrigue, had been part of Howard Hughes’ shadowy Las Vegas tenure. When Lane met him, Golden was in charge of security at the Dunes.
Despite her universally notorious status around the casino, Golden and others in law enforcement really believed that Lane had managed to straighten out her life.
And maybe she had.
But I have to believe she was watched until the final time she left the casino.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
