No ‘black book’ to keep scammers out of New York casinos

No ‘black book’ to keep scammers out of New York casinos

Article brief provided by Times Union
  • Robert Gavin, Times Union
September 20, 2021 10:53 AM
  • Robert Gavin, Times Union

Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano is among hundreds of mobsters, cheats and other nefarious figures on “black book”-type exclusion lists barring their presence from casinos from Atlantic City to Las Vegas.

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But if the one-time Gambino crime family underboss ambled into a casino in New York, the state where the notorious Cosa Nostra canary built an underworld resume that included 19 murders, he could be dealt in at the blackjack table – along with “Baby Shanks,” “Skinny Joey” and “Dicky Boy.”

That’s because the New York Gaming Commission has a list of excluded persons that excludes no one. The commission lets individual casinos compile their own lists of excluded individuals even as its own list is barren.