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Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn got his start in the hotel and gaming industry with the help of the Detroit mafia. The 76-year old Wynn, who has been the corporate face of Sin City since 1990s, personally responsible for much of the New Millennium makeover on The Strip, was in the news this week after the Wall Street Journal published an investigative piece concentrating on years of alleged sexual misconduct he reportedly inflicted on his employees.
Steve Wynn's political contributions were once seen as toxic. A series of investigative reports in The Wall Street Journal in 2018 detailed alleged rape, assault and harassment by the now-disgraced. The sexual misconduct scandal surrounding casino mogul Steve Wynn keeps getting weirder. A self-described pal of Wynn is now claiming that Jorgen Nielsen, a former hairdresser with Wynn Las Vegas.
His entrée into Las Vegas was paved by deceased Detroit mob underboss Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli back in the late 1960s. Zerilli and his wiseguy pals from the Midwest controlled the Frontier Hotel and Casino through a hidden ownership stake, using a West Coast land developer and promoter named Maurice Friedman as their front man.
Friedman knew Wynn through a friendship with Wynn’s dad, Mike, owner of a series of bingo halls in Maryland, and introduced him to Zerilli. Shortly following the introduction, Wynn was hired as the Frontier’s slot-machine manager and purchased a 5% interest in the hotel and casino for $45,000. He’s now worth billions.
“I put Steve Wynn in business, there’d be no Steve Wynn without me,” an aging Zerilli said in an interview in the weeks before he died of natural causes in 2015. “The guy took that job we gave him and that investment we allowed him to buy into and parlayed it into an empire. We legitimized him though. People knew he was suddenly a player because he had our backing to start.”
Zerilli’s dad, Joseph (Joe Uno) Zerilli served as the Godfather of the mob in Detroit for more than 40 years without ever doing a night behind bars. He was one of the only non-New York dons to hold a seat on the Commission, the mafia’s national board of directors.
When the government began breathing down his neck shortly thereafter, the younger Zerilli was forced to sell the Frontier to reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes, a man Wynn himself did future business with. The Frontier was torn down in 2008. Today, Wynn owns the property the casino once stood on.
Tony Zerilli
In 1971, Zerilli and several other Midwest mafia figures were federally indicted for skimming $6,000,000 from the Frontier. Friedman was the star witness at their trial in which they were convicted and all sentenced to five years in prison.
Following Zerilli being swept out of Las Vegas and the Frontier changing hands, Wynn turned his attention to the Golden Nugget, purchasing the iconic gambling palace and using it to transform the city’s then- downtrodden downtown area with mass renovations and a successful rebranding effort. By the early 1980s, the Golden Nugget was the most profitable casino in Las Vegas. Later in the decade, he changed gears and began a building campaign to rejuvenate the Strip, spearheaded by his construction of the Mirage and Treasure Island. The 1990s brought his opening of the opulent Bellagio, setting a trend for the long line of ultra-luxurious hotels and casinos you see dotting the Strip today.
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Wynn has been hounded with rumors of mafia ties dating back decades. New York mob figure Anthony (Tony Cakes) Castelbouno was busted for laundering narcotics proceeds through a Wynn casino in Atlantic City 35 years ago. A conversation between former Genovese crime family street boss Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and one-time Cleveland mafia consigliere John (Peanuts) Tronolone was intercepted by an FBI wire planted in Salerno’s East Harlem headquarters in 1982 where Tronolone requested Salerno use his sway with Wynn to “rein him in,” and aid in sale negotiations related to a piece of property Wynn owned on the Strip. More recently, Boston Goodfellas Darin (Nino) Buffalino and Charles (Good Time Charlie) Lightbody were overheard on a wire talking about how they had Wynn “on their side,” in Las Vegas.
BOSTON — Wynn Resorts has renamed the $2.5 billion casino it’s building outside of Boston to Encore Boston Harbor, as the company continues to take steps to distance itself from founder Steve Wynn after sexual misconduct allegations.
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New CEO Matthew Maddox confirmed the long speculated change to state gambling regulators Friday as they considered the company’s request to remove Wynn’s name from its Massachusetts casino license.
Wynn resigned as chairman and CEO and later sold his company shares following the allegations, which he denies.
“This company is not about a man. Steve Wynn is not Wynn Resorts,” Maddox said. “Wynn Resorts is about the 25,000 employees that grow this company every day.”
Maddox said banners around the Everett waterfront site that once heralded the coming of “Wynn Boston Harbor” were being removed Friday and new ones bearing the “Encore” moniker also used at one of the company’s Las Vegas casinos were going up in their place.
Commission members didn’t comment on the change, which doesn’t require state approval.
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They’re expected to issue a decision next week on whether Steve Wynn should continue to be considered a part of the Massachusetts project for regulatory purposes.
The commission has stressed that even if Wynn’s name were removed from the company’s casino license, it would not interrupt the broader review of Wynn Resorts.
The five-member panel is investigating what the company’s board might have known about the allegations, including a $7.5 million settlement with one accuser that wasn’t disclosed when the state awarded the company a license in 2014.
A lawyer for Steve Wynn has argued that the commission no longer has jurisdiction over him because he’s a private citizen divested from “all ownership interests” in his namesake company.
Maddox outlined other ways the company is changing its corporate culture, including appointing three new women to the board of directors, providing paid parental leave, changing its sexual harassment training and creating a new department focused on gender equality, diversity and female leadership.
“Things are moving at lightning speed,” he said. “We are moving this company forward. We’re taking these issues very seriously.”
Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria, who attended Friday’s hearing in Boston, said the name change was the right move in light of calls from sexual assault survivors, who joined a chorus of prominent state officials in requesting it, including Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Democratic state Attorney General Maura Healey.
“There were a lot of serious allegations made,” DeMaria said. “If those prove to be true, they’re not appropriate and a name change is in the best interests of the project.”
Gina Scaramella, head of the nonprofit Boston Area Rape Crisis Center that supports sexual assault survivors, called it a positive step forward.
“It shows that we’ve reached a tipping point in how our culture responds to sexual harassment and assault,” she said.
Wynn has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Associated Press for its reporting on a separate allegation made to police.