Why was frank rosenthal called lefty

Rosenthal always denied any charges of mob involvement or skimming profits from the casinos he managed. No one controls Frank Rosenthal. Underline that. On the evening of Oct. When he turned on the ignition, a bomb under the gas tank exploded. An unnamed law enforcement source told the Las Vegas Review-Journal at the time that Rosenthal had apparently started the car with the door still open.

Authorities had warned him a year earlier, the source said, that his life was in danger and that they had heard of plots to kill him. After the attempt on his life, Rosenthal moved with his children to California and then to Florida. In Florida, he also ran a sports betting website and served as a consultant for offshore casinos. Now that Rosenthal is dead, three former law enforcement sources with first-hand knowledge confirmed what was long suspected.

Lefty Rosenthal was an FBI informant, whether his attorney knew it or not. While Rosenthal was alive, no one would confirm it. Nobody wanted to be the one who got Lefty whacked. After he died of a heart attack in his Florida home Oct. Was it a sly reference to the handsome Greek warrior who was invincible except for his heel? Or was he simply a heel? Sure beat the code name his mob buddies used when discussing him — "Crazy.

His information helped the FBI develop a lot of organized crime and casino skimming cases. Later, he told the Chicago Tribune he rebuffed the offer to become a federal witness. One source said Rosenthal was an expert handicapper. As an oddsmaker, this was his chance to bet both sides of the game. A second source said it was speculation, but "he may have felt he needed a way out at some point, and he knew cooperation was one way to get out.

When the mob needed someone to watch over its Las Vegas casino interests, Lefty was the man. From until , San Diego businessman Allen Glick was the casino owner, but Rosenthal, despite his ever-changing titles, was the smooth operator.

Nor did he testify against Midwest mob leaders as Glick did during the trial in Kansas City, which ended with mob boss convictions in Las Vegas was an open city for the mob. No one organized crime family controlled all the casinos; different families shared the booty.

The Chicago mob through the Argent Corp. The indictments were many, so were the convictions. Despite the extensive wiretapping, Rosenthal was never charged, even though authorities described him as the man who "orchestrated the skim at the Stardust. In John L. That era, punctuated by the car bombing, resulted in several Midwestern mobsters being imprisoned a few years later in casino skimming trials. Several theories have surfaced regarding who tried to kill Rosenthal.

Another theory pins the crime on the outlaw bikers Geri Rosenthal knew in Southern California during a downward spiral that resulted in her apparent drug overdose death there at age 46 a month after the car bombing. Spilotro and his brother, Michael, were beaten to death in and buried in an Indiana cornfield. Some who were around in those days view it differently, believing Kansas City mobsters were responsible for the bombing. Frank Cullotta, a Chicagoan who reconnected with childhood pal Spilotro in Las Vegas in the s, becoming his Mob lieutenant in town, said in a recent telephone interview that the Kansas City Mafia suspected Rosenthal of being a government informant and therefore wanted to take him down.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jane Ann Morrison later confirmed through her law enforcement sources what some mobsters sensed, that Rosenthal had been a Top Echelon federal informant. The screenwriter said Frank Rosenthal likely had been a Top Echelon informant as far back as his Chicago years, when he was a prominent oddsmaker.

When the Mob finally learns that about someone, arrangements are made to silence the person. Unlike others from that period, Rosenthal never was held criminally responsible for the widespread skimming that took place then. He moved away from Las Vegas not long after the bombing, first to California, then to Florida, where he offered sports-betting advice on his own website before dying in of an apparent heart attack at age