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Frankie Masterana still looks the part he has played all his life: a high-rolling bookmaker who moved millions on illegal sports bets in Las Vegas and the offshore sports books he helped start in the Caribbean.
Dressed in a fashionable light gray suit, still tanned from the Dominican Republic, wearing a full beard and ponytail - both gray; he is, after all, 72 - he sits in his lawyer's suburban Hamburg office after pleading guilty last week to gambling charges in U.S. District Court.
It looks like the end of a long run for Masterana, who started in Las Vegas in 1951 when the mob still ran the town and who forevermore carries the tag - wrongly, he says - of organized-crime associate.
This is how far he has come from the days when he dealt faro to Willie "Ice Pick" Alderman - you don't want to know how he got that name - or Joseph "Doc" Stacher of Murder Inc. fame. Or when he took bets picked up on FBI wiretaps from Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, the mob's Las Vegas muscle guy renamed Nicky Santoro and played by Joe Pesci in the movie "Casino."
Asked how he came to choose his attorney, Dennis Gaughan, to defend him on charges laid after FBI wiretaps heard him taking bets in Buffalo from his Dominican Republic sports book, Masterana replies, "It was a referral from the AARP."
This is the mob-associated bookie the federal government has gone after numerous times? The high roller put in prison three times already and about to go for a fourth? Getting a lawyer from the American Association of Retired Persons?
Masterana laughs.
"My wife joined for us."
The last time he was convicted for bookmaking, his attorney was Oscar Goodman, the lawyer to the mob who now proudly serves as mayor of Las Vegas.
Masterana took the plea before U.S. District Judge John T. Elfvin, the last of nearly a dozen defendants to plead guilty, he says, because he's tired of fighting the government.
"I was going to fight it," he said. "But I've been a gambler all my life. You have to weigh the risk against the gain. Even if I win, I lose."
Even if Masterana were acquitted, said Gaughan, who called the law on offshore gambling a lot less clear than the government believes, there would no doubt be an appeal.
"It would take years for the appeal and thousands of dollars," Gaughan said. "Frank no longer has either to spare."
And if he were convicted, he'd be looking at another three to four years in jail, instead of a far lesser sentence he can expect with his guilty plea.
Refuses to be a fugitive
Still, Masterana could have comfortably lived out the rest of his life in the Dominican Republic, where he works as a consultant to two dozen sports books in the capital city of Santo Domingo.
"It's a crazy country," he said. "They like to bet on everything."
The Dominican Republic considers gambling legal, has issued him a bookmaker's license and has no extradition treaty.
If he ignored the Buffalo indictment, that would make Masterana a fugitive. And he could no longer come to the States to visit his son, a quadriplegic injured in a diving accident; his two daughters; or his wife, who has health problems of her own. He'd never be able to go back to his home in Las Vegas.
Even when he visits Nevada now, he can't go into casinos. He'd be arrested if he so much as drove into a casino parking lot.
Masterana is one of 35 people listed in Las Vegas' Black Book, those the Nevada Gaming Commission has banned for life.
Masterana is listed for a million-dollar sports betting ring he got caught running in 1988, the one where he was heard taking Spilotro's bets. He scoffs at those getting put on the list these days - "slot cheats," or those who have figured out how to electronically rig the slot machines for payoffs.
He was a bookmaker in the days before the big corporations came to Las Vegas and built casinos that look like pyramids, circuses or a slice of New York City.
"Nevada was a nothing state," he said of the days before gambling. "When they legalized gambling, who knew anything about it? The doctors and lawyers? The outfit ran the town. Now they don't need those people, they make them persona non grata."
Masterana had a brush with legal fame in 1974 as one of the first people prosecuted for using a blue box, the electronic device that mimicked the telephone company's audible code for a long-distance call and allowed users to make calls free of charge.
"I did 40 months in jail for defrauding the phone company of $1.55," he said.
Billion-dollar-plus industry
After he was banished from the casinos, he left for the Dominican Republic, started Caribbean Sports and was soon taking sports bets over toll-free lines from the United States. The betting has since spread to the Internet.
"I was the first when I went there in 1988," he said. "Now there's probably 500 or 600 offshore books, not just in the Caribbean."
It's a billion-dollar-plus industry, one that Masterana and others say is legal, despite what the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice believe.
Anthony M. Bruce, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Masterana, said the bookie is wrong. It is illegal to take bets in New York State, Bruce said, and it's a federal crime to do it over the telephone or on the Internet.
The case here dates to 1996 and involved local bettors acting as "beards," or frontmen, for big-time Las Vegas gamblers looking to spread their bets. The local bettors, and three Philadelphia bookies, placed their bets through Masterana in the Dominican Republic.
Enters guilty plea
Masterana stood in court and pleaded guilty but still believes there is nothing illegal about what he did.
"I think he's dead wrong," Masterana said of the prosecutor. "Where the bet is accepted is where the bookmaker is, and it's legal to bet in the Dominican Republic."
Masterana said the government ought to give up prosecuting gamblers and make money off them, as Nevada, New Jersey and the Canadian government do with their casinos.
"It's such a waste of manpower and resources of the United States government," he said. "They can't stop people from drinking, can't stop them from gambling, can't stop them from taking drugs. They might as well legalize it all and collect taxes."
And for those who can't control their gambling?
Masterana, who has been around gamblers since he was boy in Canton, Ohio, where his father ran a craps game, has little sympathy.
"If you're an alcoholic, nobody is going to help you but yourself," he said. "If you're a degenerate gambler, no one is going to help you but yourself."
Masterana is due back in court for sentencing by Elfvin in May and then will start what he hopes will be his last stretch behind bars.
Dressed in a fashionable light gray suit, still tanned from the Dominican Republic, wearing a full beard and ponytail - both gray; he is, after all, 72 - he sits in his lawyer's suburban Hamburg office after pleading guilty last week to gambling charges in U.S. District Court.
It looks like the end of a long run for Masterana, who started in Las Vegas in 1951 when the mob still ran the town and who forevermore carries the tag - wrongly, he says - of organized-crime associate.
This is how far he has come from the days when he dealt faro to Willie "Ice Pick" Alderman - you don't want to know how he got that name - or Joseph "Doc" Stacher of Murder Inc. fame. Or when he took bets picked up on FBI wiretaps from Anthony "Tony the Ant" Spilotro, the mob's Las Vegas muscle guy renamed Nicky Santoro and played by Joe Pesci in the movie "Casino."
Asked how he came to choose his attorney, Dennis Gaughan, to defend him on charges laid after FBI wiretaps heard him taking bets in Buffalo from his Dominican Republic sports book, Masterana replies, "It was a referral from the AARP."
This is the mob-associated bookie the federal government has gone after numerous times? The high roller put in prison three times already and about to go for a fourth? Getting a lawyer from the American Association of Retired Persons?
Masterana laughs.
"My wife joined for us."
The last time he was convicted for bookmaking, his attorney was Oscar Goodman, the lawyer to the mob who now proudly serves as mayor of Las Vegas.
Masterana took the plea before U.S. District Judge John T. Elfvin, the last of nearly a dozen defendants to plead guilty, he says, because he's tired of fighting the government.
"I was going to fight it," he said. "But I've been a gambler all my life. You have to weigh the risk against the gain. Even if I win, I lose."
Even if Masterana were acquitted, said Gaughan, who called the law on offshore gambling a lot less clear than the government believes, there would no doubt be an appeal.
"It would take years for the appeal and thousands of dollars," Gaughan said. "Frank no longer has either to spare."
And if he were convicted, he'd be looking at another three to four years in jail, instead of a far lesser sentence he can expect with his guilty plea.
Refuses to be a fugitive
Still, Masterana could have comfortably lived out the rest of his life in the Dominican Republic, where he works as a consultant to two dozen sports books in the capital city of Santo Domingo.
"It's a crazy country," he said. "They like to bet on everything."
The Dominican Republic considers gambling legal, has issued him a bookmaker's license and has no extradition treaty.
If he ignored the Buffalo indictment, that would make Masterana a fugitive. And he could no longer come to the States to visit his son, a quadriplegic injured in a diving accident; his two daughters; or his wife, who has health problems of her own. He'd never be able to go back to his home in Las Vegas.
Even when he visits Nevada now, he can't go into casinos. He'd be arrested if he so much as drove into a casino parking lot.
Masterana is one of 35 people listed in Las Vegas' Black Book, those the Nevada Gaming Commission has banned for life.
Masterana is listed for a million-dollar sports betting ring he got caught running in 1988, the one where he was heard taking Spilotro's bets. He scoffs at those getting put on the list these days - "slot cheats," or those who have figured out how to electronically rig the slot machines for payoffs.
He was a bookmaker in the days before the big corporations came to Las Vegas and built casinos that look like pyramids, circuses or a slice of New York City.
"Nevada was a nothing state," he said of the days before gambling. "When they legalized gambling, who knew anything about it? The doctors and lawyers? The outfit ran the town. Now they don't need those people, they make them persona non grata."
Masterana had a brush with legal fame in 1974 as one of the first people prosecuted for using a blue box, the electronic device that mimicked the telephone company's audible code for a long-distance call and allowed users to make calls free of charge.
"I did 40 months in jail for defrauding the phone company of $1.55," he said.
Billion-dollar-plus industry
After he was banished from the casinos, he left for the Dominican Republic, started Caribbean Sports and was soon taking sports bets over toll-free lines from the United States. The betting has since spread to the Internet.
"I was the first when I went there in 1988," he said. "Now there's probably 500 or 600 offshore books, not just in the Caribbean."
It's a billion-dollar-plus industry, one that Masterana and others say is legal, despite what the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice believe.
Anthony M. Bruce, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Masterana, said the bookie is wrong. It is illegal to take bets in New York State, Bruce said, and it's a federal crime to do it over the telephone or on the Internet.
The case here dates to 1996 and involved local bettors acting as "beards," or frontmen, for big-time Las Vegas gamblers looking to spread their bets. The local bettors, and three Philadelphia bookies, placed their bets through Masterana in the Dominican Republic.
Enters guilty plea
Masterana stood in court and pleaded guilty but still believes there is nothing illegal about what he did.
"I think he's dead wrong," Masterana said of the prosecutor. "Where the bet is accepted is where the bookmaker is, and it's legal to bet in the Dominican Republic."
Masterana said the government ought to give up prosecuting gamblers and make money off them, as Nevada, New Jersey and the Canadian government do with their casinos.
"It's such a waste of manpower and resources of the United States government," he said. "They can't stop people from drinking, can't stop them from gambling, can't stop them from taking drugs. They might as well legalize it all and collect taxes."
And for those who can't control their gambling?
Masterana, who has been around gamblers since he was boy in Canton, Ohio, where his father ran a craps game, has little sympathy.
"If you're an alcoholic, nobody is going to help you but yourself," he said. "If you're a degenerate gambler, no one is going to help you but yourself."
Masterana is due back in court for sentencing by Elfvin in May and then will start what he hopes will be his last stretch behind bars.