Audio Updates
Great timing!!! The audio version of my books “Cullotta” and “Battle for Las Vegas” are now available from Amazon.
Both are in CD form and ready for shipping… Just in time for the holidays!!
Cullotta
From burglary to armed robbery and murder, infamous bad guy Frank Cullotta not only did it all, in Cullotta he admits to it and in graphic detail. This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro’s gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta’s was a world of high-profile heists, street muscle, and information lots of it about many of the FBI’s most wanted. In the end, that information was his ticket out of crime, as he turned government witness and became one of a handful of mob insiders to enter the Witness Protection Program.
Battle for Las Vegas
In the 1970s and thru the mid-1980s, the Chicago Outfit was the dominant organized crime family in Las Vegas, with business interests in several casinos. During those years the Outfit and its colleagues in Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were using Sin City as a cash cow. Commonly referred to as the skim, unreported revenue from Outfit-controlled casinos was making its way out of Vegas by the bag full and ending up in the coffers of the crime bosses in those four locations. The skim involved large amounts of money. The operation had to be properly set up and well managed to ensure a smooth cash flow. To accomplish that goal, the gangsters brought in a front man with no criminal record to purchase several casinos. Allen R. Glick, doing business as the Argent Corporation (Allen R. Glick Enterprises) purchased the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina. They next installed Frank Lefty Rosenthal as their inside man, and the real boss of the casino operations. Rosenthal was a Chicago native and considered to be a genius when it came to odds-making and sports betting. Under Lefty s supervision the casino count rooms were accessible to mob.
From J. Kaye’s Book Blog
May 22, 2008 by Da Boss
Filed under Book Review
Posted on J. Kaye’s Book Blog on November 20, 2007.
Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness by Dennis N. Griffin
Dennis Griffin’s new book, Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness, tells readers exactly what the book is about. Simply put, it takes readers inside the life of Frank Cullotta. Unite this tell all title with the mug shot on the cover, and I expected the book to be void of humor. It wasn’t. In fact, Mr. Griffin allowed Frank Cullotta’s colorful personality to shine throughout with astonishing candidness.
In the book’s forward, Nicholas Pileggi says an actual murder committed by Mr. Cullotta in 1979 was recreated for the movie, Casino, starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci. Also, Mr. Cullotta was hired as a technical advisor during the production. Knowing Joe Pesci’s character was based on the real-life mob-enforcer Anthony “Tony” Spilotro is the perfect opening for the book. Tony and Frank Cullotta were childhood friends and he plays a huge roll in Mr. Cullotta’s life.
Mr. Griffin’s easy, entertaining writing style will interest readers who aren’t true crime buffs as well. By the end of the book, I had greater comprehension regarding the mob; and my question about how much of The Sopranos was fictionalized had been answered.
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This book also gives readers raw insight into Frank Cullotta’s father, his childhood, early beginnings into crime, his success as a full-blown criminal, his time in prison, him trying to go straight, the set up at Bertha’s, witness protection and the end of Tony Spilotro and his brother, Michael. .
Mr. Griffin spent over 20 years in investigations and law enforcement in New York State, retiring in 1995 as Director of Investigations for the New York State Department of Health, Wadsworth Center. Shortly after retirement, he began to write his first novel, The Morgue, which is a fictionalize story of Mr. Griffin’s real life investigation of a Medical Examiner’s office in upstate New York by the New York State Department of Health.
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I enjoyed Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness so much, I plan to order The Morgue as well. (http://www.j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com)
