Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - Early Retirements: Notorious Mobster Deaths

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

They built empires of blood, betrayal, and cash—until it all came crashing down. This week, we’re diving into two of the most infamous mob murders in American history. First, Sam Giancana: the Chicago kingpin who helped JFK win the presidency. Then, Bugsy Siegel: the flashy mobster who brought Vegas to life—and got sniped through his window in return. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money and Murder to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Scams, Money and Murder is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa Richardson. Exciting news, conspiracy theories, cults and crimes is leveling up. Starting the week of January 12th, you'll be getting two episodes every week. Wednesdays, we unravel the conspiracy or the cult, and on Fridays we look at a corresponding crime. Every week has a theme. Tech, bioterror, power, paranoia, you name it. Follow conspiracy theories, cults and crimes now on your podcast app, because you're about to dive deeper, get weirder, and go darker than ever before. This is crime house.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It's not just a saying. It's a means of survival. Because in the world we're entering, trust is a trap, and betrayal is often fatal. I'm Carter Roy, and this is scams, money, and murder. And I'm Vanessa Richardson. Every Thursday, we'll explain Explore the story of a money-motivated crime gone wrong, whether it's a notorious con, fraud, burglary, or even murder. From the archives of Crime House, the show, Murder True Crime Stories, and Killer Minds, these are some of our favorite cases that have kept us lying awake at night wondering,

if money didn't make the world go round, could all this have been avoided? And as always, at Crime House, we want to express our gratitude. to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following, scams, money, and murder, wherever you get your podcasts. This week's episode comes from Crime House the Show, where the theme is mob murders. First, we'll start on June 19, 1975,

when Al Capone's protege, Sam Mooney Giancana, was assassinated in Chicago before he could spill his mafia secrets to call. Congress. Then we'll jump back to the same week in 1947 to Beverly Hills, California, when hot-headed gangster Bugsy Siegel finally wound up on the wrong side of a gun. Both of today's subjects made millions of dollars in the business of organized crime and took pleasure in murdering anybody who stood in their way. But they couldn't outrun their enemies forever, and it was just a matter of time until karma caught up.

to these killers. All that and more coming up. A little after 10 o'clock p.m. on June 19th, 1975, 67-year-old Sam Giancana, who friends called Mooney, was cooking up a late-night snack at his bungalow in Oak Park, Illinois. At some point later in the evening, a guest dropped in to see him. We don't know who it was, but they must have been someone Sam trusted. He let them in, no questions asked, then returned to the kitchen where he was frying up some Italian sausages and peppers. While Sam's back was turned, his guest pulled out a 22-caliber pistol and shot him in the back of the head. Once Sam was sprawled out on the floor, the killer placed the gun under Sam's chin and fired five more times, ending the life of one of America's most notorious mobsters.

Sam Giancana was born on May 24th, 1908, to a pair of Sicilian immigrants. They lived in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, called The Patch. It was a rough area, and Sam's home life wasn't any better. His mother died when he was two. That left Sam and his siblings alone with their father, a streetcarbender and violent alcoholic. Although Sam's dad was abusive towards all three kids, Sam got the worst. of it, and by the time he was 10 years old in 1918, Sam had had enough. He ran away from home and spent a year sleeping and abandoned cars and stealing scraps to get by, but the whole time

he was eager to find a new group of people to call family. Soon, he found what he was looking for in a gang. The patch, where most of the Italians lived, bordered an Irish neighborhood. There was a lot of bad blood between the two groups, leading to a lot of street brawls. In this rough-and-tumble environment, neighborhood boys formed gangs to defend their turf. The most fearsome gang in the patch was called the 42s, and in 1919, 11-year-old Sam became their newest member. Together, the 42s stole cars and fought rival gangs all over Chicago. Despite being only 11 years old, one of Sam's favorite pastimes was whipping stolen cars down the road, then taking a sharp turn so the vehicle ended up balancing on two wheels.

Soon, the 42s made him the driver for all their jobs. They also gave him a nickname that would follow him for the rest of his life. Mooney, because he was the craziest of the bunch. Over the next six years, Sam worked his way up in the 42s and became just as notorious for his aggressive fighting as he was for his wild driving. And by 1925, the 17-year-old's antics caught the attention of the gang of an up-and-coming Chicago crime boss named Al Capone. Prohibition was in full force, and Capone had built a formidable bootlegging operation that supplied the west and south sides of Chicago with illegal alcohol. Now, Capone was looking to expand his territory, which meant he needed more manpower.

Sam, now a hardened criminal, came highly recommended. But first, he needed to prove himself. In Sam's first assignment for Capone, he shot and severely injured a rival gang leader who took the hint and left town. In the next, Sam chased one of Capone's enemies through the streets of Chicago by car, then pulled up alongside him and shot the man dead. Sam was even rumored to have taken part in the infamous St. Valentine's Day massacre when seven of Capone's competitors were executed in a Chicago garage by assassins disguised as police.

With his rivals out of the picture, Capone was able to consolidate his control over the city's gangs and become the king of the Chicago underworld. and he was grateful to Sam for helping him get there. By the early 1930s, 24-year-old Sam was a full-fledged member of Capone's gang, known as the Chicago outfit. He dressed in fancy suits and carried a revolver in his pocket, running illegal distilleries and gunning down anyone who got in his way.

But the good times didn't last forever. In 1932, Al Capone was sent, to 11 years in prison for tax evasion. With their boss behind bars, Capone's successor, Frank Nitty, took over running the outfit. And although prohibition ended in 1933, Sam continued to be a valuable asset to the group. Because while they weren't running illegal distilleries anymore, they had plenty of other illicit businesses to keep afloat, and they needed Sam's help to do it. And so for the next seven years, Sam continued to rise in the ranks. But he didn't know he was about to follow in his idol's shackled footsteps.

In 1939, when Sam was 31 years old, federal agents raided one of the gang's illegal businesses. Sam was arrested and sentenced to four years at the Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. But he didn't pass the time quietly. Instead, he got familiar with a new and very lucrative criminal enterprise. One of Sam's cellmates was a black Chicago man named Eddie Jones, who was in Leavenworth for tax evasion. The two Chicagoans struck up a friendship, and eventually Jones told Sam about one of his operations. He explained it was a popular underground lottery known as Policy that ran on Chicago's south side. Jones and the other people in charge of policy were making millions of dollars a year running rackets.

When Sam left prison in 1942, the 34-year-old was determined to help the Chicago outfit get a cut of the policy game, and he didn't care if he had to tear down his friend to do it. Eddie Jones got out of jail four years later in 1946. That year, 38-year-old Sam had his men travel to the South Carolina. side and kidnap Jones in broad daylight. They locked him up in a basement where Sam came to visit his old prison pal. He gave Jones an ultimatum, give the policy operation to the Chicago outfit, or die. It didn't take long for Jones to make his decision. He told his lie, they were now reporting to Sam Giancana. By the 1950s, Sam Giancana was one of the Chicago outfits,

top earners. He brought in enormous amounts of cash through gambling, protection rackets, union contracts, loan sharking, and countless other criminal enterprises. But things weren't all smooth sailing. During that same period, the outfit went through multiple changes in leadership, as different bosses were killed, sent to prison, or fled the country to avoid prosecution. By 1957, at the age of 49, there was only one person left who had the skills to take charge. That year, Sam became the leader of the Chicago outfit, and he was going to milk it for all it was worth. The acrobat studio, your new foundation.

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49-year-old Sam Mooney Giancana was living like royalty. He had a beautiful house, several luxury cars, and a collection of exotic antiques. He took lavish trips to mafia-owned casinos in Las Vegas, where he paled around with celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe. It was exciting to be around such big stars, but Sam had his eyes set even higher on the world of politics, specifically on an ambitious young senator named John F. Kennedy.

Frank Sinatra introduced Sam to Kenney, Kennedy in 1959, when the politician was gearing up to run for president. Sam liked JFK. They were both hard drinkers and big womanizers. But more than that, Sam really liked the idea of having the ear of the president of the United States. So Sam decided to throw the full weight of the Chicago outfit behind Kennedy's campaign against Richard Nixon. On November 8, 1960, the election was too close to call. Democratic strongholds like Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee had unexpectedly gone for Nixon, leaving the race nearly tied. As votes were tallied, it became clear that whoever won Illinois would be the next president. Luckily for John F. Kennedy, Sam Giancana had done more for his campaign

than just donate money. On election day, Sam's men drove groups of voters from one polling precinct to another so they could vote multiple times. In some neighborhoods, Sam's thugs stood outside, reminding voters that Sam expected them to back Kennedy. After all the votes were counted, Kennedy carried Illinois by just 9,000 votes and became the 35th president of the United States. As a boy, Sam Giancana had brawled with Irish kids for control of the patch. Now he'd just helped put the first Irish Catholic president into the White House, and Sam expected Kennedy to return the favor by looking the other way when it came to the Chicago outfit. But Kennedy ran a hard bargain. Before agreeing to anything, he allegedly needed something from Sam,

and it was a pretty big ask. Apparently, he wanted Sam to help the CIA kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. While the CIA had been gathering intelligence on Castro for years, they hadn't been ready to actually take him down. But now, with Sam on their side, the Kennedy administration thought they might have the missing piece. They figured a kingpin like Sam would know plenty of cold-blooded killers who could help them get the job done. Sam passed along the name of one of his operatives to the CIA, a wildly corrupt Chicago cop named Richard Cain, who was, was fluent in five languages and an expert marksman. Soon, the CIA was putting Kane to work,

training Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro's government. By 1961, the invasion was all planned, and the Cuban soldiers were ready to go. But there were some unexpected bumps along the way. On April 14, 1961, a brigade of 1400 CIA-backed Cuban exiles and mercenaries landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs, but before they even got inland, they were quickly defeated by Castro's army. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion was a massive embarrassment for the Kennedy administration. Privately, JFK blamed the CIA for bungling the operation and

fired several key members of the agency in retaliation. The CIA agents Sam had worked with were furious at Kennedy, who they believed had stabbed them in the back. Seeing how Kennedy double-crossed his own spies, Sam grew concerned. If the president was willing to turn on his own operatives, how could Sam trust him to keep his promise and stay away from the Chicago mob? Sam was right to question Kennedy's loyalty. Over the next couple of years, the president's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, established a special organized crime task force. Soon, FBI agents were aggressively surveilling the Chicago Outfits operations. Sam tried to get in touch with JFK for an explanation, but none of his White House contacts were returning

his calls. Sam's troubled relationship with the president ended on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. In the decades since, rumors have swirled that Sam Giancana had teamed up with the disgruntled ex-CIA operatives to orchestrate Kennedy's assassination as revenge. However, while declassified documents have confirmed Sam's involvement with the CIA's Cuba operations, there's no evidence he was involved in Kennedy's murder. But even though JFK was gone, the FBI was still watching the Chicago outfit around the clock, and in 1965 they started to take action.

That year, 57-year-old Sam was served with a subpoena to testify at a grand jury hearing on organized crime. He ignored it and spent a year in jail for contempt of court. Sam had obeyed the mafia's golden rule, never talk to the police. But if he was hoping his fellow gangsters would appreciate his silence, he was sorely mistaken. Shortly after his release in 1966, Sam's lieutenants in the Chicago outfit let him know he had too much heat on him. He was a magnet for attention, and it was having a serious impact on the outfit's bottom line. It was a polite suggestion, but Sam had spent enough time in the mob to know what would happen if he didn't take the hint. So in 1967, 59-year-old Sam Giancana retired as head of the Chicago outfit.

Right after, he moved to Mexico, where he hoped to avoid any mobsters or government agents who had unfinished business with him. But just because he wasn't in the U.S. didn't mean he was in the clear. In July 1974, after seven years in the tropical city of Quernavaca, 66-year-old Sam was arrested by Mexican police. He'd overstayed his tourist visa and was deported back to the United States. There, he resettled in a bungalow in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Oak Park. By then, Sam's health was failing. He was suffering from a gallbladder disorder and had multiple operations over the course of the next. year. In the middle of all this, he got some unexpected news. In early 1975, Sam received another

subpoena, this one from the U.S. Senate's Church Committee. Headed by Idaho Senator Frank Church, the committee was tasked with investigating abuses and corruption within the U.S. intelligence community. Because Sam had firsthand knowledge that the government had worked with organized crime figures, like himself, the church committee was eager for him to testify. The last time Sam had gotten a subpoena like this one, he'd ignored it and ended up in prison. Now Sam was very sick. He knew his days were numbered, and he didn't want to spend whatever time he had left behind bars. So he agreed. But just days before he was scheduled to testify, somebody silenced Sam Giancana for good. On the night of June 19, 1975, Sam's caretaker found him dead on the floor of his kitchen,

shot six times in the head. He was 67 years old. He was the first person in U.S. history who was killed to prevent them from testifying before Congress. Sam Giancana's murderer was never caught. Some people believed he was killed by the Chicago outfit, while others think it was a former CIA operative who wanted to protect the agency's reputation, will probably never know the truth. But not even a bullet could change the fact that the little Italian runaway had left a lasting impression on Chicago and America. Coming up, another history-making mobster who met a mysterious end. 28 years before Sam Giancana was gunned down in his home by an unknown assailant, another mob kingpin met a similar fate. Like Sam, this mafioso started his criminal

career as a young boy before rising in the ranks to rub elbows with America's elite. Along the way, he turned a desolate desert town into one of the world's hottest tourist attractions. On the evening of June 20, 1947, 41-year-old Benjamin Bugsy Siegel was enjoying a quiet, night at his Beverly Hills mansion. Bugsy was one of America's most famous gangsters. He was a founding member of the mafia-run assassin ring, Murder Inc., a friend to Hollywood superstars like Carrie Grant, and the owner of Las Vegas' newest casino. Needless to say, he had a lot going on.

He probably felt like he'd earned a little rest and relaxation. At around 10.30 p.m., Bugsy was lounging on the couch, reading the Los Angeles Times, when Nine bullets crashed through the living room window. The first round hit Bugsy square in the head. Three other shots hit him in the face and chest, but the job was already done. The former chairman of Murder Inc. had just been killed himself. In some ways, he was the victim of his own success, but he was also undoubtedly the victim of his failures. Benjamin Siegel's life began on the other side of the country in a Brooklyn tenement on February 28, 1906.

He was one of five children whose parents were poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. While his mother stayed home with the kids, Benjamin's dad spent his days making clothes in a sweatshop, barely earning enough to keep food on the table for his family. Benjamin saw how hard he worked to make so little. and he decided at an early age that he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps. By the time he was 12, in 1918, Benjamin had given up on school to focus on a much more lucrative pastime. He and his friends would walk up to streetcar vendors in their neighborhood and ask for a dollar. If the vendor said no, the boys would splash kerosene on the vendor's goods, then set them on fire.

The next time they came back around, the vendor knew. to give them the money. In the world of organized crime, this is called a protection racket, and Benjamin was very good at it. Soon he became known as Bugsy for his short temper and tendency to go Bugs, a slang term for lashing out with acts of ferocious violence. Before long, Bugsie's antics caught the eye of another streetwise hooligan from a Jewish family, Meyer Lansky. Meyer was four years older than Bugsy and was inspired by New York's Irish and Italian street gangs. He wanted to create one for Jewish kids like him, and he wanted Bugsy to be his first recruit. Bugsy was all in. Soon they were recruiting more and more Jewish boys to their cause.

Eventually, locals began calling their operation the Bugs and Meyer mob. Over the next 10 years, the Bugs and Meyer mob, expanded from a simple street gang to the beginnings of a criminal empire. They ran illegal card games, extorted protection money from businesses all over Brooklyn, and staged daring robberies in Manhattan and Harlem. Hot-headed Bugsy was the gang's chief enforcer. If you owed the gang money from a card game or were behind on your protection payments, Bugsy would be the one to smack you around until you paid up.

Meanwhile, Meyer was the brains of the operation, running the business, counting the money, always strategizing and thinking about the big picture. It was this long-term thinking that led Meyer to forge an alliance with a young Italian-American gangster named Charles Lucky Luciano. While most Sicilian mafiosos looked down on the still-up-and-coming The Bugs-And-Meyer mob, Lucky Luciano respected their hustle. The two gangs coordinated with one another, peacefully divvying up neighborhoods to maximize profits and minimize unnecessary violence. These young criminals were taking a more business-like approach to organized crime than the older, more traditional Sicilian gang bosses.

And it wasn't long until their efforts paid off. For the next decade, Bugsie, Meyer, and Lucky worked together to take down New York's more established gangs. The city's most powerful gangster, Joe Masseria, head of the Genovese crime family, was wrapped up in a massive turf war with a rival Italian gang. Bugsie and his cronies saw this and sensed an opportunity. While Joe Masseria was focused on an endless cycle of assassinations, the Bugs and Meyer mob was steadily muscling in on his bootlegging empire. Although Bugsie and Meyer were busy growing their criminal enterprise, they still found time for romance. And like everything else in their lives, they did it together.

In 1927, they started double dating a pair of girls from the Lower East Side, Esta Krakauer and Anna Citron. Bugsy's girlfriend, Esther, was crazy about him, and the two got married in 1929, when Bugsy was 22 and she was 17. Meyer and Anna followed suit four months later, and while both women knew their husbands were involved with bootlegging, neither was aware of how deadly their business was, or how much more violent it was about to get. On April 15, 1931, a new era in organized crime began. That night, Lucky Luciano invited Joe Masseria to dinner and an Italian restaurant in Coney Island.

He said he wanted to talk about forming an alliance. After a few hours of whining and dining Joe, Lucky excused himself and went to the bathroom. Moments later, Bugsie Siegel rushed in with three of his most trusted killers and shot Joe dead at the dinner table. With that, the old guard was officially finished. Now, 25-year-old Bugsy-Sigel, 29-year-old Meyer Lansky and their ally, 34-year-old Lucky Luciano, were the most powerful

gangsters in New York. Together, they joined forces to form a new criminal organization, one that finally united Italian, Irish, and Jewish criminals in pursuit of profit. They called themselves the Syndicate. The Syndicate did all the things the Bugs and Meyer mob used to do, protection rackets, illegal gambling, bootlegging, robbery, but on a much bigger scale. The group expanded out of New York and into cities all over the East Coast. The syndicate was run by a commission, which included all the most important gang leaders on the East Coast. This commission mediated disputes and voted on the syndicate's operations,

ensuring that disagreements were handled in the boardroom instead of on the streets. Bugsie ran the syndicate's enforcement arm, chillingly known as Murder Inc. If the commission voted that someone needed to die, murder ink would do the dirty work. Bugsy recruited and trained a small army of hitmen who killed up to a thousand people during the 1930s. He joined in on the violence whenever he could. But one day in the fall of 1932, the violence came looking for him. Bugsy was driving to a meeting with a business associate in Manhattan when a car pulled up beside him at a red light. Moments later, the passengers in the other vehicle pointed a machine gun at Bugsy and fired.

Bugsy's car was bulletproof and he managed to speed off unharmed. Afterward, he returned to his and Myers' hideout on Grand Street, and that's when a bomb went off. It had been stashed in the chimney. Although his injuries were minor, Bugsie's men rushed him to the hospital, and while he'd escaped with his life, Bugsie was furious. Through his underworld sources, he learned the attempted hits had been ordered by a gangster named Tony Fabroso. Bugsy and his Murder Inc. hitmen had killed two of Tony's brothers for messing with the syndicate. Tony had wanted to avenge their deaths. Now Bugsie was eager. to even the score. A few nights after the bombing, Bugsie told his nurses at the hospital that he was

going to bed early. He hid a few pillows under his blankets, then snuck out of the first floor window where his men were waiting in a car to whisk him away. Bugsy knew Tony was hiding out at his dad's house until the heat died down. His men drove him over and Bugsie knocked on the door. When Tony's elderly father answered, Siegel flashed a fake badge and claimed to be a detective with some questions from Mr. Frabzzo's son. The old man summoned Tony to the front door. As soon as he appeared, Bugsie drew his gun and shot Tony in the face while his family watched. Then he hurried back to the hospital. He climbed back through the window and into his bed. if the police came calling about the murder, the nurses could back up his alibi. He'd been asleep all night. But even though he'd outmaneuvered the law, Bugsie's brazen killing

caused a lot of headaches for Meyer Lansky and the rest of the syndicate. It hadn't been approved by the commission and generated headlines and publicity that the syndicate didn't want. To make things even worse, New York City's newly elected mayor, and anti-corruption crusader, Fiorello LaGuardia, had pledged to crack down on organized crime. With this much heat on them, the syndicate needed to play it cool and keep a low profile. But everyone on the commission knew that playing it cool wasn't exactly Bugsy's strong suit. So they hatched a plan to keep their hot-headed enforcer as far away from their New York operations as possible. In 1933, Bugsy Siegel took his first trip out to Los Angeles.

The syndicate had decided to open a West Coast operation, and they thought he was the perfect man for the job. By the 1930s, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel was one of the most feared gangsters on the East Coast. He was part of a new mob organization called The Syndicate, which he ran with his friend and co-conspirator Meyer Lansky, and a few other gang leaders. But Bugsy and Lansky were the head honchos in charge. Meyer managed business operations

while Bugsy did the dirty work, running a squad of hit men known as Murder Inc. But after Bugsy's high-profile murders began to draw unwanted attention, the syndicate decided it was time to send their hot-headed colleague out west. That way he could expand the operation and hopefully learn to tone down his antics along the way. And so, in 1933, 27-year-old Bugsy rented a 35-room mansion in Beverly Hills for himself, his wife, Esta, and their two young daughters.

Bugsy immediately fell in love with Southern California. He'd always been a movie buff, and with his good looks and snappy suits, he fit right in with the Hollywood crowd. He even had an old friend in the movie business, George Raft. Back when they were kids, he and Bugsy had wreaked havoc on the streets of Brooklyn. Eventually, George straightened up, found work as a Broadway actor, and went to Hollywood, where he made a name for himself playing gangsters on the big screen. When George heard Bugsie was coming to L.A., he was thrilled.

Now he could introduce his famous friends to a real-life gangster. Before long, Bugsy was a fixture at Hollywood parties, where movie stars couldn't wait to meet the suave and charming mob hitman. Leading men like Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Carrie Grant were fascinated by Bugsy's machismo and studied his mannerisms for their own roles. Bugsy asked Platinum blonde starlet Jean Harlow to be the godmother to one of his daughters, and had several affairs with different actresses. But when Bugsy wasn't partying with celebrities, he was hard at work. Los Angeles was an untapped market for organized crime, and everywhere he looked, Bugsy saw opportunities to make a fortune.

First, Bugsy forged an alliance with the leaders of Hollywood's background actors union. Bugsy used this partnership to extort the Hollywood kingpins he met at parties. If the head of a studio didn't pay him off, Bugsy would make sure no extras showed up to film the big crowd scene the following day. With the entire production at stake, it was cheaper and safer for the studios to play ball with the dangerous gangster in their midst. In his first year in Hollywood, Bugsy squeezed the studios for more than $400,000 this way. It's the equivalent of nearly $10 million today. But Bugsy made even more money for the syndicate by running illegal gambling operations.

He organized regular high-stakes craps games at his management. and muscled his way into the lucrative world of off-track bedding, taking a cut of the winnings from horse and greyhound races all over Southern California. He even partnered with his actor pal, George Raft, to invest in the SS Rex, a casino boat anchored in international waters just a few miles from Santa Monica. Water taxis ran between L.A. and the Rex 24 hours a day, ferrying wealthy Angelinos to the floating gambling den where U.S. laws didn't apply. In its first six months, the SS Rex earned over $200,000.

But despite all the money-changing hands, Bugsie felt like something was missing. He knew he was supposed to be laying low in L.A., but he couldn't help himself. And before long, Bugsie was raring to get back to his favorite pastime, contract. killing. Harry Greenberg, known to his friends as Big Greenie, was a 30-year-old New York-based member of the syndicate. When aggressive federal prosecutor Thomas Dewey started investigating him in early 1939, Big Greenie went on the run, first to Montreal and then to Detroit. But at some point, Big Greenie cracked. Word got back to the syndicate that he was thinking about cooperating with Dewey's investigation and ratting out his friends. So the syndicates leaders put the matter

to a vote and agreed. Big Greenie had to die before he got them all arrested. As luck would have it, Big Greenie had left Detroit and taken up residence in Los Angeles. Soon, Bugsy Segal got a call from his old murdering colleagues asking if he could hire some guys to take Big Greenie out. Bugsy was thrilled to have a chance to get back into the assassination game. Even though his bosses at the syndicate instructed him not to get personally involved in the hit, Bugsy couldn't help himself. Bugsy used his connections to track Big Greenie to a small apartment and had his men keep an eye on the place. Then, on the night of November 22nd, 1939, when Big Greenie came home, an assassin was waiting

in the bushes beside the driveway. He stepped up to the driver's side window and shot Big Greenie five times, then ran out to the street where Bugsy was waiting in his brand new 1939 Buick convertible to help him escape. For a public figure like Bugsy, taking part in a gangland murder and using his own personal vehicle as the getaway car was unwise, to put it lightly. Over the next several months, police rounded up multiple accomplices who pointed to Bugsy as the mastermind. In 1940, 36-year-old Bugsy was arrested and held in custody as he went on trial for Big Greenie's murder. But after multiple key witnesses turned up dead, the charges were dropped in 1942.

Still, things weren't the same after Bugsy went free. In the wake of his highly publicized murder trial, the famous actors who used to flock to Bugsy's house no longer wanted to be seen with him. Feeling like he'd overstayed his welcome in Hollywood, Bugsy set his sights on new opportunities in a city just a few hours east. Las Vegas. In 1942, Las Vegas was a very different place than it is today. It was just a little railroad junction town, with a pocket. population of less than 8,500. After the Nevada legislature legalized gambling in 1931, a few old West-themed casinos sprung up, but most high rollers preferred the swankier gambling dens

up north in Reno, but Bugsy saw potential in Las Vegas that others didn't. His experience with the SS Rex had shown that wealthy Angelenos wanted a casino gambling hotspot close to home, and Las Vegas wasn't far away. Rebounding from his recent failures, Bugsy wagered he could turn his luck around in Vegas. Gambling had always been a profitable venture for Bugsy and the syndicate. Now, Bugsy wanted to build a luxury casino that would put Las Vegas on the map. Card games and roulette plus resort-style amenities like air conditioning and swimming pools. For the next few years, Bugsy tried to buy a controlling stake in different small-time casinos around Vegas. Eventually, he realized he'd be better off building his own from scratch.

In 1946, 42-year-old Bugsy partnered with a cash-strapped property developer named Billy Wilkerson to buy a 33-acre plot on the south side of town. In March of that year, they broke ground on a casino that would change Las Vegas forever. Bugsy called his pet project the Flamingo. It turned out Bugsy was a great gangster, but a terrible project manager. Soon he'd pushed out Wilkerson, the experienced developer, and insisted on ordering the construction workers around himself. Once the contractors realized how clueless Bugsy was,

they found ways to take advantage of him. In the wake of World War II, construction materials were already expensive. Now, Bugsie's suppliers were double or triple billing him for every truckload of materials, knowing the gangster would never catch on. Before long, the Flamingo's construction budget had ballooned from $1.2 million to $6 million, nearly $100 million in today's dollars. This was a problem for Bugsie. He'd put a lot of the syndicates' money in the Flamingo, promising his fellow gangsters a huge return on investment. As the costs spiraled out of control, Bugsy's old friend Meyer Lansky started to grow impatient.

Bugsy was already on thin ice after his attention-grabbing roll in the Big Greenie hit. Now his desert adventure was seriously impacting the syndicate's bottom line. By December of 1946, nearly 10 months since breaking ground, The Flamingo still hadn't opened. To add insult to injury, Meyer believed that Bugsie had been embezzling some of the funds. Instead of investing the syndicate's money into the flamingo, the way he was supposed to, he thought Bugsie was funneling it into an offshore bank account instead. This was the last straw.

The leaders of the syndicate put the matter to a vote and decided that Bugsie Siegel had to die. But one person was willing to go to bat for him. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy's oldest friend and partnering crime, wanted to give his pal one last chance. He urged his fellow gangsters to hold off on the hit until after the Flamingo's grand opening on December 26th. If Bugsy's investment turned out to be as big of a moneymaker as he claimed, the syndicate could rethink their decision.

Bugsy didn't know it, but he was gambling with. with his life. Bugsy Siegel pulled out all the stops for the grand opening of the Flamingo. He called in every favor he could with the Hollywood celebrities who would still talk to him, hoping to get all the stars at the Flamingo for opening night. But when December 26th arrived, a winter storm in L.A. grounded the two planes Siegel had chartered to fly the celebrities to the party. In Vegas, the few guests who showed up found a half-finished,

casino with faulty heating and decrepit rooms. To make matters worse, rival casinos had hired professional gamblers to attend the party. By the end of the night, the Flamingo wound up paying out more money than it made at the card tables. Even if Bugsie didn't know his life was on the line, it was clear he had to make some changes and fast. In January of 1947, he temporarily closed the Flamingo to finish construction. It reopened in March. But despite all the glitz and glamour inside the casino's bright pink walls, the operation was still losing money. Bugsy had done everything he could think of, and yet the Flamingo wasn't bringing in enough business to cover the hotel's astronomical costs. By July, even Bugsy's longtime defender, Meyer Lansky, was ready to pull the plug on his old

friend. On the night of June 20th, 1947, Bugsie was back in L.A. after an extended stay in Vegas, trying to turn the Flamingos fortunes around. He sat on the couch with a newspaper trying to relax after the stress of the past few months. Outside, a sniper was hiding, watching. They took aim and fired nine shots, killing Bugsie with a bullet to the head. Minutes after Bugsie's death, representatives from the syndicate walked into the Flamingo and informed them the casino had a new manager, Meyer Lansky. With Meyer at the helm, the Flamingo flourished,

attracting even more casinos and turning Vegas into a worldwide destination. Meanwhile, Bugsie's killer was never caught. The hot shot had gone to Vegas, bet big, and lost it all. Looking back at this week in crime history, we can see that crime sometimes does pay, at least for a while. Sam Giancana and Bugsy Siegel rose from the streets and lived like kings for a time.

But eventually the bill came due, and it was delivered by the people they once called friends. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, This is Scams, Money, and Murder. If you enjoyed this episode, you can check out more just like it by searching for Crime House, The Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Scams, money, and murder is a Crimehouse original.

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