The Mob and Las Vegas

In the below clip, Nick Civella discusses political donations in Nevada with Carl “Tuffy” DeLuna. A lot of these conversations were recorded inside the law office of James Patrick Quinn. Civella and his upper echelon mobsters often gathered at this law office to discuss their skimming and other business activities in Las Vegas. They believed the FBI could not plant a microphone or tap the telephone inside a lawyer’s office. They were woefully uninformed about the law of electronic surveillance and probable cause.

This office was located in the next block away from the office of the KCPD Intelligence Unit and 3 blocks from the FBI office. Once we learned they had a secret meeting place with a code name of “The Square”, we merely followed Tuffy and watched him enter this office. We sat back and during the next 15 minutes several others including Nick Civella appeared and entered. During the next few weeks, we merely watched this same office in the afternoon and these same subjects reappeared at about the same time and stayed for about 2 hours.  This was the basis for our probable cause. Once Sunday afternoon, we surrounded the building with agents and the Black Bag guys planted the microphones and the phone company made the connections. The take from this installation was phenomenal.

Denny Griffin’s book, The Battle for Las Vegas, tells some of these stories. Check out Denny Griffin on facebook.

 

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