Mobbed Up in Ohio

As of last month, I’ve been writing about casinos and walking gaming floors for 41 years. Well, these days, it’s more of a shuffle, rapidly careening toward a crawl, after which I will have my minions carry me to the craps table, like pharaohs were transported in days of old.

Anyway, in all that time, I’ve encountered characters of all stripes. I’ve been propositioned by lovely women, who, I soon realized, were actually working (and here I thought they just fancied old, fat bald guys). I’ve seen otherwise sane people talk to slot machines, begging them to pay out.

My wife and I were once at a casino bar when another couple invited us to go “party” in their hotel room. (We declined, due to an aversion to being murdered.)

I’ve been witness to slot abuse of all kinds. Just last week, a guy next to me at a video poker bar seemed to think that slapping the buttons would increase his luck. He was assaulting that button panel as if he were fending off a pack of wild jackals. (It didn’t help him win. Everyone knows you have to slap your foot to summon luck.)

Still, as I peruse the monthly gaming news feed, I find there are characters of a type I’ve never encountered, as evidenced by a recent news story from WKBN 27 in Youngstown, Ohio. It seems a man who was a regular customer of Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course, who also had outstanding arrest warrants for making terroristic threats, made some fresh threats shortly after arriving at the racino at 6:30 one Sunday morning.

According to police reports, officers were summoned to the property just after 7 a.m. on an “aggravated menacing” call. Employees told police that the man claimed to have lost $15,000 on a horse race, and he wanted his cash back because he owed money to the “Pittsburgh Mafia.”

He threatened to shoot one of the employees unless he got his money back, and he provided a checklist of the weapons he claimed to have for the job—9 mm and .45 caliber pistols, and a 12-gauge shotgun he described as a “fireball.” He didn’t appear to have any of the weapons on him, but apparently, he was ready to go fetch them and come back.

It gets weirder. According to the police report, he also warned the employees that he has relatives in the “New York Mafia,” and that his Mafia family godfather is… wait for it… President Donald Trump.

The president’s been called many things by many people, but this is the first time I’ve heard him called a wiseguy.

By the time police arrived, the man had evaded casino security staff and had gotten in his car and left. Someone gave police a description of the car, and it was spotted driving away from the casino on Mahoning Avenue. When he saw police lights, the guy took off and led the cops on a wild chase through town, swerving around vehicles and reaching speeds over 100 mph.

Comparisons of police video from the chase and casino surveillance footage confirmed it was the same man—the guy who lost $15,000 and owed money to the mob and was in Godfather Trump’s crew. One of the police said he appeared to stick a gun barrel out of the window as he fled. It was like a movie chase scene.

Somehow, the guy managed to elude the police. He got away. He “gave them the slip.” He was “on the lam.”

They eventually identified the man and arrested him. It’s not clear where he was when he was arrested, but it was either in Youngstown, Pittsburgh or at his godfather’s house in Washington, D.C. Or maybe Mar-a-Lago.

Moving on, another instance of casino crime last month revealed that criminals sometimes are not among the sharpest tools in the shed, or sharpest knives in the drawer, or sharpest metaphors in the column. A guy in a Pennsylvania casino lunged over a blackjack table, grabbed around $17,000 in purple chips, and somehow bolted out the door without getting caught.

The fact he managed to pull off this brazen heist and get away clean was amazing, but what was more amazing was what he did several hours later: He returned to the casino and used the purple chips to buy in at the craps table. He managed to cash those out, but the next day, he was at it again, redeeming three purple chips.

Naturally, he was arrested.

He told the judge he had to steal the chips. He owed money to the Pittsburgh Mafia.