Casino Artie Piscano
Philip Greenwas an American real estate agent and casino executive who served as the Chicago Outfit's frontman for running the Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada during the 1970s. Philip Green worked as an Arizona real estate agent for years. In 1973 the American Mafia set him up as a frontman by establishing the Tangiers Corporation with Green as its CEO, which would open the Tangiers. The casino counters begin stealing some money for themselves, prompting the Midwest mafia bosses to put Artie Piscano of the Kansas City mafia in charge of overseeing the transactions. Piscano is hopelessly inept. Vinny Vella as Artie Piscano. The research for Casino began when screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi read a 1980 report from the Las Vegas Sun about a domestic argument between Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, a casino figure, and his wife Geri McGee, a former topless dancer. The film depicts the situation as follows: Chicago mob bosses thought someone was stealing part of the skim money from the fictional Tangiers Casino (based on the Stardust casino) and assigned the Kansas City family to oversee the operation and look into the theft from the skim. In the film, the character Artie Piscano represents Kansas City. Artie Piscano (died 1980) was the Underboss of the Kansas City crime family of the American Mafia. During the 1970s, he was sent to Las Vegas, Nevada to oversee the Mafia's skim operation, as local mobsters were taking some of the skim for themselves. Piscano was known to be an inept mobster, and he kept incriminating ledgers.
I have not addressed the “elephant in the room” much, if at all. As most of you know, in the film, Casino, Producer Martin Scorsese and writer Nick Pileggi tell about the Las Vegas casino skim. They show a clip indicating the FBI hidden microphone was inside a vent in the back of a store. The character, Artie Piscano, was supposed to be Tuffy DeLuna. First of all, that character was not anything like Tuffy. I knew Tuffy DeLuna and the Artie character was no Tuffy DeLuna. The FBI heard the first mention of the skim in this mike. As you know, in reality, that was at a table in the Villa Capri.
Casino Artie Piscano
In the below clip, I found a piece of the Casino film that shows a conversation about the skim and then a conversation between Vincent Borelli (the Nick Civella character) and Artie Piscano (Tuffy). Borelli tells Piscano he must go out and check on the skim. Artie complains about not getting reimbursed for his expenses. He said he was going to keep records so he could get his money back. Borelli tells him, “Artie no records, What do you want to keep records for, to pay taxes.” Watch this clip to see what really happened. I inserted some actual audio from the mike.