Factor was released from Sandstone Prison in
February of 1948. He was sentenced to parole for the remaining four years of
his ten-year sentence. In 1954, at the end of his parole sentence, he told the
parole board he was broke. In 1955, one year after his final meeting with the
parole board, and six years since he last held a job, convicted felon John
Factor announced that he had purchased the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas. Jake
the Barber was now the owner and operator of one of the largest casinos in the
world.
It was Murray Humpreys who decided that Jake
the Barber would buy the Stardust with the only explanation out of the mob
being that "Jake owes Chicago a big one."
Humpreys must have put up the money to buy
the casino. From that point on, Jake the Barber was Chicago's front man in the
Stardust, and it was a mob gold mine.
At first the outfit was excited at the
prospect of having John Factor as its head man. He was, at least by mob
standards, trustworthy. He was smart enough to know the outfit would kill him
in a heartbeat if he tried anything creative.
The problem with Factor was that he, like
Cornero, couldn't get a liquor license. As Hank Messick wrote, "...much to
the disgust of the Chicago boys. The Barber tried everything he could to get a
license but there was no way it was going to happen. He finally bowed to
reality and announced that he would lease to the Desert Inn Group....It took a
western Appalachian to solve the matter."
In a meeting held in mob lawyer Sidney
Korshak's Beverly Hills office, Meyer Lansky, Longy Zwillman, Doc Stacher
(representing New York and New Jersey), Moe Dalitz and Morris Kleinman decided
that Dalitz would lease the casino operation. Dalitz represented the Desert
Inn. All involved agreed that Dalitz's Desert Inn would pay $100,000 a month-a
low figure for the second largest money maker in Las Vegas-to operate the
casino part of the Stardust. Factor would, at least on paper, still own the
building, the grounds and the hotel operation.
Dalitz, who was one of the founding members
of the national crime syndicate, would run the day-to- day operation and Johnny
Rosselli-Brian Foy's old pal-would be off in the shadows, representing the true
owners of the Stardust: Paul Ricca, Tony Accardo, Sam Giancana and Murray
Humpreys.
Everybody was making money off the Stardust.
Carl Thomas, the master of the Las Vegas skim, estimated that the Chicago mob
was skimming $400,000 a month from the Stardust in the early sixties, and that
was only for the one arm bandits. Blackjack, craps, keno, roulette and poker
yielded a different skim.
It was more money then they had ever dreamed
of and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to prevent them from taking it.
And then Roger Touhy was released from
prison.