Digital Social Hour
The Shocking Truth About Mob Life in Vegas | Anthony Ruggiano DSH #1168
Sat, 08 Feb 2025
🎲 Get ready to uncover the shocking truth about mob life in Vegas! In this gripping episode of the Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly sits down with Anthony, a former insider, to explore mind-blowing stories about the mob's control over Sin City, the rise and fall of its influence, and the untold secrets behind infamous mafia moments. From personal tales of mob bosses to the connections with Hollywood hits like *Casino* and *The Sopranos*, this conversation is packed with jaw-dropping insights you won’t hear anywhere else. 😱 Discover how Vegas evolved from being "mobbed up" to its glittering modern-day persona, the truth about the mafia's behind-the-scenes power, and the emotional toll of living a double life. You’ll even hear about Anthony’s crazy experiences in witness protection and his take on mob stories like the mysterious disappearance of Hoffa! 🤯 Don’t miss out on this exclusive insider look into the darker side of Vegas history. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and join the conversation today! 🚀 #crimedocumentary #truecrime #historydocumentary #truecrimestories #truecrimedocumentary #truecrime #truecrimestories #crimedocumentary #michaelfranzese #goodfellas CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:26 - Vegas in the 70s 03:19 - Where is Hoffa 05:24 - Consulting for Movies 06:20 - Mob Therapy 08:22 - Father's Double Life 11:15 - Dad’s Meatball Recipe 13:18 - The Third Trial 15:08 - Unlimited Money for Feds 18:25 - Faking Hospitalization for Trial Delay 19:08 - Longest Sentences in Prison 19:20 - Prison and Witness Protection 21:56 - Witness Protection in Idaho 26:30 - Living in Fear in Witness Protection 36:00 - Father's Role in JFK Assassination 39:38 - The French Mob 41:43 - Italian Mob and Heroin Trade 42:50 - Marijuana Business Insights 44:15 - New Jersey Mob's Power 46:10 - Politicians Under Mob Control 47:50 - Bad Blood with Gottis 49:40 - Reconciliation with Sammy the Bull 50:30 - Domenico Cefalu: Shelved Boss 51:40 - Joey Merlino's Influence 54:34 - Downfall of Philadelphia Mob 55:56 - Michael's Sports Betting Ventures 57:06 - How to Find Anthony APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: jenna@digitalsocialhour.com GUEST: Anthony Ruggiano https://www.instagram.com/anthonyruggianojr/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/
Chapter 1: What was Vegas like in the 1970s under mob control?
All right, guys, we got Anthony back on the show. Hasn't been to Vegas in, you said, what, 30 years? I haven't been to Vegas since 1977. Holy crap. October of 1977. Dude, so there's a lot of new buildings and stuff out there now. Oh, my God.
You know, I was at Caesar's Palace yesterday or yesterday. And when I, so let me tell you how I got to Vegas. So I got married October 2nd. in New York. Congrats. And Arnel de la Croce, who was the under boss of the Gambino family, was in prison at the time. But another main member, Joe the Cat, had a travel agent. And Neil's present to me was my honeymoon in Vegas.
So he sent me, I'm 24 years old. So he sent me to Vegas and it was Caesars Palace. And when I got in there, I was treated like, forget right this way, Mr. Ruggiano, because they knew it. Because back then Vegas was all mobbed up. Yeah. And across the street from Caesars was just like a little strip mall. Now there's beautiful buildings and it's just completely, totally different.
Yeah. When did the mob get ran out of Vegas? Do you know what time frame?
I would say sometime in the 80s. Well, I was there in 77. They had it on lockdown. I mean, I was treated like O'Neal sent me there. The guys, the people in Cedars Palace knew I was coming. They were waiting for me. I had a big suite. I had a credit line of like $2,000 in the casino, which was a ton of money back then. And everywhere I went, I went to all the shows. I got right in. I had no issues.
I would say... The 80s, going into the 80s, and then by the 90s, they were gone, and now they're totally out of it.
I heard some might be on the old strip, the downtown one, but I don't know.
I don't know. Listen, the mob is never going to go away. Never going to go. I mean, it was built with Team Stamani. We all know that. Tony Provenzano, I actually met him once. I was getting transferred out of Greenhaven, and he was getting transferred out of Greenhaven, And when the correctional officer put me on the bus, the prison bus, he was there. And he saw me.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Jimmy Hoffa?
We didn't know each other, but he must have known, Italian. And I sat down next to him, and I told him I was Fat Andy's son. And he heard, you know, he knew my old man. He goes, oh, how is he? And bah, bah, bah. And we had a conversation. And I was dying. to ask him about Hoffa. Where's the body? Yeah, it was like on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn't do it.
And I was getting transferred to this place, Arthur Kill, in Staten Island, and he was on the bus with me the whole way. I forgot where they were sending him, but I was dying to ask him because that's how this place was built. I mean, that's a fact. I mean, it was all teams to money. I mean, the movie Casino pretty much had... That's how it was. I mean- It was pretty accurate?
That was pretty accurate.
That's a good movie.
Without a doubt. That was definitely accurate. I mean, for sure.
Is there anyone alive right now that knows where Hoffa is, you think?
You know, that's a good- Somebody asked me that about two weeks ago. I don't think so. I think they're all gone. Damn. You know, they're all gone. And if they are alive, they got to be like close to 100. Yeah. You know, there's people that think they know or, you know, like somebody told me this. And so, like the movie, The Irishman, That was, I mean, some of that was true.
I mean, I knew, I actually knew the Russell Buffalino, the guy that Joe Pesky played. He was actually good friends with my family, my father and his partner. And we used to go to his Christmas show. He had a Christmas show every year, a Christmas party in Pittston every year. And the last time I went to his Christmas party, Tony Bennett sang at the Christmas party.
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Chapter 3: How accurate are mob portrayals in Hollywood movies?
He was the first person, when I got married in 77, he was actually the first person to come to my wedding in Brooklyn. He was the first person to show up. He was in on all that, you know, with the Hoffa, with the Vegas and all that. But that movie, The Irishman, The part that De Niro played, he wasn't involved like that. That's just stuff he made up. I don't believe that he was involved in it.
I don't think anybody knows where he is. My personal opinion is they dissolved his body. I don't think he's buried anywhere. My old man, that's what he used to tell me. They probably dissolved him because it's funny. Because Russell, you know, Russell Buffalino, the guy that's in the movie that Pesky played, we went to his Christmas party, like I said, every year. And he had a factory.
that we toured with him, me, my father, and a bunch of us. And it was like a chemical factory. And there was these big vats of chemicals. And teasingly, my father, Fat Andy, were walking through the warehouse. And we passed the vats. And my old man turns around and tells him, how many people did you just throw in that vat? It was like a joke. It was like a mob joke.
So maybe half of them went in the vat. Who knows? Very possible.
Definitely possible, man. Irishman. That was a decent one. It was a bit slow. Yeah. You know, that movie was long. Yeah. Do they consult with mafia guys when they're making movies like that?
Yeah, you know, they're consultants like for the casino. Yeah, not guys that are in, like guys like me that cooperated, that aren't in it but know about it. Yeah, they'll bring us in as consultants. Like Sammy the Bull's working on something. I might be a consultant on that. Definitely. Yeah, he's making a show, right? Yeah.
But a lot of the actors, too, you know, people don't realize, like a lot of actors grew up in neighborhoods that were run by the mob, like De Niro, Pesky. These guys grew up around wise guys. So they know how to portray them because they saw them from when they were kids. Scorsese grew up in downtown Manhattan. I mean, there was a mob club on every corner. Yeah.
And Sopranos, mob guys were definitely... talk to for that, because that was pretty much, they had everything down pat on The Sopranos, without a doubt.
So that show was really accurate, Sopranos?
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Chapter 4: What was Anthony Ruggiano's Family Life Like?
Very. Outside of him seeing a psychologist. The mob doesn't deal like that. Want me to tell you how the mob deals with psychiatric issues? They kill you, right? There was a guy named Vito Guzzo. He was a made member of the Colombo family. He was good friends with my father. Back in the day, in the 70s, he actually had, he probably was bipolar, but nobody knew what that was.
And he actually had a breakdown, a nervous breakdown, and he went into a psych ward. Damn. And he came out and he was okay. And then he had another one. The second one, he went back into the cycle. Now this is like the early 80s. He got out the second time and he disappeared. So that's how the mob dealt with people that had psychiatric issues. So the Sopranos were real. outside of that.
I mean, no mob boss is going to see a psychiatrist or a therapist. It's not going to happen.
Which is pretty crazy because I'd imagine a lot of mob guys have a ton of trauma from what they're witnessing and they can't even express it, right? You got to keep a straight face.
Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, you know, not even take, you know, if you're taking Prozac, you better not tell nobody. Damn. Yeah. And even the kids, listen, the kids, my daughter is traumatized. My daughter, she's a therapist. When my daughter was a kid, she was about eight years old, I was in prison, and she found a box, a cardboard box in the basement with newspaper articles in it, and she was...
read, you know, she was eight, she knew how to read. And she started reading the newspaper articles, and they were about murders, like my father's murders, the murder I was involved in. So she's reading these articles about her loving grandfather and her father involved in murders, and she didn't even know how to process it. She didn't even know how to talk to anybody about it.
Now, in her late 20s, she's processing it now. The kid's in therapy. Wow. Because her grandfather, my father, was so affectionate, And to think that he did crimes like that, like she's the kid's traumatized.
Yeah. So your father was living two lives, right?
Without a doubt. You know, I did a podcast yesterday, and they asked me to explain to them my father. So I told them my father at home never reprimanded me. And I was a truant. I was playing hooky. And he never had a father. His father died when he was eight years old in 1932. So he never had a father to reprimand him. So he never reprimanded us. He was an affectionate father.
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Chapter 5: How was Anthony's Father Caught by the Feds?
They would point to me and say, that's Fat Andy's son. That's Fat Andy's son. And that's when I started learning about it. And then me and him started talking about it. And he took me around and introduced me to people. Now my kid brother, he found out about it through the newspaper.
So my father had gotten indicted in Brooklyn on this, they bugged the trailer and he got caught on some tapes and he got indicted and it was on the front page of the newspaper. So when I came home one day, my brother said, is that true what they said about daddy? It's in the newspaper. And I go, yeah. And he had a baseball game that night. And my father went to all his baseball games.
So when I went upstairs, my father said to me, did Albert read the newspaper? And I said, yeah. So now we went back downstairs and my father looked at my brother and he says, you read the newspaper? And my brother said, yeah. My brother was about 11. And my brother said, yeah. And he goes, you still want me to come to the baseball game with you?
And my brother said, of course I want you to come to the baseball game. So we all get in the car, the three of us. We get in the car. We go to the baseball game. Now, none of the fathers knew my old man was a wise guy. They just thought he was like Andy, you know, a baseball, you know, father, you know, kid. So nobody knew.
We pulled up at the baseball game, the little league game, and they mobbed them. The fathers came right off the stand. Well, we didn't know, you know. They were like up his ass. They mobbed them to the point where they actually later on, they asked him for favors, and he got a couple of their sons later on in years in like the carpenter's union, the electrical union. Yeah.
But that's how me and my brother found out about him.
Yeah, that's wild. Crazy. You said they bugged his RV. Did you have methods for detecting bugs and stuff? You know, they bugged his house.
Not really. They did. My father, we never... People did, but we never did. We never checked around. My father had a house in Florida. They had the kitchen bug. He used to like to cook. Yeah. And he used to talk to guys in the kitchen. They put a bug in the kitchen light. Wow. When he went on trial, they had a... his meatball recipe on the bug.
He was telling an undercover FBI agent in the kitchen how to make meatballs. We didn't know the guy was an FBI agent. And he's in the kitchen telling the FBI agent how to make meatballs while they're discussing a crime. So when they played the tape in between him discussing a crime, you heard his meatball recipe. Everybody got a kick out of that.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Anthony face in prison and witness protection?
I mean, I never went to trial with the feds. I went to trial once with the state. I got convicted. But every time, the two times I got locked up by the feds, I took pleas both times.
Yeah, because first of all, it's too expensive, right, to fight that. Expensive. Second of all, the stress. Expensive.
My father went for everything. The third trial was funny because the first trial was we went for hundreds of thousands. The second trial, the same thing, but we fixed the jury. The third trial... We're in the restaurant. My father's partner, Tony Lee, he was a made member of the mob. Myself and this lawyer called Mark Krasnow, he was my father's attorney. This is the third trial.
I was sitting in the restaurant, and he was a character, Tony Lee, and he looks at the lawyer, and he tells the lawyer, now it's time to talk money. He tells the lawyer, got a razor blade on you? He looks at him and goes, what, what do I need a razor blade for? He said, cause all we got left is blood. Take our blood. We have no more money. All I got left is my blood.
But he, so he took a lot less for the first time. He said, all I got left is blood. Take my blood.
I mean, they bleed you dry, right? They got unlimited money. They have no conscience. I mean, they got unlimited resources, money.
Mob lawyers have, they're criminals. Mob lawyers are criminals. Mob lawyers are criminals. They actually tell you how to lie. They tell you how to... They're criminals. And they take your... They have no qualms about money. You know, you got to pay them. You have to pay them and that's it.
And they throw figures at you like... Well, a lot of lawyers, not even just mob lawyers, behind the scenes, they're working out deals with other size lawyers without you even knowing about it. But mob lawyers are...
And mob lawyers are different than other lawyers because mob guys, we're all guilty. You know what I mean? Like when we get indicted, we're guilty, you know? And they know it. And they, like Bruce Cutler, he was John Gotti's lawyer. He thought he was a wise guy. Like he kissed you on the cheek. He hung out in the club. He dressed like us. He acted like us. He liked the attention. Yeah.
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