Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel is remembered as the visionary mobster who first recognized the enormous money-making potential of the legalized gambling oasis of Las Vegas, Nevada, and who oversaw the construction of the town's first lavish casino and hotel, the Flamingo, in the mid-1940s. Like his close associates Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, Siegel began his underworld career as a street hoodlum on New York's Lower East Side, and with Lansky formed the Bug-Meyer Mob while still in his teens. Specializing in protection rackets, gambling, and auto theft, Siegel also quickly gained a reputation as a brutal hit man and worked alongside Lansky in the formation of Murder Inc., the enforcement arm of the New York syndicate. In the mid-1930s Siegel moved to California, where he worked to expand organized crime operations chiefly in gambling and drug smuggling, and renewed his...