But it's ok to be murderers, pimps, loan sharks, drug dealers, casino robbers, assaulters, prostitutes and Harry Reid.
From the LA Times: Frank Citro Jr. is holding court at his regular table at a dingy roadhouse, about as far from the glamour of the Strip as you can get.
Men in suits stop to pay their respects, some kissing the cologne-splashed cheek of the guy they call Frankie. It's a gesture of affection, like those of his neighborhood cronies in Jersey City, back in the old days.
But more recent days haven't been so kind to Frankie. He loves this live-music joint, don't get him wrong. When you're Frank Citro Jr., there are only so many nightspots in this town where you're still welcome.
For 23 years, Frankie has been included in Nevada's Black Book, officially the "Excluded Person List," an index of desert undesirables blackballed by the state's casino regulators. Since its inception in 1960, the book has included such mobsters as William "Icepick Willie" Alderman, Murray "the Camel" Humphries and Chicago crime boss Sam "the Cigar" Giancana.
Black Book inclusion means you can't own, manage or even enter a casino. The only way off the list is to die, and even then state regulators require a death certificate as proof that you are, indeed, truly departed.
Now the 68-year-old Frankie is attempting something never tried in the book's history: He wants off the list while he's still alive.
"I don't belong in this book," he said in his thick Jersey accent, an unlit Camel dangling from his lips. "I never cheated a casino, never had a fight there. I'm just supposedly a notorious felon. There are lots of felons in this town. Why me?"...
In 1985, Frankie and six others were convicted of bookmaking and loan-sharking operations in Southern California and Las Vegas that prosecutors said charged clients as much as 1,000% interest. He spent two years in prison.
To gaming officials, the verdict — not to mention the fact he had consorted with known mobsters — made him the kind of notorious character they didn't want in Nevada's casinos. So they put him in the Black Book, a distinction that dims even the brightest lights of Sin City. Being inside a casino, he knows, can mean arrest and even jail time.
Frankie says the book discriminates against Italian Americans — half the list's 33 current members have Italian surnames — and promotes Mafia stereotypes. This in a city that has embraced its organized crime roots with not one, but two, mob museums. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vegas-frankie-20130327-dto,0,5366025.htmlstory
Considering all the criminals the casinos have in their midst nowadays, they should let this guy in, unless there is some compelling reason to keep him out.
Cripes, look what happened a couple of weeks ago when a couple of pimp thugs got into a fight at a casino and one of the thug pimps and shot and killed another thug pimp on Las Vegas Blvd. and took out a taxi driver and passenger.
And they want to keep this guy out of a casino?
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