EDITOR’S NOTE: “Vegas Myths Busted” publishes new entries every Monday, with a bonus Flashback Friday edition. Today’s entry in our ongoing series originally ran June 3, 2024.

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel is incorrectly blamed for introducing the mafia to Las Vegas in 1946. That’s when the suspected murderer from Brooklyn exploited Flamingo founder Billy Wilkerson’s gambling addiction as the means to steal the under-construction casino resort out from under him.

Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, bought the land where the Flamingo would be built, named the casino resort, and even started its construction in 1945. But he soon ran out of money due to his costly weakness.

And guess who was nice enough to be there to lend it to him?

Bugsy first came to town in 1940, to invest in the Northern Club downtown, looking for a piece of the race wire market.

Five years later, he and his partner, Moe Sedway, launched their own race wire, called TransAmerica, through which they ran the horse-betting at the Frontier, the Las Vegas Club, El Cortez, and other Las Vegas casinos.

Race wire services kept illegal bookies — and casinos in Nevada, which had just legalized off-track betting — informed of horse racing entries, odds, pay-off prices, and, of course, results.

The precious information was rushed out over a network of telegraph wires.