Today, Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States and its citizens enjoy a good standard of living, with top-notch schools, a world-class university and many amenities that are never seen by the millions of tourists that continue to flock to this gambling resort in the Nevada desert. What makes the colorful stories about how Las Vegas came to be what it is today, as captured in motion pictures such as "Casino," all the more compelling is the fact that these stories are, by and large, true. In fact, notorious organized crime figures such as Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel were largely responsible for founding what would become modern Las Vegas, but billionaire Howard Hughes helped to transform it into the corporate Disneyland the city has become in the 21st century. This paper provides a review of the relevant literature to determine how these organized crime figures and others seized the opportunity represented by legal gambling to reap billons of dollars in ill-gotten gains before being shut down by federal law enforcement authorities. A summary of the research and important findings are provided in the conclusion.
             While definition vary, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 provides a working definition for the purposes of this analysis: "Organized crime means the unlawful activities of members of a highly organized, disciplined association engaged in supplying illegal goods and services, including but not limited to gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, narcotics, labor racketeering, and other unlawful activities of members of such associations" (cited in Chin, Kelly & Schatzberg at 23). According to Chin and his colleagues, in order to determine whether a given activity is an organized crime by this definition:
             1.Note whether an "association engaged in supplying illegal goods and services, including but not limited to gambling, prostitution...