The CCS chips came off ebay. We only saw the one auction for 2 chips. Mike Vuolo bought them and we took one each. Turned out they were good ones.

After over 50 years in the poker world, every time I think I’ve seen it all, sure enough they come up with something new. It looks like the same rule applies to the history of the “Illegal Of The Day” posts. We have seen almost every type of city, county, and state official, both elected and appointed, indicted for conspiring to keep the illegal casinos operating.

Here comes the topper! The Iowa “State Attorney General,” the number one law enforcement person in the state is indicted for graft from illegal club operators. This one might be hard to top. Maybe we need to go back and revisit those 2 Missouri illegals that Harry Truman’s name showed up in.

The Illegal casino operators across the country left a never ending trail of $, $, $, and $.

Enough Of that:

Iowa:

Tony Pasha
Club Cigar Store
422 Nebraska
Sioux City, IA

CCS

Anthony “Tony” Pasha was born to Italian immigrant parents at Omaha, Nebraska in 1896. In the 1910’s he crossed the Missouri River into Iowa and settled about 100 miles northwest of Omaha in Sioux City. From the late 1910’s until the early 1940’s Pasha operated billiard halls and cigars stores at many locations in downtown Sioux City and became a well known gambler there.

In 1935 the editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Verne Marshall, started an investigation into political corruption in the State of Iowa and began publishing stories about what he found. His exposure of gambling payoffs made in Sioux City led to a grand jury investigation there which resulted in the indictment of Iowa’s Attorney General Edward O’Connor and several others in July 1935, including Tony Pasha and his brother Frank. The indictment and subsequent trial of the AG was a story reported nationwide. Here’s the New York Times from July 4th 1935 (AG’s name was O’Connor not O’Connell):

My note: The story made the New York Times. That tells you just how big the story was.

Although indicted in July, the trial of the AG wouldn’t begin until November. Pasha and Sioux City gamblers James Pontralo and Ike Sherman, who had also been indicted, provided financial assistance for the Attorney General’s legal defense. The Pasha’s weren’t arraigned until October:

My note: ” Huh?” The illegal operators paid for the Attorney General’s lawyers? Sounds like some of the stuff that went on in Newport, KY for over 30 years.

The Attorney General’s trial began November 12th 1935 and ended seven weeks later with a hung jury. At a second trial in January1936 he was acquitted. The work of the Cedar Rapids Gazette and its editor Verne Marshall in its “crusade against corruption and misgovernment” was recognized a few months later when it was awarded the most prestigious honor given to journalism in the US: the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. A day later the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the indictments against the other defendants in the gambling and graft investigation, including Tony Pasha, were invalid and the cases were dropped.

My note: Let me think! HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM?

The newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize. Gamblers paid for AG’s lawyers. The AG was acquitted. The Iowa Supreme Court throws out indictments of the gamblers on a technicality. Do you think we might have found the end of the never ending trail of the $, $, $, and $? I wouldn’t bet on it.

The issue still was making the news several months later when the guy who had been the attorney for the Attorney General during his conspiracy trial, Fred H. Free, made some comments about the job performance of Sioux City’s Commissioner of Public Safety.

The Commissioner, who claimed to have knowledge that a majority of the Sioux City Police Department was being paid off by “two big gambling games” released a statement in reply to Free’s comments; here’s part of it:
(Free was a Special Assistant to the Attorney General at the time)

In the years between the AG’s conspiracy trial and the ordering of the CCS chips in Nov.1939, Pasha operated in succession a billiard hall at 418 1/2 Nebraska, the Turf Cigar Store at 517 Pierce and the Paddock Cigar Store at 314 Nebraska. The structure which housed the Club Cigar Store at 422 Nebraska no longer exists—the whole original block is gone and has been replaced by one large building which houses the Sioux City Public Museum.

Here’s a current aerial with an old map showing the location; a few doors away is the Capitol Movie Theater:

Here’s a couple of views of the street from the 1950’s & 1960’s (not very good quality pics; the Capitol movie marquee is visible on the right):

The Club Cigar Store ran for maybe 2 years; by 1942 it was no longer there. This is about the time Pasha re-crosses the Missouri River and heads northwest again—this time about 1600 miles to Seattle, Washington. Pasha resides there for most of the rest of his life and appears to have been involved in activities similar to what he was doing in Sioux City (his brother Frank followed shortly afterwards). Tony died in the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona in 1987 at the age of 91 and was buried in Seattle.

Sioux City was the hometown of Pauline Esther Friedman, better known as Abigail Van Buren or “Dear Abby” (her father owned several movie theaters in Sioux City including the Capitol on Nebraska). In 1960 a “Mrs. Chips” seeks her wise counsel:

All poker players should frame Dear Abby’s response to Mrs. Chips on their walls above their poker table. You now have the perfect excuse to stick in the little woman’s face every Saturday night.
I came up with an answer that worked better for me. I taught the little woman to deal then play poker! She learned well and actually became a pretty good player.

She went on to become a poker room manager at a big Las Vegas resort, including running a major poker tourney. We were the only husband/wife poker room managers in Las Vegas at the time, 1990’s.

There were one other husband/wife poker managers that worked for Jackie Gaughan downtown in the 1980’s that I am aware of. They had the El Cortez and the Union Plaza at the same time.