It’s sometimes hard to tell where the entertainer, Las Vegas tough guy Frankie Citro, ends and the genuinely emotional family man Frank Citro begins.
The 80-year-old Las Vegan has been on the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s list of banned persons, also known as the “Black Book,” for 34 years as of this month.
Earlier this month, Citro hit out when his lawyer filed a formal request to be removed from the list – something that has never been done before by a living person.
Within the next few months, the Nevada Gaming Commission will determine if there is enough evidence to consider a hearing for his potential removal and only then can a hearing be brought before the commission for consideration.
“All I want is a chance,” Citro said in a recent interview.
If given the opportunity, Citro hopes to explain to the commissioners how his life has changed over the years.
“I think basically I would say to all the board members, it’s been a tremendous number of years that I’ve stayed out of trouble,” he said. “I’ve heard of others who have repeatedly done bad things, sold drugs, gotten drunk. I haven’t had a spot, not even a parking ticket. Am I that bad of a person? Can you show me forgiveness?”
Citro swore to his wife long ago that he would never return to prison and he has kept his word.
The hearing in 1991
Citro hopes a hearing would go better than the last time he appeared before the commission on Nov. 21, 1991. That was the day five commissioners led by chairman Bill Curran, now senior counsel for the Las Vegas law firm of Ballard Spahr, voted unanimously to ban him from casinos. At the time, he was the 21st person to be added to the list; now there are 37 on it, including at least two who have died.
Death is usually the only way a person gets off the list, but Citro hopes to make history by becoming the first to be removed while alive.
The commission found several reasons to place him on the list decades ago.
In the 1991 hearing, commissioners cited an August 18, 1980, racketeering conviction in US District Court in Nevada; one guilty plea on July 31, 1987, to conspiracy to use counterfeit credit cards, also in Nevada District Court; and a February 3, 1986, conviction under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He served two years in prison and was placed on probation,
In total, he had six convictions, four of which were felonies.
In the hearing, the commissioners held that the exclusion was based on his “notorious and unsavory reputation as reflected in government crime reports, indictments and newspaper articles.” An article introduced into evidence was headlined “Southern Mafia Armed and Dangerous Knuckle Therapy and Loan Sharking, Four Men Convicted.”
At the hearing, Citro argued that he was never convicted of extortion in 1980 because the charges were dropped after he appealed. He also said the counterfeit credit card charges were baseless. He also claimed that he had turned his life around and had not reoffended for ten years from the date of the hearing.
That argument would be a big part of his presentation if he gets the chance.
But Citro has other things going for him too.
Friends with Spilotro
As an entertainer, Citro presents as a throwback to the old days of Las Vegas when mob figures ruled the casinos. Citro was part of that era back then and was friends with notorious mobster Anthony “The Ant” Spilotro.
Today, he is popular and well connected with some of the city’s entertainment elite.
“He’s a character,” said Review-Journal entertainment columnist John Katsilometes. “It seems like he’s an actor who does method acting all the time. But he’s authentic. I think people gravitate to him because he’s kind of a relic from an era that doesn’t really exist in Las Vegas anymore. It’s almost like he fell asleep in the ’70s and came to last year.”
He is a frequent entertainer at the Italian American Club in Las Vegas and when on stage he sings be-bop and Italian folk songs and tells jokes and stories from his mob past. Indeed, he has used his notoriety as a member of Black Book to promote his persona on stage.
But Citro has ambitions to entertain in front of a larger audience and could be a hit in a casino lounge show.
But that’s the problem – he can’t go into a casino to perform because of his disqualification.
Some of the times he has performed locally, he has been enthusiastically embraced as he and his multitude of entertainment friends have raised money in benefits for dozens of charities over the years.
A room in his Las Vegas home is adorned with posters from charity events where Citro either performed, hosted or staged.
Collection
He has letters from the recipients of some of his fundraisers, thanking him for rallying his friends to raise money.
“Foster Care & Adoption Association of Nevada would like to express our sincere appreciation for all of your efforts and hard work for the children in foster care,” read a letter addressed to Citro in 2001. “As a result of your efforts and the kind generosity of the people who attended your wonderful event, we were able to give Christmas gifts to some of these children who would have received no pity for any of you or nothing that your children would not have received.”
Another letter from Clark County’s Department of Family Services Child Haven in 2002 thanks Citro for his efforts.
“It is heartwarming to know that there are people in the community who so graciously support the abandoned, neglected and abused children at Child Haven,” the letter reads. “Your friendship and generosity is truly overwhelming.”
One of Citro’s friends is Scotty Waller, who first met Citro and his wife, Cookie, after moving to Las Vegas from Texas in 2019.
He didn’t get a full read on Citro’s plight until one day when he casually mentioned watching “Jersey Boys” and asked Citro if he had seen it. He responded by explaining why he couldn’t go to the theater because it was at a casino resort.
“He was a reliever,” Waller explained. “After he started, I realized I had done something that we all take for granted.
“I couldn’t stop thinking how strange it must be to live 30-40 years in one place and never be able to walk through and see what’s going on, what people are talking about … the Bellagio Conservatory, the new Fontainebleau, the Circa Sportsbook.”
Waller has enjoyed going to the Italian American Club and watching Citro sing with Nicholas Cole and watching him dance with Cookie.
“Frankie is just a kind, lovable character,” Waller said. “He likes Cookie, and when the two of them dance it’s like watching kids at a ’50s sock hop.”
Hope to hear
Today, Citro is at a crossroads. Will he be heard and have a chance to be delisted? He is hopeful.
The worst thing about being on the list, he said in a recent interview, is that all these years it has been difficult to face his family with the reality of his situation.
“I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I can’t go here, I can’t go there,” he said in an interview. “How would you like to try to raise a family with kids and have them grow up and say, ‘Gee, Dad, can’t you take me to Circus Circus?’ They are too young to understand. My children are adults now and they have children themselves, so they understand now.
“How do you get home to the woman who has been with you all these years?” he asked. “For a while it was very difficult to put food on the table. My wife stood with me through it all. Now there is a champion for you.”
Citro believes part of the reason he was put on the list is so he wouldn’t cooperate with police by implicating his friends in past crimes, so Metro officers were overzealous in their testimony against him. He also believes that during that era there was considerable bias against Italian-Americans, a claim that Anthony Spilotro’s former defense attorney, Oscar Goodman, has made in his earlier criticism of the establishment of the Black Book.
But even after Citros was included on the list, he has done everything possible to support himself and his family by taking on odd jobs over the years and keeping his entertainment skills sharp.
He hopes that if he is delisted, he could get an entertainment gig in a casino lounge.
“If the gaming commission gives me the blessing to come out, I think every casino in the world will want to host me,” he said. “You know what I’m saying? Because I’m a good guy. And people from all over the world will want to hear stories about Las Vegas’ past.
“All I want is a chance.”
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