Gambling in American History

James Riddle Hoffa became an essential part of the Las Vegas casino industry when he arranged the financing of several new properties in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the use of pension funds of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on Valentine’s Day in 1913. He was the son of a coal driller who died when Jimmy was seven years old. His mother soon moved the family to Detroit, where she secured employment in an automobile factory. Jimmy got his first job when he was eleven years old. Life was tough, and Hoffa responded to it with his fists, fighting and scrapping all the way. Through experiences in many hard jobs, Hoffa was drawn into the union movement.  He organized a strike at a Kroger’s grocery store where he worked in the stockroom. That successful effort resulted in his first affiliation with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (often referred to as the Teamsters’ union). He went on to work for the union, first in 1932 as a recruiter, then as a business agent, and soon as a leading organizer. In the mid-1930s, he became the president of Detroit Local 299. Hoffa rose in the Teamsters’ ranks, and in 1952 he became the chairman of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters. He joined in the efforts to help make David Beck the Teamsters’ president, and Hoffa got the vice presidency of the union as a result.
David Beck was the first victim of the U.S. Senate’s McClellan Committee hearings on union corruption. It was revealed that Beck had misused Teamsters’ pension funds, and he had to step down from the presidency in 1957. Hoffa became union president. The McClellan Committee, with its counsel Robert Kennedy, never ceased its attacks on the Teamsters’ union, now making Hoffa its target of choice. An ongoing battle between Kennedy and Hoffa ensued that lasted for almost a decade.
During his union presidency, the Teamsters’ union’s Central States Pension Fund became the leading source of funds for capital financing of Las Vegas casinos. Moe Dalitz turned to Hoffa for the money needed to build La Costa Country Club in California, the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, and the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas. Hoffa financed the Dunes Casino through his personal attorney, Morris Shenker, and also the Landmark, the Four Queens, Aladdin, Circus Circus, and Caesars Palace. Caesars received the biggest Teamsters’ loans, over $20 million. The money was critical, as it came into Las Vegas at a time when organized crime interests tied to Meyer Lansky were pulling back from investments because they were coming under more and more scrutiny from federal investigators. The Hoffa pension fund money provided an interlude between Lansky capital and Howard Hughes capital financing. The Teamsters’ loans came at a price, even though interest rates were not high – actually quite the opposite. Through a variety of means, however, Hoffa reportedly received kickbacks and also access to casino operations. He could place his people in the casino, and he also could demand a piece of the action through different skimming-type mechanisms.
Although Hoffa lived a very modest middle-class lifestyle, the charges of corruption and misuse of funds came to rest at his doorstep. Robert Kennedy pursued a prosecution of Hoffa with a vigor that probably transcended notions of due process or adherence to constitutional liberties or values. After one unsuccessful prosecution in 1962, Hoffa was finally nailed with a conviction for tampering with the jury. In 1964 he was convicted again of misappropriating union funds. His appeals ran out, and in 1967 he stepped down from union office and went to prison for fifty-eight months.
President Nixon commuted Hoffa’s sentence in 1971 with a pardon decreeing that he could not hold union office again until 1980. In 1975 Hoffa was purportedly cooperating with federal authorities who were still investigating the misuse of Teamsters’ pension funds. Perhaps he was seeking to have his pardon changed so that he could reclaim the union presidency. That was not to be. On 31 July 1975 he disappeared. The presumption is that he was murdered, although his body was never recovered, and the crime has never been solved.
In 1936, Hoffa married Josephine Poszywak. They had a daughter, born in 1938, and a son, James Hoffa Jr., in 1941. The son is now the president of the Teamsters’ union.

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