So, you wanna go to SHOT show? You think it's all fun and games? Get to play with guns? See Jesse James and R. Lee Ermey? SHOT show is the annual pilgrimage of the unwashed masses to Las Vegas to rub elbows with youtube celebrities, bloggers and overseas businessmen copying US made equipment and share infectious disease.
If you love guns, gambling and gonorrhea - SHOT show is for you! It is not my typical idea of a good time. I am not a big fan of Las Vegas.
However: I do attend for a few reasons. First, I do enjoy travel and I'm platinum on AA so I can usually score an upgrade. Second, industry people are in there that I do hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars with business with so it's nice to put a face with the name and see what deals are out there. SHOT for me has been a bust for the past few years. Being a value guy, I want to buy at $1000 and sell at $3000 and as of recently the gun business is more like buy for $1 and sell for $1.10 if you get what I mean.
We used to do business at SHOT and now it's just checking in on foursquare, instagram and rubbing elbows with bloggers and the like. I want to make money, not spend money so this is very annoying to me.
Anyways, onto the play by play.
Monday, January 16th. One day before SHOT show.
http://imgur.com/a/HoFUm
Every time I've been rejected by a woman, I move $1 from checking into savings and I take the bankroll down to the Wynn for some play. Lets do this.
The TSA line is a shitshow thanks to, well TSA.
I slog my way to the lounge, as shitty as it is to wait for my winged chariot to DFW. I have gone from being in an abusive relationship with Delta to being in an abusive relationship with AA. Although if you really want to experience the battered spouse feeling, UA is a few gates over. This trip's light reading is trying to finish "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Such a good book as well as "Outliers" if you want a good read.
I walk up to the podium to find out that my upgrades do not clear, even as an AA Plat thanks to the addition of a FOURTH elite tier. Goddamn fucking W. Doug Parker. Asshole. I gate check my bags to make life easier for me and the rest of the folks. The gate agent calls concierge key and executive platinum passengers. I look down and realize I'm wearing a suit and board with the executive platinum folks because I do not care and I look the part. If you walk with a purpose and are dressed reasonably well, you fit the profile. I settle into my window seat and try to finish outliers. I pass out before takeoff and I'm awoken by the dulcet tones of the flight attendants preparing for landing. We land at Dallas a few minutes early and I hightail it to the Centurion for a quick bite to eat. I grab a plate and help myself to some of the excellent brisket, pecan encrusted chicken and some roasted jumbo asparagus. Yes, my pee is going to smell funny. No, I do not care. The lounge is packed. The bar is full and I grab a quick single malt as I have my meal since American's not going to feed me. They begin boarding to Mccarran as I walk out of the lounge. No time for a stop in the spa on this trip. I make it to the gate just as the call group 2 boarding.
I bypass the main line and walk up through the priority line giving no heed to the people that have been waiting there before me as I hold up my paper boarding pass with PLATINUM to the gate agent. I board and take my usual seat - the exit row without the seat in front of it. I'm aghast to see this sight.
http://imgur.com/a/dygil
The savages. Literally. The savages.
I put my loathing away for a moment and look down at the exit row. I have the window. The aisle is a large middle aged man and in the middle is what I believe to be a formecurrent linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys wearing a 52 regular sports jacket. He's not a fat guy in a little coat, he's a big fucking hulk of a man stuffed in an exit row seat that is already an inch narrower due to the tray table. I grimace as I take my seat and give him the manly nod. He does not look happy about the fact that his knees are in the seat in front and I'm stretched out like a Cheshire cat in front of a fireplace on a cold January afternoon.
The boarding door closes for an on time departure and Stephanie the FA takes her seat. He leans over and asks if he can take the empty row across the aisle and she takes one look at the three of us and gives him the nod. I bail out to give him a path of egress and suddenly the trip to Las Vegas has just become way more comfortable. I finish The Tipping Point somewhere over west texas, so I pop a xanax and dr pepper and zone out for the rest of the ride. I awake to feel one of the FA's jostling me awake telling me to put my seat up. I do so and we have a ride so smooth that not even the Delta guy behind me can complain about light chop. We catch the TYSSN4 arrival and the next thing I know it the Messier Dowty landing gear of the A321 touch the paint at Mccarran for a smooth rollout down 25L.
My phone battery is approaching grim death since this seat has no power plugs and I find bartman383 has sent me a message. He has been enjoying LV with his wife and their due to bad weather they are in the city of sin for a few extra nights. He invites me to dinner. I'm still pretty full from DFW and I tell him I'll be over there once I get my bags and the car and I'll see him when I see him. He gives me the info for the hotel as we pull up to the gate.
First stop: Centurion lounge. AA's app tells me bags being unloaded. I grab a quick bite of fried chicken and brussels sprouts since they are good for you and a chocolate pudding. The brisket and pecan encrusted chicken from DFW still has me full but I'm well aware of the speed of a union baggage handlers nowadays and who doesn't like chocolate pudding? Terrorists. That's who. Want to know how to screen for terrorists TSA? Set up a table of free chocolate pudding at the airport. The people who don't take any are members of ISIS. It's just that simple.
I grab my bag and hoof it to Hertz. I'm an idiot and I am an hour late for my pickup. Oops. Will an Audi A3 suffice? I sigh and I accept my Teutonic quattro chariot. I do a burnout in the parking garage and hightail it to the exit. I flash my #1 card and my ID and the gatekeeper gives me the go ahead. I get onto the the strip and traffic is awful. I'm going to be late for dinner. I make a left onto Russell Road and hightail it up the 15. I manage to get the car up to 100 as I pass the Luxor. My phone is dead so I can't message Bart about being late. Fuck. The exit approaches quickly as I put the 4 wheel disk brakes to work and sling the car around and head south on Las Vegas Bl. I accidentally turn into the Bellagio and I'm now running even more late. Fuck. Eventually, I get the car into the garage at the Cosmopolitan and head upstairs. I cannot remember the name of the restaurant but I head up to the third floor where all the restaurants are and I see this sign that's reminiscent of my days in retail.
It says RESTAURANT - LOUNGE - PAWN SHOP.
I laugh. I walk in. It's literally a pawnshop. I look around puzzled.
FC: Is this a restaurant?
Bald Headed Guy: Yes, through that door.
He points towards a door. I walk in to find a bustling restaurant, lounge via the entrance of pawnshop. This is insane. I pass a mirror and check myself out. I adjust my tie, after all it is YSL and the ladies LOVE YSL. Remember that. I find the hostess and inform her I will be joining some friends for dinner. They probably do not have me on the reservation though but I turn on the charm and she smiles and says no problem at all. She asks if my tie is from Hermes. I say no, I'm a YSL guy. She looks impressed as I tell her I'll make a quick lap of the room to see if they're there and surprise them. She gives me a nod and tells me to go right ahead. Still got it.
I spot bart and his wife who I can only remember vaguely from gunnitlive after party video and I pull up a chair. Bart is surprised to see I made it and they are in the middle of dinner. They offer to ply me with food and beverage but I decline as I'm driving so no booze for me and no food since I am stuffed from Dallas. We chat about life and liberty over libations. Bart's wife thinks I am hysterical. She's had a few drinks and they are already into their main courses. The brussels sprouts are way too salty and we have to send it back. No bueno.
Bart invites me up to his suite on the top floor of the hotel where we are to meet Brogelicious later in the evening. I say, when in rome......we head to the top floor of the hotel tower where Bart shows me his view from the balcony and cracks open the mini bar for some more libations. He asks if I want a drink and I say I better not. I'm driving.
Not 30 seconds after arriving, brogel shows up. Bart's wife hugs brogel. She's infatuated with him. We start shooting the shit and bart opens up the minibar and tells us to take anything we want, it's on the hotel. I laugh and I look outside as bart opens his yeti 110 for some silver bullets. Apparently he is so baller the hotel will send up a yeti 110 filled with beer to make him happy. His wife is apparently such a baller. I ball on a budget. They just ball. Hahaha.
We shoot the shit some more about guns, gun stuff and people on the reddit for a while. I get a little thirsty and I crack open bart's cooler. I ask him how long the stuff in the cooler is supposed to last and he says until Wednesday.
I look down and I am agape at what I see.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
I mentally prepared my butthole and I decided to help myself to a coors light against my wishes but Bart, Bart's wife and Brogel are all drinking so I let peer pressure take hold as I cracked open a beer with them. We head out to the balcony to smoke some cuban cigars together as bart's wife takes a photo of all of us. We all look like hell. Haha.
As bart downs his second beer, he asks me a question.
Bart: ever go hunting?
Me: Ducks a little bit but not much
Bart: ever want to hunt some deadly game?
Me: Like on african safari?
Bart: No, I mean like.........man.
Me: Hahahahhahaaha you're just fucking with me. Hahahahahhaa. That's really funny.
Bart: No really, the concierge here at this hotel will set it up for us. It's amazing. I remember my first hunt......
Brogel starts laughing and I realize they've been doing a bit. I've been had.
We bullshit about SHOT and Barrett's shotguns and other things and next thing I know, it's late but bart hands me a mixed drink. I sip it a bit and I was in the middle of a tirade complaining about my customers. Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the city, and a voice was screaming: Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals? Nobody seems to understand what I'm talking about. It's cold on the balcony. Our cigars are done. We head indoors. No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastards will see them soon enough.
Back indoors I realize Brussels sprouts and coors light is a bad choice. Seriously no bueno. I excuse myself to the bathroom and drain the vein. The asparagus funny smelling pee and the side effects of beer and brussels sprouts is a noxious combination that a defense contractor should weaponize it. It's pretty bad and not even cuban tobbaco can mask the smell.
I sit back down and continue to talk about guns and stuff with bart and the gang and bart asks who ruined the bathroom. I apologize as he sprays a bunch of febreze around and opens the balcony. I apolgize to brogel. He is not accepting my apology. (sorry :( )
Nearly 11, it's about time to pull chocks and mosey on down the dusty trail. I don't want to prompt an evacuation of the hotel due to noxious odors so I decide to leave and bart seems to be kinda mad that I've ripped ass and polluted the sanctuary of his hotel. Half a coors light and brussels sprouts are no bueno in my book now. Bart decides to party hard with his wife and I offer brogel a ride home. He seems skeptical to share a confined space with me after I have just destroyed bart's hotel room. The car has 4 windows and the Uber will cost him a few bucks he can put towards ammo. He relents as we head down to the garage to find my car. Thankfully we find it quickly and I manage to contain the weapons of ass destruction for the 16 minute ride off strip to casa de brogel.
He says I'm not that bad a dude and I agree as I hightail it to my hotel. I cannot find my hotel reservations so I call my travel agent to see.
Apparently the Wynn was not in my travel budget this year. I have come to find out I have been booked at Circus Circus, much to my chagrin. How bad could it be? I've stayed at the Wynn. I've stayed at Encore. I've stayed at the hotel that Elisabeth Shue's character got raped in in Leaving Las Vegas - but Circus Circus? Did I mention that I HATE CLOWNS? I HATE CLOWNS. Fuck.
I pull into the parking garage and the check in line resembles something straight out of the TSA line at Mccarran. 45 minutes to check in. The clerk is friendly and says he's also from Louisiana which is neat. He asks if I've stayed there before and I, being a connoisseur of old vegas history I decide to make a joke and I tell him the last time I was there, Jay Sarno owned the place. He got a laugh. I head up to my room and unpack. The lobby is clean as an old vegas casino can be, the room is clean and there's no way to plug anything in since the hotel predates personal electronic devices. I plug my phone into my external battery and collapse on the bed. I message Bart and chugbleach instead of falling asleep about show tomorrow and I offer to pick bart up early since there is no shuttle from the cosmo.
Tuesday, November 16th SHOT Show Day One
I awoke several hours later in a daze......the clock said 10AM. The show opened at 8:30. Fuck me to tears. I hurry up and get dressed and down to the sands convention center. The parking lot is FULL. The entire complex is a mess. When my man Steve Wynn built his joint he didn't build enough parking. So people would park at the Venetian and now FUCKING NOBODY CAN GET A PARKING SPACE. Holy shit. I eventually say fuck it and park over at the Wynn and walk over to the Sands. I meet up with a few of my regular suppliers and I see nothing interesting at all. Bart went to bed at 6AM after spending all night partying with his wife over at the palazzo. I joke and say that he just should have stayed there. Bart is amazed at the size of the show and we have lunch at the most disgusting place in las vegas - the convention center bistro snack bar. Bart is a wise man as he grabs a powerade and a fruit cup. I decide to try an "italian beef" and a fruit cup instead of fries to stay semi health conscious. The "italian beef" is the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten. It is flat out depressing. They give me fries with it and I demand a fruit cup. The sassy black woman working the stand asks me "DID YOU ASK FOR FRUIT? CAUSE RIGHT HERE SAYS FRIES" and I channel my inner Louis CK from the "this is how I talk" bit from SNL as I shoot back "WHY YOU FRONTIN ON ME I ASKED FOR FRUIT AND YOUR ASS BETTER BACK UP AND GET ME SOME FRUIT" so she goes back and gets me some fruit.
The "italian beef", my fruit cup, bart's fruit cup and powerade comes to $81. My platinum amex comes out and I treat bart to "lunch". We bullshit about guns and stuff in the Springfield booth as we wait at the world's worst concession stand. We eat and Bart is so hungover that he thinks he is in need of physical therapy and a wheelchair. There is no way he is going to party tonight before his trip home. Or so I think. Haha.
I meander around the show a bit more and I find this, the most USELESS PRODUCT OF 2017. It's made by a company called radetec.
http://imgur.com/a/GOiCB
It's a shot counter. For your gun.
A digital odometer, for your gun.
The only person that would buy this is the guy like my dad that kept a spiral bound notebook in his car where he documented how many miles he traveled per tank, gallons dispensed, PRICE, service station and whether they had a different price for cash/charge, oil consumption, tire rotations, alignments, all services - scheduled or otherwise, and a running odometer. Does anyone know the gun owner who asks for a round count when they are looking at a used gun? The question I always shoot back is "do you want to be lied at a little or do you want to be lied at a lot?" because that's what you're asking for when you ask for round count.
UNLESS YOU BUY THIS PRODUCT!
I roll my eyes so far back into my head that I nearly lose my balance. This is idiotic. I cannot fathom anyone willing to buy this. What a waste of perfectly good exhibition space.
Bart heads back to his hotel after visiting SHOT show for a few hours, not getting any swag and to get an IV of fluids since he looked like he was rapidly approaching grim death.
I wrap up visiting prime vendors and checking out the new products, or lack thereof because I have something on the schedule. At 4:30 there's a suicide prevention for retailers seminar hosted by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As many of you know this is an issue that is important to me and perhaps we as retailers should be doing more. The keynote was from their chief medical director talking about the accessibility of firearms and the mindset of the "typical" suicide. Mostly men. If you are a veteran you are at a significantly larger risk. The information was presented very not surprisingly and one of the things discussed was that we only spend around 21M a year on suicide prevention.
A few take away facts from the keynote:
When suicide barriers are put up on a bridge, suicide rates for the entire area drop. The key to preventing suicide is getting people to talk about their problems. Once you can get someone out of that mindset, they are statistically less likely to do it and live productive lives afterwards. There are certain terms that they are trying to get away from - for instance, they are not saying "committed suicide" they are now saying "died by suicide" in order to bring awareness and tell it like it is.
One thing that really was interesting to me was my reading on the flight in from Dallas. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell discusses how things stay the same and suddenly they all change. One of the things that he discusses is in micronesia - where teen suicide was practically unheard of became an outright epidemic. One teenager did it, for reasons passing understanding to me as an outsider and then all the other kids realized that they too could escape their pain by hanging themselves as well and suddenly the suicide rates in micronesia became so high to where it became a public health issue. I wish I could show you all the article I wrote on TTAG about my friend's death but it has been lost in the cloud and I am unable to find the last draft I sent to print, but it echoes some of the problems we have with suicide and mental health in the firearm industry.
After the keynote, the good doctor opened the floor up for questions. Her keynote posed a lot of statistics but not a lot of answers. I am a detail oriented granular data guy and I did not get a solid grasp of the AFSP solutions posed, if any.
Several firearm dealers discussed the lack of a cohesive solution and the takeaway was they're trying to develop awareness for the suicide problem. Their goal is to lower suicide rates but how they get there is yet to be determined. I didn't like hearing that and the comments from the crowd reflected the lack of a "here's what you can do TODAY to help this problem" part of the initiative.
Going around the room, one dealer who used NICS said that if a customer was just flat out acting funny - he'd lie to the customer and say there was a delay with NICS even though there was an approval just to get them to not be able to have a gun for a few days. The crowd applauded this initiative, however I'm not sure lying to customers is the best way to run a business and treat them with respect. Another dealer brought up an interesting point. When someone comes in looking to buy a gun and they don't know what kind of gun they want, what caliber, and are generally clueless - they're either buying a gun to kill themselves with, OR perhaps they are a very uneducated prospective customer - and there is no clear way of finding out which is which.
The problems presented by the AFSP are real. The solutions aren't there though. Yet. Ideally I'd like to see some change to that. However, there's some problems.
I hung around and asked the good doctor and her staff some questions and I am in no way denigrating her life's work and her dedication to preventing suicide since she has dedicated her life's work to the issue, but the conversation went something like this.
Did you do any research on the accessibility of firearms from a retailer from the legal standpoint?
"No, we haven't"
Do you know how the NICS or state POC background systems work in regard to mental health holds, etc?
"No"
One of the problems that I foresee right off the bat is that you talked about how you are fighting time, and if you can get someone out of that suicide mindset - even for a few hours, you can get them into that higher survival bracket. If we apply a one size fits all solution to it like California and put a 10 day wait on everything with the goal of protecting someone from their own life, how do we balance that with the needs of the woman who has been hiding from her abusive spouse and needs a gun right away?
"That's a good question that I don't have an answer for."
Their initiative, I admire - the lack of solutions is a little off putting however. I tell the doc about how my friend's suicide has impacted me and she seems to be sympathetic to the situation as does her colleagues. I am given her cards and told to call the next time I'm in New York so we can get together and discuss things within the industry. I'll give them a buzz in a few weeks when I'm up there on business. On my way out of the hall, I run into Massad Ayoob. Nice guy. I've admired his work over the years. Bart invites myself and chugbleach to dinner, I can't reach Chug and even though I am beat I decide to hang out with Bart and Mrs Bart
Bart: What do you want to eat?
FC: Let's find a nice seafood restaurant and eat some red salmon, I feel a powerful lust for red salmon.
I begin vomiting.
God damn mescaline. Why the fuck can't they make it a little less pure?
We eventually head downstairs and order too much food. We are tired and not very hungry. Bart is still hungover and barely able to process food. His wife is grazing on all sorts of meat products. I am in awe of how they are both still upright after six nonstop nights of partying. I've only been here one day and I feel like I am about to die.
Dinner concludes with an awkward hug with bart's wife - I don't know how other men feel about wife hugs so I have just avoided the prospect entirely. Like flying through Denver on Frontier. Or flying on Frontier. Ever.
I drive over to the Wynn to set up my markers and the poker room is full. I draw a $2500 marker at the craps table and watch the game a bit. I have never played craps before in my life but the three people there seem to be having fun.
I look down at my phone and I realize a plane has landed. fluffy_butternut has landed in Las Vegas on business. I had lost a bet and offered to pick him up from the airport. I cash back in my chips against my casino credit and head back to my car. I cannot find my car. Fuck. I wander the wynn garage which is covered in construction debris. I eventually find it and haul ass to the airport. Now, I didn't know this but fluffy has the WORST SENSE OF DIRECTION AT ALL. Seriously. I have no idea how he even made it to the correct city. He lands and has to get his bag and stuff and I circle the airport. He lets me know he's at door 77 wherever the fuck that was. I drive into the pickup portion and I see no sign. He then says he's coming up a level, and I tell him that I'll be there shortly. I park the car and Metro PD starts yelling.
Metro: You can't park your car here.
FC: Why not? Is this not a reasonable place to park?
Metro: Reasonable? You're on a sidewalk! This is the sidewalk!
I give the man a $20 and tell him to keep it running as I wander Mccarran screaming FLUFFY! HERE FLUFFY! I message fluffy to let him know I am the car parked on the sidewalk. I instantly figure out who he is having never seen a photo of him and I throw his bags into the car as we head for his hotel. I haul ass out of the airport and get the A3 on the highway.
Now this was a superior machine. Thirty nine grand worth of gimmicks and high-priced special effects. The rear windows lit up with a touch like frogs in a dynamite pond. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights and dials and meters that I would never understand.
We check in at the Rio where the desk clerk is friendly and flirty. I express amazement there is no line. Fluffy checks in and we take his bags upstairs and he offers to buy me food for driving him to the airport. I decline. We head to the bar anyways. He orders two beers and we decide to call chug. He's staying out in Summerlin or something because his company is apparently run by cheapskates. He asks if we want to hang out and shoot the shit. I say sure and ask if he wants us to pick up food or anything from CVS or something since I have the car and I'm able to do anything I want. He asks for some toothpaste. No problem. I may be an asshole on the internet but I have a heart of gold. We get some toothpaste get to the hotel.
Arriving at the lobby, we have no idea where he is. It turns out he gave us the address for the hotel across the street. We laugh and go to that lobby and shoot the shit till 3AM much to the chagrin of the hotel clerk. Fluffy has some beers and we plan on dinner the next day. I drive fluffy back and arrive at the hotel at 4. Fuck me to tears.
Wednesday, January 18th. Day 2 of SHOT show.
Alarm goes off at 7:30 AM. I wash up, eat and get breakfast. In the garage by 8:15. Nice. I get some dillo dust and check out the new Sig 220 DA/SA and SAO legions. Daddy likey. I go to a competing firm and I piss of my state sales manager by telling him his newer designed triggers suck ass. He says the company tested them and they're the same in every way. I ask him why the triggers have two different part numbers in the catalog and how come they're not interchangeable and if that's really the case, how come there's X changes in the supposedly identical pistol parts that he's holding side by side. He gets mad at me and says I'm not an expert on their product and perhaps I should take his job since I'm so smart. I agree that I'm smart and I hold firm that if he didn't want me to complain about the shitty trigger, they should stop selling guns with shitty triggers. I am nearly kicked out of the booth.
I meet up with some of my wholesale reps and I'm mid convo when I see Itsgoodsoup and his friend walking around the show. I yell SOUP but he does not hear me. So I grab his friend and find him and I tell him we should get together at dinner with fluffy and chug. He agrees.
The show winds down, I get some business done and nothing much else. We break for a shitty gunnit live lite and I take a few questions from the crowd in fluffy's suite at the Rio. Dinner is at 8 and we arrive at the restaurant late to find soup and his friend sitting at one table and chug and his girlfriend sitting at another. Perhaps we should have gotten here a little earlier. Hahaha. So, fluffy said the place is really good and I order a few of the specialties of the house. Apparently according to yelp they do a kickass peking duck. Soon to be mrs chug is a vegan. But we can eat meat in front of her. I wonder how it's served and Soup's vancouver raised asian friend tells me that they normally carve it tableside. Our vegan says as long as there's no head she's cool. We're not sure if they can fulfill that request. So we order and food starts coming out and we tell tall tales of shot show BS and other stuff. Sure enough, the duck comes out with the head. No bueno. Haha. But I decide to treat us to vegan donuts at the vegan bakery across the street later. Seven courses later we are full. Vegan bakery closed. I am committed to getting her some vegan donuts though. We head to Fremont street to gamble. Fluffy wanders about and we try craps and we're not impressed. We hit some slots and eventually I hit the craps table where chug explains the game to me. We start betting on dice. And somehow we start winning. I find that the house allows you to take 10X behind the line. No idea what this means so I plop $5 on the pass line and the point hits 6. I drop $50 behind it and it hits. We go a few rounds and leave ahead. It's 2:30 AM. Fuck. I drive everyone back to their hotel. I get to sleep around 4.
Thursday, January 19th. Day 3 of SHOT show.
Wake up at 10AM feeling like crap. Debate whether to head straight to show and wander about. Fuck it. Went to halal guys for some halal. Delicious. Got vegan donuts. Dead drop them at the Palazzo lobby for chug and his girl. Show is a bust. Literally nothing exciting. Fluffy offers to buy me dinner. One of my customers who lives in Summerlin offers to take me to dinner. I pass on fluffy and he destroys the seafood buffet at the rio. I head to Sinatra at the Wynn for dinner with my customer. All good in the hood. Chug has been invited to the Glock dinneafter party and I'm not so we all go our separate ways. I call foghorn5950 and due to some weather, he's flying home early and our plans to hangout are fucked up unless I go tonight. I grab fluffy and we head to Whiskey Down. He orders a makers and I give him a funny look. I tell the waitress make it a bulleit. Everyone laughs. I talk shop with Jeremy also from TTAG and we shoot the shit over cigars and talk about useless products. Next thing we know, chug is out of the dinner and wandering the strip. We decide to meet up at the Linq. It takes us nearly 30 minutes to get out of Whiskey Down at MGM because the waitress was awful and messed up everyone's tab. It was a fucking disaster. To boot, MGM is now charging for parking.
FC: What a bunch of fucking jews
Fluff: You should just tailgate that lady in front of you out and screw them out of the $7
FC: I should
We pull behind her and watch as she gets flustered at the awful parking machine. Her nevada license plate says VETERAN. As the gate goes up we haul ass and screw MGM out of $7. I shout "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" out the window as we blow right by her up to the Linq. Through fluffy's awful navigation, we wind up at the loading dock for the Linq. Eventually we find chug and gf hanging at the penny slots. They are holding vegan donuts, which she is very appreciative of. Least I could do after showing her the head. Fluffy plays the House of Cards slot machine.
He stuck $100 in, played for 6 minutes and then got really mad and hit the cash out button and $80 was left after 5 minutes.
ITS EXACTLY LIKE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!
Chug's gf asks to play a special slot machine called kitty glitter. We ask and the linq does not offer it but Harrahs next door does. So we head over there and the slot tech finds the kitty glitter machine. Fluffy sticks a C note in there and tells her to play and have a blast. So she's banging away at the one armed bandit WHEN SUDDENLY I HEAR THE SOUND.
It's PUTTIN ON THE RITZ in shitty .wav file internal speaker format. Hahah. She's just hit the progressive jackpot on the penny KITTY GLITTER machine. THIS PLACE IS AWESOME! We cash out after some play and a good time was had by all. I dump off fluffy at the rio since it was very close and drive everyone else back. It's late, I'm tired and the Palace Station oyster bar is open 24 hours......I head over there and there's a 45 minute wait.
So, I pull out my backup bankroll and using everything chug and fluffy have taught me about craps I belly up to the $3 min table where they let you take 10x behind the line. I'm still learning and the table is slow so one of the boxmen start explaining the game to me.
Box: So if you place the 6 or the 9 or individual numbers you can bet those but you gotta pay a little juice on it like a commission
Me: Like when you buy the hook?
short pause
Box: Yeah! Exactly like that! You got this!
So I played a little and went up a bit and down a bit. As you do. Plunked $5 down on the pass line and took full odds and the point hit. This game is pretty cool! So I hung around and watched for about an hour and finally decided to eat my winnings. I take $5 off my stack and, drop it on the pass line and announce dealer bet - $5 to pass. It hits. The dealers love me.
Maybe Vegas isn't so bad after all.
http://imgur.com/a/LGhDj
I have the pan roast at the oyster bar. No line. It is DELICIOUS. I get back to the hotel at 5AM. I don't care when I wake up.
Friday, January 20th. Day 4 of SHOT show.
Wake up around noon feeling like crap. Go to show. Debate destroying milk cart with wheels with an ax borrowed from fire station. Decide against it. Gas up car and find myself out by palace station again. Played some craps, hit the buffet and went for an early sleep.
It's midnight. The neighbors in my the hotel are having sex. A LOT OF SEX. I can hear everything. I gently knock on the door. No answer. I knock slightly harder. No answer. I head back to my room and close the door just as I hear their door open. I zoom back out to find a puzzled middle aged stocky and perhaps sticky Latino man looking both ways.
I get in his line of sight.
Me: Hey. I'm next door. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun. I get it. I really do. In fact I haven't had sex since the bush administration so I'm gunning for you man I really am. But it's midnight and I have a 6am flight and a rental car to return. So trust me when I say I'm really happy for you but if you don't mind I really need to get some sleep tonight okay?
The awkward silence is deafening. He nods without saying a word and mouths okay. I give him a manly nod and thumbs up.
Me: thanks. I'd shake your hand or fist bump but well you know.....
I give him a peace sign as he goes back into his little pleasure palace and I turn to realize that I have just locked myself out of my room. I am wearing boxers, a tshirt and barefoot. I head downstairs to the lobby. The check in at the front desk resembles the TSA line at Mccarran. Normally I would not be this rude but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The line is 50 people deep. I walk past every person. Fuck your queue. I approach the desk where someone is helping a guest and I raise my right hand as if I were in a deposition to get them to stop. The staff and guest looks puzzled as the angry barefoot man clad in nothing but boxers and a "uzi does it" tshirt approaches the desk.
Me: excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt. I have an emergency. I'm up on 8 and my neighbors are having a lot of sex. I mean a LOT of sex.
(This is the same front desk clerk who actually checked me in Monday night by coincidence looks back at me very awkwardly and puzzled.)
Me: this isn't your regular sex. I'm talking this is your (I begin air humping the front desk and slapping the granite counter with my palm and grunting loudly) sex. You could hear the plan B packaging open.
At this point - the ENTIRE FRONT DESK STAFF HAS STOPPED CHECKING IN GUESTS. The people in line and are watching the show. The clerk is stunned. Speechless. Shock and awed. Crapped out and busted. The women are covering their children's eyes and ears. The men are wondering if this show requires a 2 drink minimum.
Me: now I get this is Vegas. Everyone wants a good time. It's midnight. My flight leaves at 6 which means I have to be up by 4. And this just isn't working. So I asked them to keep it down and I locked myself out of my room. So if you can make me another key or move me I'd appreciate it.
The clerk nods.
Clerk: of course. may I see your ID?
Years of ballet have prepared me for this day. I step back to make sure my genitals are still ensconced in my boxers as I pirouette and gesticulate wildly.
Me: DO I LOOK LIKE I HAVE ID?
The floor manager steps over and asks me to head down to the end of the desk where she will make me a key. I give her the room number and thank her after she offers to have security sent up to shutdown the best little whorehouse in Vegas. I tell her it may not be necessary. As I take my keys and walk away the people in line break out in raucous applause.
I take a bow and miraculously my boxer shorts don't rip. These people are my subjects and I have been crowned the the king of the three ring circus that is the circus circus lobby. Im offered a $1 tip from a kind soul but I decline.
My walk back to the hotel elevator bank is uneventful. So much so that I realize it is going too well. The other shoe, if I were wearing one felt as if it was about to drop. Suddenly a dumbass in a rascal scooter is heading toward me at flank speed as his head is turned to look at everyone BEHIND HIM. There's no way this will end well.
For you gentle readers joining us mid conversation - it's midnight and I need to be at the airport in 4.5 hours. I can just see it now. (Cue the harp noises)
Scene: Emergency room
Nurse: Allergic to anything? Me: NKDA Nurse: cause of injury? Me: what's the IC10 code for "run down by drunken buffoon on motorized wheelchair?"
I saw my life and confirmed upgraded first class seats home being given away by the Mccarran gate agent flash before my eyes and my catlike reflexes kicked in and I jumped to my left into the wall, mid 1960's Las Vegas union construction being the path of least resistance. Think "The Bodyguard" with Kevin Costner.
The buffoon barely realizes what happens. Children are amazed. "HEY MOM! Look! That guy just ran into a wall!"
Me: it was that OR GET RUN DOWN BY SOME JACKASS ON A GODDAMN SCOOTER GOING FULL SPEED DRIVING LIKE A....
I look down and a midwestern nuclear family with two children of formative age are waiting for the elevator. I change my last word.
Me: LUNATIC!
I look over to the parents.
Me: I'm really sorry. This is a family joint and I shouldn't have cursed the drunken scooter driver like that. Sorry kids.
Parent: no big deal. They've heard fucking worse.
I crack a smile at her word choice. Fucking worse. Yeah. That sounds like my evening.
After jumping into a wall, I'm now wide awake and unable to go back to sleep. I make the plane and push on time. The 737 comes to a stop short of the runway and holds. Something is wrong. The pilots come on and say that they loaded more cargo and passengers than planned so they have to redo their numbers. We're waiting on the taxiway with both engines running as they do this and the waiting music comes on. What's the first song?
Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You"

The Small-Time Bootlegging Run That Started It All
A few days after Valentine’s Day in 2011, a State Police cruiser pulled over a van from New York City on a quiet highway outside Lowell, Mass. While it seemed at first like a routine stop — the light above its license plate was out — the troopers made a curious find.
When they searched the van, they found nearly 2,000 bottles of top-shelf cognac and a pack of razor blades, which they surmised had been used to remove the bottles’ tax stamps. The driver claimed ignorance. He said that a friend from New York, a man named Hamlet Peralta, had asked him as a favor to drive the brandy from New Hampshire to a church party an hour south of Lowell. But the law was the law, and the driver was arrested for transporting untaxed liquor. His case was soon disposed of with six months of probation and a $1,000 fine.
What no one knew at the time was that this two-bit bootlegging run was the tip of a criminal scheme that within three years would be used as evidence in an unimaginably larger case, a federal corruption investigation that would ultimately reach deep into New York City’s highest offices of power. While the inquiry began with Mr. Peralta, it eventually engulfed a Dickensian cast of characters: two Orthodox Jewish businessmen, an influential union leader, a hedge fund mogul, a coterie of top police officials — even the city’s mayor.
Because the case has involved so many people and has moved through the courts in separate pieces, its story, at least so far, has been told in serial increments. Some of the nearly 20 figures it has touched have pleaded guilty. Some have gone to trial. Others have escaped public censure — except, perhaps, in the headlines. But the sprawling paper trail the case has left behind — legal filings, trial transcripts and wiretap records — reveals a larger saga of favor-trading and back-room deals that connects its various players in an intersecting web of venality and vice.
In May, the last two targets of the probe — Jeremy Reichberg, an Orthodox Jewish community leader from Brooklyn, and James Grant, a former Police Department deputy inspector — will appear in Federal District Court in Manhattan at a bribery trial that will also feature a dozen other uncharged co-conspirators. As it nudges the case toward its conclusion, the trial will reprise the investigation’s central theme: that a culture of graft — sometimes petty, sometimes serious — has existed in New York since the days of Tammany Hall.
The authorities have never said what tipped them off to Mr. Peralta, but in an affidavit that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used to tap his cellphone, investigators said that in February 2013 an anonymous letter was sent to the Police Department’s anti-corruption nerve center, the Internal Affairs Bureau. The letter, which appears to be the first public mention of the inquiry, contained an explosive allegation: The man in charge of Harlem’s 30th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Ruel Stephenson, was crooked. Specifically, it claimed that the deputy inspector was close with someone named Hamlet and often warned him when the police were planning to inspect his businesses.
At that point, Hamlet Peralta owned two businesses in Harlem, a liquor store on West 125th Street and the Hudson River Cafe, a restaurant several blocks to the north. Perched near the water, Hudson River Cafe was known both for its views and its lively “club nights” that featured bands and D.J.’s. It was also known as a police hangout.
A gregarious man born in the Dominican Republic, Mr. Peralta, 39, was friends with several officers from nearby precincts, men who called him “bro” and regularly texted him with gossip. In April 2013, two months after getting the tipster’s letter, Internal Affairs sent undercover detectives to speak with him at his restaurant. According to court papers, the detectives pretended that they wanted Mr. Peralta’s help with “an outstanding ticket.” Mr. Peralta told them that he had “a very good relationship with Inspector Stephenson” and trying to be helpful, passed along his number.
Within a matter of months, investigators were digging deeper into Mr. Peralta’s business deals. They found two confidential sources who told them that for years Mr. Peralta had purchased spirits out of state — or sometimes stolen off trucks — and sold them wholesale to restaurants and nightclubs in violation of his liquor license. They also learned about the role he played in the brandy shipment discovered in the traffic stop in Massachusetts. EDITORS’ PICKS How One Interview Question Fuels the Gender Pay Gap They Survived a Massacre. Then the Lawyers Started Calling. A Very German Love Story: When Old Left and Far Right Share a Bedroom
Mr. Peralta’s bank accounts were particularly suspect. Court filings say that money flowed into them from one person and then out to another in a manner suggesting a Ponzi scheme. The filings also said that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been transferred in recent years to two convicted drug dealers. The records further indicated that Mr. Peralta owed large sums to the state tax authority and was substantially in debt to a capo in the Genovese crime family.
But what pushed the case forward — and finally undid Mr. Peralta — was a series of seemingly innocuous transactions. In his accounts, court papers said, the authorities found numerous deposits from a company called JSR Capital — among them, a $250,000 check with “liquor loan” written on its memo line.
Following the money, investigators learned that JSR was a real-estate firm with offices on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks south of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It took its name from the initials of its owner: Jona S. Rechnitz.
“It Made Him Look Good, Made Me Look Good”
Mr. Rechnitz was an up-and-comer from California. He had arrived in New York in his late teens from Los Angeles, where he grew up as the scion of a wealthy family that was staunchly pro-Israel and active in Republican Party politics. His father, Robert Rechnitz, a successful real-estate developer, had served as a finance chairman on Senator Lindsey Graham’s 2016 presidential campaign and was a prominent donor to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. But the family’s real money belonged to Mr. Rechnitz’s cousin who owned a chain of California nursing homes that ultimately fell afoul of state and federal regulators.
After attending Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan, Mr. Rechnitz followed in his father’s footsteps and tried to make a go of it in New York City real estate. For his first few years, those who knew him said, he worked in minor jobs at middling firms like Marcus & Millichap. But in 2007, he edged closer to success, taking a post at Africa Israel USA, the American subsidiary of the international development firm Africa Israel, which was owned by the billionaire diamond dealer Lev Leviev.
By his own account, Mr. Rechnitz started slowly at Africa Israel, fetching coffee and picking up dry cleaning for its New York chief executive. But as he later testified, he enjoyed the company’s ambience of “trophy properties” and “luxury developers.” Within a few years, as he progressed at the firm and eventually became its director of acquisitions, Mr. Rechnitz began to make connections to the machers and scoundrels who populated the world of New York real estate — something else he seemed to enjoy.
“I have never seen a young man so schooled in networking,” said someone who had dealings with him at the time and requested anonymity to avoid the investigation. “He made his life all about connective tissues. He doesn’t know how to do financial analysis. He doesn’t know how to put together a proposal. He doesn’t have normal business skills. But he knew everyone.” Comments
The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.
Forever on the hunt for people who could help him advance his prestige or career, Mr. Rechnitz noticed one day that one of his Africa Israel clients had custom license plates marked “Sheriff” that gave him special parking privileges. “When he came to meet me, he would park wherever he wanted,” Mr. Rechnitz later said in court, “and that is something I thought was pretty cool.”
Mr. Rechnitz wanted his own set of the plates, and the client offered to introduce him to the man who had provided them. His name was Jeremy Reichberg, and he would soon be hosting a charity dinner for the N.Y.P.D.’s football team, the client said. When Mr. Rechnitz learned that “a lot of the higher-ups in the Police Department” would be at the event, he was even more convinced he had to go.
So, hustling as always, he bought a $5,000 ticket. Mr. Reichberg, he recalled, was “very happy with the donation” and arranged for the football team to give him a memorial plaque. “It made him look good, made me look good,” Mr. Rechnitz said, “and we started to become friends.”
Aside from dabbling in real estate and diamonds, Mr. Reichberg, now 44, also worked as an official liaison between the Police Department and Borough Park’s Orthodox Jewish community. The department uses liaisons throughout the city to keep abreast of the concerns of local residents, but prosecutors say that Mr. Reichberg considered the post as both a public-service job and a personal profit center. In their early meetings, Mr. Rechnitz said, Mr. Reichberg described himself as “a fix-it guy” who used his police connections to help his friends in Borough Park take care of things like parking tickets and moving violations. For rendering these courtesies, he charged a small fee.
As the men grew closer, Mr. Reichberg supposedly acknowledged performing other favors. Once, Mr. Rechnitz said, he confessed that he had sent the police to a colleague’s diamond business to chase away a rival who was handing out fliers in front of his store. The police were later “rewarded with jewelry,” Mr. Rechnitz said.
To fulfill these requests, the government says, Mr. Reichberg relied on a stable of pliant police officials. Among them, prosecutors claim, was Mr. Grant, who at that point ran the 72nd Precinct nearby in Sunset Park, and Michael Harrington, an inspector assigned to a larger unit, Patrol Borough Brooklyn South. Mr. Reichberg also had connections, the government says, to a former commander of Borough Park’s 66th Precinct who had left the department to become the police commissioner in Floral Park, N.Y. Court papers say that he had similar relationships in the Westchester County Police Department and the New York courts.
“He had all these connections to police,” Mr. Rechnitz testified. “I didn’t know many people that had connections with police, growing up in Los Angeles, and I thought this would be an awesome tool for me personally and for my business.”
Not long after the football dinner, Lev Leviev, the head of Africa Israel, came to New York on a business trip. Wanting to impress him, Mr. Rechnitz called Mr. Reichberg, who, he said, offered to have the police escort Mr. Leviev from his private plane at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel into the city. Prosecutors say that at Mr. Reichberg’s behest, the police shut down one of the tunnel’s lanes so that Mr. Leviev could sail through on his own. “This is good,” Mr. Rechnitz remembered thinking at the time. “This will earn me a lot of points.”
In the months that followed, Mr. Rechnitz said, he started joining Mr. Reichberg for expensive dinners at which they entertained police officials and were rewarded with little perks like getting invited behind security lines at the New York City Marathon and the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square. The two men developed a dynamic based on their money and connections. “Jeremy would deal with more of the details, if something needed to be done,” Mr. Rechnitz later said, “and I would be the guy to basically pay for it.”
In 2011, at age 29, Mr. Rechnitz left Africa Israel and opened JSR Capital. In his later testimony, he claimed to have owned as much as $100 million in holdings at one point. He bought the old Mount Hope Medical Center in the Bronx and, not long after, a building at 238 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. He also owned two townhouses in the East Village and a sprawling complex called Solomon’s Plaza in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
But even if his properties were something less than glamorous, JSR gave Mr. Rechnitz a pool of capital to spend on his new friends, and his expenditures were eventually legion. On the witness stand, he testified that during this period he regularly racked up credit card bills of $1 million a year. As one lawyer involved in the case later claimed in court, Mr. Rechnitz often spent more on New York Knicks tickets — one of his favorite gifts — than he did on his taxes.
By early 2013, the government says, the two men’s ties to the police had widened. They struck up friendships with four deputy chiefs in top commands across the city, including David Colon, who ran the department’s Housing Bureau. In a bit of coincidence, Deputy Chief Colon was friends with Mr. Peralta and an occassional patron of the Hudson River Cafe. (Though none of these officials were ultimately charged, most of them either retired or were transferred from their posts.)
As they expanded their network, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg also became more brazen. In February 2013, the government said, they chartered a private jet — for nearly $60,000 — and flew Mr. Grant and David Milici, a detective from the 72nd Precinct, to Las Vegas for an all-expense-paid weekend at the Super Bowl. There were tickets to the game, prosecutors said, and luxury suites at the MGM Grand.
There was something else, too: a high-priced escort — “a professional in her industry,” as Mr. Grant’s lawyer later called her — joined the men on the flight in a special costume that Mr. Reichberg bought: a sexy stewardess’s outfit.
Moving Up in the Ranks
Philip Banks III was a legend in the Police Department. Capping a career of nearly 30 years, he was promoted in March 2013 to chief of the department, the highest uniformed position on the force. Rumor had it that there was even more was in store for Chief Banks, the top black official in the N.Y.P.D. As prosecutors noted in a legal filing, he was on a shortlist for deputy commissioner.
In one of his early moves, Chief Banks plucked his protégé, Michael Harrington, from Brooklyn South to work as his executive officer. While this was a coup for Mr. Harrington, it was also one for Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg. After moving into 1 Police Plaza, Mr. Harrington introduced the men to Chief Banks. As Mr. Rechnitz later claimed in court, the fortuitous staffing change gave him “access to the highest levels at the N.Y.P.D.” — or what he called a “one-stop shop for assistance.”
Within weeks of Mr. Harrington taking his new job, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg lavished him with gifts, the government said. Mr. Rechnitz sent him Knicks and New York Rangers tickets, court papers say, while Mr. Reichberg helped arrange a contract for a security company his brother owned.
Mr. Grant was also still receiving the men’s largess. When he and his family went to Rome in August 2013, Mr. Rechnitz paid a portion of their hotel bill, prosecutors say. A few months later, according to court papers, they bought Mr. Grant a $3,000 watch and spent another $6,000 to install new railings on his house in Staten Island.
Then on Christmas Day, prosecutors say, the two religious Jews, who typically wore sober black and white, showed up at the Grant family home dressed as Santa’s elves. They were bearing gifts: a Nintendo set for Mr. Grant’s children and jewelry for his wife. After leaving the presents, the government claimed, they went on to do the same at Mr. Harrington’s house.
Within a few months, court papers say, Mr. Harrington had returned the favor by dispatching officers to help Mr. Reichberg with problems at his diamond business. Prosecutors claim that he also sent police cars to protect a synagogue that Mr. Reichberg attended — and a police boat and helicopter to some of Mr. Reichberg’s private gatherings. Mr. Grant, the government said, also ordered officers on missions to help the men. According to court papers, he later helped the men illegally get gun permits with the assistance of another fixer from Borough Park, a vodka-swilling businessman who, the papers say, was bribing him.
But the two men clearly saw Chief Banks as their most important contact. Court papers say that in late 2013, they started spending time with him at least twice a month, dining at what Mr. Rechnitz called “the finest kosher establishments in New York.” They bought Chief Banks a ring, Mr. Rechnitz testified, that had once belonged to Muhammad Ali. (Chief Banks was a fan.) The chief, in turn, met with the men in his office, prosecutors said, letting them park in his reserved spot in the department’s private garage. They went to cigar bars and started taking trips together — a fact that “carried weight,” Mr. Rechnitz said, when they sought help from other officers.
While these arrangements were cozy, they were not necessarily illegal. But one thing troubled the federal agents on the case. As they continued scrutinizing Hamlet Peralta’s bank accounts, they found curious transactions involving Chief Banks.
At some point in 2013 — the record is unclear — prosecutors say that David Colon, the Police Department’s housing bureau chief, introduced Mr. Peralta to Mr. Rechnitz. Mr. Peralta was, as always, strapped for cash — “in way over his head,” his own lawyer said — and at a meeting, he pitched Mr. Rechnitz on investing in his liquor deals. Charging a “cash fee” of 18 percent, Mr. Rechnitz started gathering money from a group of friends and relatives and ultimately invested more than $3 million with Mr. Peralta. Some of that money, the authorities said, came from Chief Banks.
The chief was not the only official doing business with Mr. Rechnitz. As he and Mr. Reichberg grew closer to Chief Banks, they were introduced to one of the chief’s old friends, Norman Seabrook, the longtime leader of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, the union for New York City’s jail guards. Though he was a dandy with a taste for cigars and tailored suits, Mr. Seabrook was also a power broker who wielded control over Rikers Island and had numerous connections to local politicians. Immediately, Mr. Rechnitz saw him as a usable commodity.
“This was yet another chapter in my life,” he later said of meeting Mr. Seabrook, “and another thing that I felt no one else had access to.”
In December 2013, a few weeks before their elfin Christmas visits, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg chartered another private jet and took Chief Banks and Mr. Seabrook on a trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Peralta also went along. As Mr. Rechnitz later said: “We played golf. We relaxed. We smoked cigars. We ate nice.”
One night, after a long bout of drinking, Mr. Rechnitz found himself in Mr. Seabrook’s room at their luxury villa. Amid the palm trees — and under the influence of local booze — Mr. Seabrook became emotional. According to Mr. Rechnitz, he launched into a story about his troubles: how he had grown up with a single mother and reached the pinnacle of power in New York, but had little to show for it financially. Mr. Seabrook said his mortgage was crippling him and his beloved dog had just died. Drunk, he opened his shirt, Mr. Rechnitz said, and showed off a tattoo of the dog he had gotten on his chest.
Then he broke down.
“He makes, everybody makes, but Norman Seabrook doesn’t make,” Mr. Seabrook told him.
“Yeah,” Mr. Rechnitz answered, “you should be making money.”
Mr. Seabrook agreed. “It’s time,” he said, “Norman Seabrook got paid.”
The Scheme to Pay the Union Boss
Mr. Rechnitz knew someone who might pay Mr. Seabrook.
Murray Huberfeld, a founder of the hedge fund Platinum Partners, was an old family friend. Mr. Huberfeld’s father and Mr. Rechnitz’s grandfather were from the same part of Poland and had both survived the Holocaust. The two men had vacationed together when Mr. Rechnitz was a child, and when he came to New York City, Mr. Rechnitz reconnected with Mr. Huberfeld and occasionally did business with him. While working in real estate, Mr. Rechnitz had sold Mr. Huberfeld a few apartments in the pricey Apthorp building on the Upper West Side.
Beyond his experience as a financier, Mr. Huberfeld was also a major donor to Chabad-Lubavitch synagogues and to various yeshivas in Borough Park. But despite his philanthropic tendencies, he had a checkered past. In 1993, Mr. Huberfeld had been convicted in a fraud case, accused of having someone else take his broker’s license test in his name.
Shortly after returning from Punta Cana, Mr. Rechnitz met with Mr. Huberfeld in his office near Carnegie Hall. He wanted to see if Platinum Partners might be interested in investing money from Mr. Seabrook’s union. Platinum Partners was, in fact, looking for institutional investors. It was potentially lucrative for the firm, a small fund that stood out for its double-digit returns, but Mr. Rechnitz told Mr. Huberfeld that there would be a catch if the deal went through: Mr. Seabrook would have to get a kickback.
Mr. Huberfeld, prosecutors said, was amenable. Like many hedge funds, Platinum Partners worked on what was known as the “2 and 20” structure: The fund charged 2 percent of the total investment as a management fee and then kept 20 percent of the profits. From that 20 percent, court papers say, Mr. Huberfeld agreed to give a cut to Mr. Seabrook.
In March 2014, before the deal was sealed, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg took Mr. Seabrook and Chief Banks on another trip, this time to Israel. They prayed together at the Western Wall, ate at fancy restaurants in Jerusalem and went to the Arab marketplace, where Mr. Rechnitz bought Chief Banks a backgammon set, a game they liked to play together.
Within a month of their return, Mr. Seabrook had persuaded his union to invest $10 million from its pension fund into Platinum Partners, the government said. Over the summer, he invested another $10 million from the operating fund. According to court papers, the $20 million play was the largest single-client deal that Platinum Partners had gotten that year. But the last two tranches of $5 million, investigators say, were never approved by the union’s board of directors. Even its treasurer didn’t know.
By the end of 2014, prosecutors say, Mr. Seabrook was getting antsy. Although he had invested heavily in Platinum, he had not yet been paid, and he started pressing Mr. Rechnitz for his money. Mr. Rechnitz said he went to Mr. Huberfeld, who complained his fund was having a bad year. In their initial conversations, Mr. Rechnitz had promised Mr. Seabrook that he would make at least $100,000 in the deal. But feeling pinched, the government said, Mr. Huberfeld was now offering only $60,000 — and even that was a stretch.
So Mr. Rechnitz devised a solution. Court papers say that he proposed paying Mr. Seabrook the $60,000 from his own reserves and getting the money back from Mr. Huberfeld by invoicing Platinum Partners an equivalent amount in phony Knicks tickets. To carry off the scam, Mr. Rechnitz suggested routing the transaction through a Ponzi-scheming ticket broker he had been involved with — yet another of the shady businesses he dealt in.
The payoff was scheduled for Dec. 11, 2014, the government said. Aware that he was chintzing Mr. Seabrook, Mr. Rechnitz said he tried to sweeten deal by tossing in a gift: an $800 Salvatore Ferragamo handbag. He knew that Mr. Seabrook loved the brand. The union leader had once proudly showed Mr. Rechnitz the burgundy suede Ferragamo loafers he was wearing. After Mr. Rechnitz bought the bag, he stuffed it full of cash from his office safe. Then, he said, he met Mr. Seabrook on West 57th Street in Manhattan, climbing into his Chevrolet Suburban, which had pulled up to the curb.
Mr. Seabrook was hardly thrilled, Mr. Rechnitz said, to be getting less than he was promised, but their friendship managed to survive. Later that night, the two men met Chief Banks and Mr. Reichberg for dinner on Lexington Avenue and then strolled over to a Torah dedication ceremony at a Chabad-Lubavitch office on Fifth Avenue, where all they danced with the scroll.
After that, Mr. Rechnitz said, they retired to the Grand Havana Club for cigars.
The Investigation Expands — and Immediately Falls Apart
As entertaining as the night had been, there was something the men didn’t know at the time: All of them were under investigation.
The authorities had been on to them for weeks, secretly collecting their conversations through a court-ordered wiretap. The inquiry, which had started with Mr. Peralta, was by now an expansive operation jointly run by Internal Affairs and the New York office of the F.B.I. The initial working theory that tied these threads together was almost inconceivable: that Mr. Peralta was funneling money from Mr. Rechnitz, Mr. Reichberg and Chief Banks through his liquor business into the coffers of a drug dealer.
Though that theory proved untrue, there was already fallout from the probe. The agents had filed their application for the wiretap on Oct. 30, 2014. The next day — just before he was due to be promoted to first deputy commissioner — Chief Banks suddenly retired, citing a mix of personal and professional concerns.
The news set off a flurry of anxious calls and texts. Mr. Peralta immediately sent a message to one of his police friends, exclaiming, “Banks quit!” Not long after, court papers say, Mr. Banks reached out to Mr. Reichberg, saying he had recently seen Mr. Rechnitz, whom he described as “freaking nervous.” Mr. Banks tried to downplay the tension, telling Mr. Reichberg, “Everything is fine.” But the papers say he also told Mr. Reichberg to get his partner under control. “Just calm him down,” Mr. Banks said.
Then, just as it seemed as if the inquiry was finally was taking shape, a bombshell exploded on the wire.
Despite their alarm at Mr. Banks retiring, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg never stopped hustling. Within three months, in fact, Mr. Reichberg was caught on the wiretap telling a deputy chief that with Mr. Banks out of the way, he was angling to get Michael Harrington, now a deputy chief himself, promoted to chief of the department.
To accomplish the task, Mr. Reichberg told his friend that he would reach out “to the mayor.”
“Nobody will turn down the mayor,” he said.
The men had known Bill de Blasio since before he entered office. Though Mr. Rechnitz had at first supported one of his rivals, William C. Thompson Jr., in an early stage of the 2013 mayor’s race, after Mr. de Blasio won the Democratic primary, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg switched their allegiance and became major donors to the de Blasio campaign.
In deciding to back Mr. de Blasio, the men had followed the advice of Fernando Mateo, a local politico who was also an owner of La Marina restaurant in Inwood and worked for a city taxi union. Mr. Rechnitz said that he was introduced to Mr. Mateo by Deputy Chief Colon, Mr. Peralta’s friend. Once Mr. de Blasio secured the nomination, Mr. Mateo boasted that he had “an in with Bill de Blasio,” Mr. Rechnitz said. And when Mr. Mateo promised to arrange a meeting with the campaign, Mr. Rechnitz sensed an opportunity.
“We had the police going for us,” he later said in court. “Now it was time to get into politics.”
Indeed, within days, prosecutors say, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg had an audience with Ross Offinger, Mr. de Blasio’s campaign fund-raiser. As Mr. Rechnitz later testified, they told Mr. Offinger: “We’re going to become significant contributors, but we want access. And when we call, we want answers. When we reach out for things, we want them to get done.”
True to his word, in early 2014, Mr. Rechnitz donated $50,000 to the Campaign for One New York, Mr. de Blasio’s nonprofit fund-raising and advocacy group. Months later, Mr. Reichberg held a party for Mr. de Blasio at his home in Borough Park at which another $35,000 was raised. That same year, one of Mr. Rechnitz’s companies, JSTD Madison LLC, gave more than $100,000 to the mayor’s pet effort to flip the State Senate back to the control of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Rechnitz says that Mr. de Blasio gave him his personal cellphone number and email address and “told me to call if there’s anything I need — always be in touch.” Shortly after the election, both men were placed on the mayor’s inaugural committee with celebrities like Russell Simmons, Sarah Jessica Parker and Steve Buscemi.
But that was just the beginning, Mr. Rechnitz said, of their attempts to wrangle favors out of City Hall. As Mr. de Blasio got settled into office, Mr. Offinger was met with a barrage of calls from the two men. In one of those calls, Mr. Rechnitz said, he asked for help on behalf of a friend who owned a building on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn and was worried that the local police precinct might buy it out from under him for use as a stationhouse. In another, Mr. Rechnitz requested assistance for a cousin of his wife who ran a school on Manhattan’s east side and was having trouble meeting the city’s building code.
One of Mr. Reichberg’s friends had problems with his water bill, and Mr. Rechnitz himself had legal issues with Airbnb at his Madison Avenue property. In a particularly brazen move, Mr. Rechnitz tried at one point to get himself appointed to Mr. de Blasio’s new committee on fighting police corruption.
While city officials called and emailed to follow up on some of these pleas, many were rebuffed. Mr. de Blasio has adamantly denied that he did anything wrong. “Jona Rechnitz is a liar and a felon,” he said this fall, after Mr. Rechnitz pleaded guilty to honest services fraud and turned state’s evidence. “It’s as simple as that.”
But at the time, Mr. Rechnitz dreamed of the good turns he hoped to get in exchange for his donations.
“My mind was limitless,” he testified in November. “Jeremy had told me in the days of Giuliani, people made a fortune. I was focused on making money, getting my name out there, becoming a big player in town.”
The End Game
It all came crashing down within a few months in the spring of 2016.
On April 8 that year, Mr. Peralta was arrested in Georgia and charged with running what the government described as a $12 million Ponzi scheme. A few weeks later, in a stunning move, Mr. Rechnitz decided to cooperate with the authorities, betraying everyone he worked with. He was facing 20 years in prison and said he signed the cooperation papers “in the hopes of leniency” at sentencing.
Once he started talking, the dominoes kept falling.
On May 20, federal agents served subpoenas on Mr. Huberfeld’s hedge fund and Mr. Seabrook’s union. Three weeks later, both men were arrested and charged with fraud.
On June 20, Mr. Grant and Mr. Harrington, both of whom had since retired, were also arrested, accused of overlapping bribery and corruption charges. When the authorities showed up on the same day to arrest Mr. Reichberg, they caught his brother trying to make off with what they called potential evidence: several smartphones, a flip phone, eight compact discs, six thumb drives and a windshield placard saying that Mr. Reichberg’s wife was a friend of Mr. Banks.
Amid the arrests, Inspector Michael Ameri, another police official caught up in the inquiry, was found dead in his car of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head near a golf course in Long Island. Around the same time, Detective Milici, who had flown to Las Vegas with Mr. Grant and the prostitute, filed for retirement.
In spite of the roundup, though, the case so far has produced limited results. Mr. Peralta pleaded guilty in May 2017, and while he was imprisoned as his case moved through the courts, his restaurant was shuttered, his girlfriend left him and his father died of cancer. “I’m really broken,” he said when he was sentenced to five years in prison this September.
After fighting his own case for almost two years, Mr. Harrington pleaded guilty in March to dispatching police resources without permission. The charge was considerably less severe than the initial fraud and bribery counts the government leveled against him. (He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 11.)
Mr. Banks was never charged in the case. And in March 2017, after months of investigation, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan suddenly announced that it would not seek an indictment of Mr. de Blasio either. But in a rare public statement, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which had investigated a narrower set of issues, criticized the mayor for violating the “intent and spirit of the law.”
Mr. Seabrook and Mr. Huberfeld went on trial together in October, but the proceeding ended in a hung jury. The courtroom failure was partly blamed on Mr. Rechnitz’s cataclysmic testimony as a prosecution witness. At the trial, the defendants’ lawyers painted Mr. Rechnitz — successfully, it seemed — as “wheeler and dealer,” “a wannabe big shot” and “a straight-up liar.” As Mr. Seabrook’s lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said one day in court, “Jona Rechnitz and the truth have never been in the same room.”
Federal prosecutors have promised to retry the men in July, a few months after Mr. Grant and Mr. Reichberg go on trial. Mr. Rechnitz is scheduled to testify at both trials.
In the meantime, though, he has left New York. He now lives in Beverlywood, a neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, where he rents a house, he said, for $17,000 a month.
Diagram of the relationship between parties described

The Small-Time Bootlegging Run That Started It All
A few days after Valentine’s Day in 2011, a State Police cruiser pulled over a van from New York City on a quiet highway outside Lowell, Mass. While it seemed at first like a routine stop — the light above its license plate was out — the troopers made a curious find.
When they searched the van, they found nearly 2,000 bottles of top-shelf cognac and a pack of razor blades, which they surmised had been used to remove the bottles’ tax stamps. The driver claimed ignorance. He said that a friend from New York, a man named Hamlet Peralta, had asked him as a favor to drive the brandy from New Hampshire to a church party an hour south of Lowell. But the law was the law, and the driver was arrested for transporting untaxed liquor. His case was soon disposed of with six months of probation and a $1,000 fine.
What no one knew at the time was that this two-bit bootlegging run was the tip of a criminal scheme that within three years would be used as evidence in an unimaginably larger case, a federal corruption investigation that would ultimately reach deep into New York City’s highest offices of power. While the inquiry began with Mr. Peralta, it eventually engulfed a Dickensian cast of characters: two Orthodox Jewish businessmen, an influential union leader, a hedge fund mogul, a coterie of top police officials — even the city’s mayor.
Because the case has involved so many people and has moved through the courts in separate pieces, its story, at least so far, has been told in serial increments. Some of the nearly 20 figures it has touched have pleaded guilty. Some have gone to trial. Others have escaped public censure — except, perhaps, in the headlines. But the sprawling paper trail the case has left behind — legal filings, trial transcripts and wiretap records — reveals a larger saga of favor-trading and back-room deals that connects its various players in an intersecting web of venality and vice.
In May, the last two targets of the probe — Jeremy Reichberg, an Orthodox Jewish community leader from Brooklyn, and James Grant, a former Police Department deputy inspector — will appear in Federal District Court in Manhattan at a bribery trial that will also feature a dozen other uncharged co-conspirators. As it nudges the case toward its conclusion, the trial will reprise the investigation’s central theme: that a culture of graft — sometimes petty, sometimes serious — has existed in New York since the days of Tammany Hall.
The authorities have never said what tipped them off to Mr. Peralta, but in an affidavit that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used to tap his cellphone, investigators said that in February 2013 an anonymous letter was sent to the Police Department’s anti-corruption nerve center, the Internal Affairs Bureau. The letter, which appears to be the first public mention of the inquiry, contained an explosive allegation: The man in charge of Harlem’s 30th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Ruel Stephenson, was crooked. Specifically, it claimed that the deputy inspector was close with someone named Hamlet and often warned him when the police were planning to inspect his businesses.
At that point, Hamlet Peralta owned two businesses in Harlem, a liquor store on West 125th Street and the Hudson River Cafe, a restaurant several blocks to the north. Perched near the water, Hudson River Cafe was known both for its views and its lively “club nights” that featured bands and D.J.’s. It was also known as a police hangout.
A gregarious man born in the Dominican Republic, Mr. Peralta, 39, was friends with several officers from nearby precincts, men who called him “bro” and regularly texted him with gossip. In April 2013, two months after getting the tipster’s letter, Internal Affairs sent undercover detectives to speak with him at his restaurant. According to court papers, the detectives pretended that they wanted Mr. Peralta’s help with “an outstanding ticket.” Mr. Peralta told them that he had “a very good relationship with Inspector Stephenson” and trying to be helpful, passed along his number.
Within a matter of months, investigators were digging deeper into Mr. Peralta’s business deals. They found two confidential sources who told them that for years Mr. Peralta had purchased spirits out of state — or sometimes stolen off trucks — and sold them wholesale to restaurants and nightclubs in violation of his liquor license. They also learned about the role he played in the brandy shipment discovered in the traffic stop in Massachusetts. EDITORS’ PICKS How One Interview Question Fuels the Gender Pay Gap They Survived a Massacre. Then the Lawyers Started Calling. A Very German Love Story: When Old Left and Far Right Share a Bedroom
Mr. Peralta’s bank accounts were particularly suspect. Court filings say that money flowed into them from one person and then out to another in a manner suggesting a Ponzi scheme. The filings also said that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been transferred in recent years to two convicted drug dealers. The records further indicated that Mr. Peralta owed large sums to the state tax authority and was substantially in debt to a capo in the Genovese crime family.
But what pushed the case forward — and finally undid Mr. Peralta — was a series of seemingly innocuous transactions. In his accounts, court papers said, the authorities found numerous deposits from a company called JSR Capital — among them, a $250,000 check with “liquor loan” written on its memo line.
Following the money, investigators learned that JSR was a real-estate firm with offices on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks south of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It took its name from the initials of its owner: Jona S. Rechnitz.
“It Made Him Look Good, Made Me Look Good”
Mr. Rechnitz was an up-and-comer from California. He had arrived in New York in his late teens from Los Angeles, where he grew up as the scion of a wealthy family that was staunchly pro-Israel and active in Republican Party politics. His father, Robert Rechnitz, a successful real-estate developer, had served as a finance chairman on Senator Lindsey Graham’s 2016 presidential campaign and was a prominent donor to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. But the family’s real money belonged to Mr. Rechnitz’s cousin who owned a chain of California nursing homes that ultimately fell afoul of state and federal regulators.
After attending Yeshiva University in Upper Manhattan, Mr. Rechnitz followed in his father’s footsteps and tried to make a go of it in New York City real estate. For his first few years, those who knew him said, he worked in minor jobs at middling firms like Marcus & Millichap. But in 2007, he edged closer to success, taking a post at Africa Israel USA, the American subsidiary of the international development firm Africa Israel, which was owned by the billionaire diamond dealer Lev Leviev.
By his own account, Mr. Rechnitz started slowly at Africa Israel, fetching coffee and picking up dry cleaning for its New York chief executive. But as he later testified, he enjoyed the company’s ambience of “trophy properties” and “luxury developers.” Within a few years, as he progressed at the firm and eventually became its director of acquisitions, Mr. Rechnitz began to make connections to the machers and scoundrels who populated the world of New York real estate — something else he seemed to enjoy.
“I have never seen a young man so schooled in networking,” said someone who had dealings with him at the time and requested anonymity to avoid the investigation. “He made his life all about connective tissues. He doesn’t know how to do financial analysis. He doesn’t know how to put together a proposal. He doesn’t have normal business skills. But he knew everyone.” Comments
The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.
Forever on the hunt for people who could help him advance his prestige or career, Mr. Rechnitz noticed one day that one of his Africa Israel clients had custom license plates marked “Sheriff” that gave him special parking privileges. “When he came to meet me, he would park wherever he wanted,” Mr. Rechnitz later said in court, “and that is something I thought was pretty cool.”
Mr. Rechnitz wanted his own set of the plates, and the client offered to introduce him to the man who had provided them. His name was Jeremy Reichberg, and he would soon be hosting a charity dinner for the N.Y.P.D.’s football team, the client said. When Mr. Rechnitz learned that “a lot of the higher-ups in the Police Department” would be at the event, he was even more convinced he had to go.
So, hustling as always, he bought a $5,000 ticket. Mr. Reichberg, he recalled, was “very happy with the donation” and arranged for the football team to give him a memorial plaque. “It made him look good, made me look good,” Mr. Rechnitz said, “and we started to become friends.”
Aside from dabbling in real estate and diamonds, Mr. Reichberg, now 44, also worked as an official liaison between the Police Department and Borough Park’s Orthodox Jewish community. The department uses liaisons throughout the city to keep abreast of the concerns of local residents, but prosecutors say that Mr. Reichberg considered the post as both a public-service job and a personal profit center. In their early meetings, Mr. Rechnitz said, Mr. Reichberg described himself as “a fix-it guy” who used his police connections to help his friends in Borough Park take care of things like parking tickets and moving violations. For rendering these courtesies, he charged a small fee.
As the men grew closer, Mr. Reichberg supposedly acknowledged performing other favors. Once, Mr. Rechnitz said, he confessed that he had sent the police to a colleague’s diamond business to chase away a rival who was handing out fliers in front of his store. The police were later “rewarded with jewelry,” Mr. Rechnitz said.
To fulfill these requests, the government says, Mr. Reichberg relied on a stable of pliant police officials. Among them, prosecutors claim, was Mr. Grant, who at that point ran the 72nd Precinct nearby in Sunset Park, and Michael Harrington, an inspector assigned to a larger unit, Patrol Borough Brooklyn South. Mr. Reichberg also had connections, the government says, to a former commander of Borough Park’s 66th Precinct who had left the department to become the police commissioner in Floral Park, N.Y. Court papers say that he had similar relationships in the Westchester County Police Department and the New York courts.
“He had all these connections to police,” Mr. Rechnitz testified. “I didn’t know many people that had connections with police, growing up in Los Angeles, and I thought this would be an awesome tool for me personally and for my business.”
Not long after the football dinner, Lev Leviev, the head of Africa Israel, came to New York on a business trip. Wanting to impress him, Mr. Rechnitz called Mr. Reichberg, who, he said, offered to have the police escort Mr. Leviev from his private plane at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel into the city. Prosecutors say that at Mr. Reichberg’s behest, the police shut down one of the tunnel’s lanes so that Mr. Leviev could sail through on his own. “This is good,” Mr. Rechnitz remembered thinking at the time. “This will earn me a lot of points.”
In the months that followed, Mr. Rechnitz said, he started joining Mr. Reichberg for expensive dinners at which they entertained police officials and were rewarded with little perks like getting invited behind security lines at the New York City Marathon and the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square. The two men developed a dynamic based on their money and connections. “Jeremy would deal with more of the details, if something needed to be done,” Mr. Rechnitz later said, “and I would be the guy to basically pay for it.”
In 2011, at age 29, Mr. Rechnitz left Africa Israel and opened JSR Capital. In his later testimony, he claimed to have owned as much as $100 million in holdings at one point. He bought the old Mount Hope Medical Center in the Bronx and, not long after, a building at 238 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. He also owned two townhouses in the East Village and a sprawling complex called Solomon’s Plaza in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
But even if his properties were something less than glamorous, JSR gave Mr. Rechnitz a pool of capital to spend on his new friends, and his expenditures were eventually legion. On the witness stand, he testified that during this period he regularly racked up credit card bills of $1 million a year. As one lawyer involved in the case later claimed in court, Mr. Rechnitz often spent more on New York Knicks tickets — one of his favorite gifts — than he did on his taxes.
By early 2013, the government says, the two men’s ties to the police had widened. They struck up friendships with four deputy chiefs in top commands across the city, including David Colon, who ran the department’s Housing Bureau. In a bit of coincidence, Deputy Chief Colon was friends with Mr. Peralta and an occassional patron of the Hudson River Cafe. (Though none of these officials were ultimately charged, most of them either retired or were transferred from their posts.)
As they expanded their network, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg also became more brazen. In February 2013, the government said, they chartered a private jet — for nearly $60,000 — and flew Mr. Grant and David Milici, a detective from the 72nd Precinct, to Las Vegas for an all-expense-paid weekend at the Super Bowl. There were tickets to the game, prosecutors said, and luxury suites at the MGM Grand.
There was something else, too: a high-priced escort — “a professional in her industry,” as Mr. Grant’s lawyer later called her — joined the men on the flight in a special costume that Mr. Reichberg bought: a sexy stewardess’s outfit.
Moving Up in the Ranks
Philip Banks III was a legend in the Police Department. Capping a career of nearly 30 years, he was promoted in March 2013 to chief of the department, the highest uniformed position on the force. Rumor had it that there was even more was in store for Chief Banks, the top black official in the N.Y.P.D. As prosecutors noted in a legal filing, he was on a shortlist for deputy commissioner.
In one of his early moves, Chief Banks plucked his protégé, Michael Harrington, from Brooklyn South to work as his executive officer. While this was a coup for Mr. Harrington, it was also one for Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg. After moving into 1 Police Plaza, Mr. Harrington introduced the men to Chief Banks. As Mr. Rechnitz later claimed in court, the fortuitous staffing change gave him “access to the highest levels at the N.Y.P.D.” — or what he called a “one-stop shop for assistance.”
Within weeks of Mr. Harrington taking his new job, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg lavished him with gifts, the government said. Mr. Rechnitz sent him Knicks and New York Rangers tickets, court papers say, while Mr. Reichberg helped arrange a contract for a security company his brother owned.
Mr. Grant was also still receiving the men’s largess. When he and his family went to Rome in August 2013, Mr. Rechnitz paid a portion of their hotel bill, prosecutors say. A few months later, according to court papers, they bought Mr. Grant a $3,000 watch and spent another $6,000 to install new railings on his house in Staten Island.
Then on Christmas Day, prosecutors say, the two religious Jews, who typically wore sober black and white, showed up at the Grant family home dressed as Santa’s elves. They were bearing gifts: a Nintendo set for Mr. Grant’s children and jewelry for his wife. After leaving the presents, the government claimed, they went on to do the same at Mr. Harrington’s house.
Within a few months, court papers say, Mr. Harrington had returned the favor by dispatching officers to help Mr. Reichberg with problems at his diamond business. Prosecutors claim that he also sent police cars to protect a synagogue that Mr. Reichberg attended — and a police boat and helicopter to some of Mr. Reichberg’s private gatherings. Mr. Grant, the government said, also ordered officers on missions to help the men. According to court papers, he later helped the men illegally get gun permits with the assistance of another fixer from Borough Park, a vodka-swilling businessman who, the papers say, was bribing him.
But the two men clearly saw Chief Banks as their most important contact. Court papers say that in late 2013, they started spending time with him at least twice a month, dining at what Mr. Rechnitz called “the finest kosher establishments in New York.” They bought Chief Banks a ring, Mr. Rechnitz testified, that had once belonged to Muhammad Ali. (Chief Banks was a fan.) The chief, in turn, met with the men in his office, prosecutors said, letting them park in his reserved spot in the department’s private garage. They went to cigar bars and started taking trips together — a fact that “carried weight,” Mr. Rechnitz said, when they sought help from other officers.
While these arrangements were cozy, they were not necessarily illegal. But one thing troubled the federal agents on the case. As they continued scrutinizing Hamlet Peralta’s bank accounts, they found curious transactions involving Chief Banks.
At some point in 2013 — the record is unclear — prosecutors say that David Colon, the Police Department’s housing bureau chief, introduced Mr. Peralta to Mr. Rechnitz. Mr. Peralta was, as always, strapped for cash — “in way over his head,” his own lawyer said — and at a meeting, he pitched Mr. Rechnitz on investing in his liquor deals. Charging a “cash fee” of 18 percent, Mr. Rechnitz started gathering money from a group of friends and relatives and ultimately invested more than $3 million with Mr. Peralta. Some of that money, the authorities said, came from Chief Banks.
The chief was not the only official doing business with Mr. Rechnitz. As he and Mr. Reichberg grew closer to Chief Banks, they were introduced to one of the chief’s old friends, Norman Seabrook, the longtime leader of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, the union for New York City’s jail guards. Though he was a dandy with a taste for cigars and tailored suits, Mr. Seabrook was also a power broker who wielded control over Rikers Island and had numerous connections to local politicians. Immediately, Mr. Rechnitz saw him as a usable commodity.
“This was yet another chapter in my life,” he later said of meeting Mr. Seabrook, “and another thing that I felt no one else had access to.”
In December 2013, a few weeks before their elfin Christmas visits, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg chartered another private jet and took Chief Banks and Mr. Seabrook on a trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Peralta also went along. As Mr. Rechnitz later said: “We played golf. We relaxed. We smoked cigars. We ate nice.”
One night, after a long bout of drinking, Mr. Rechnitz found himself in Mr. Seabrook’s room at their luxury villa. Amid the palm trees — and under the influence of local booze — Mr. Seabrook became emotional. According to Mr. Rechnitz, he launched into a story about his troubles: how he had grown up with a single mother and reached the pinnacle of power in New York, but had little to show for it financially. Mr. Seabrook said his mortgage was crippling him and his beloved dog had just died. Drunk, he opened his shirt, Mr. Rechnitz said, and showed off a tattoo of the dog he had gotten on his chest.
Then he broke down.
“He makes, everybody makes, but Norman Seabrook doesn’t make,” Mr. Seabrook told him.
“Yeah,” Mr. Rechnitz answered, “you should be making money.”
Mr. Seabrook agreed. “It’s time,” he said, “Norman Seabrook got paid.”
The Scheme to Pay the Union Boss
Mr. Rechnitz knew someone who might pay Mr. Seabrook.
Murray Huberfeld, a founder of the hedge fund Platinum Partners, was an old family friend. Mr. Huberfeld’s father and Mr. Rechnitz’s grandfather were from the same part of Poland and had both survived the Holocaust. The two men had vacationed together when Mr. Rechnitz was a child, and when he came to New York City, Mr. Rechnitz reconnected with Mr. Huberfeld and occasionally did business with him. While working in real estate, Mr. Rechnitz had sold Mr. Huberfeld a few apartments in the pricey Apthorp building on the Upper West Side.
Beyond his experience as a financier, Mr. Huberfeld was also a major donor to Chabad-Lubavitch synagogues and to various yeshivas in Borough Park. But despite his philanthropic tendencies, he had a checkered past. In 1993, Mr. Huberfeld had been convicted in a fraud case, accused of having someone else take his broker’s license test in his name.
Shortly after returning from Punta Cana, Mr. Rechnitz met with Mr. Huberfeld in his office near Carnegie Hall. He wanted to see if Platinum Partners might be interested in investing money from Mr. Seabrook’s union. Platinum Partners was, in fact, looking for institutional investors. It was potentially lucrative for the firm, a small fund that stood out for its double-digit returns, but Mr. Rechnitz told Mr. Huberfeld that there would be a catch if the deal went through: Mr. Seabrook would have to get a kickback.
Mr. Huberfeld, prosecutors said, was amenable. Like many hedge funds, Platinum Partners worked on what was known as the “2 and 20” structure: The fund charged 2 percent of the total investment as a management fee and then kept 20 percent of the profits. From that 20 percent, court papers say, Mr. Huberfeld agreed to give a cut to Mr. Seabrook.
In March 2014, before the deal was sealed, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg took Mr. Seabrook and Chief Banks on another trip, this time to Israel. They prayed together at the Western Wall, ate at fancy restaurants in Jerusalem and went to the Arab marketplace, where Mr. Rechnitz bought Chief Banks a backgammon set, a game they liked to play together.
Within a month of their return, Mr. Seabrook had persuaded his union to invest $10 million from its pension fund into Platinum Partners, the government said. Over the summer, he invested another $10 million from the operating fund. According to court papers, the $20 million play was the largest single-client deal that Platinum Partners had gotten that year. But the last two tranches of $5 million, investigators say, were never approved by the union’s board of directors. Even its treasurer didn’t know.
By the end of 2014, prosecutors say, Mr. Seabrook was getting antsy. Although he had invested heavily in Platinum, he had not yet been paid, and he started pressing Mr. Rechnitz for his money. Mr. Rechnitz said he went to Mr. Huberfeld, who complained his fund was having a bad year. In their initial conversations, Mr. Rechnitz had promised Mr. Seabrook that he would make at least $100,000 in the deal. But feeling pinched, the government said, Mr. Huberfeld was now offering only $60,000 — and even that was a stretch.
So Mr. Rechnitz devised a solution. Court papers say that he proposed paying Mr. Seabrook the $60,000 from his own reserves and getting the money back from Mr. Huberfeld by invoicing Platinum Partners an equivalent amount in phony Knicks tickets. To carry off the scam, Mr. Rechnitz suggested routing the transaction through a Ponzi-scheming ticket broker he had been involved with — yet another of the shady businesses he dealt in.
The payoff was scheduled for Dec. 11, 2014, the government said. Aware that he was chintzing Mr. Seabrook, Mr. Rechnitz said he tried to sweeten deal by tossing in a gift: an $800 Salvatore Ferragamo handbag. He knew that Mr. Seabrook loved the brand. The union leader had once proudly showed Mr. Rechnitz the burgundy suede Ferragamo loafers he was wearing. After Mr. Rechnitz bought the bag, he stuffed it full of cash from his office safe. Then, he said, he met Mr. Seabrook on West 57th Street in Manhattan, climbing into his Chevrolet Suburban, which had pulled up to the curb.
Mr. Seabrook was hardly thrilled, Mr. Rechnitz said, to be getting less than he was promised, but their friendship managed to survive. Later that night, the two men met Chief Banks and Mr. Reichberg for dinner on Lexington Avenue and then strolled over to a Torah dedication ceremony at a Chabad-Lubavitch office on Fifth Avenue, where all they danced with the scroll.
After that, Mr. Rechnitz said, they retired to the Grand Havana Club for cigars.
The Investigation Expands — and Immediately Falls Apart
As entertaining as the night had been, there was something the men didn’t know at the time: All of them were under investigation.
The authorities had been on to them for weeks, secretly collecting their conversations through a court-ordered wiretap. The inquiry, which had started with Mr. Peralta, was by now an expansive operation jointly run by Internal Affairs and the New York office of the F.B.I. The initial working theory that tied these threads together was almost inconceivable: that Mr. Peralta was funneling money from Mr. Rechnitz, Mr. Reichberg and Chief Banks through his liquor business into the coffers of a drug dealer.
Though that theory proved untrue, there was already fallout from the probe. The agents had filed their application for the wiretap on Oct. 30, 2014. The next day — just before he was due to be promoted to first deputy commissioner — Chief Banks suddenly retired, citing a mix of personal and professional concerns.
The news set off a flurry of anxious calls and texts. Mr. Peralta immediately sent a message to one of his police friends, exclaiming, “Banks quit!” Not long after, court papers say, Mr. Banks reached out to Mr. Reichberg, saying he had recently seen Mr. Rechnitz, whom he described as “freaking nervous.” Mr. Banks tried to downplay the tension, telling Mr. Reichberg, “Everything is fine.” But the papers say he also told Mr. Reichberg to get his partner under control. “Just calm him down,” Mr. Banks said.
Then, just as it seemed as if the inquiry was finally was taking shape, a bombshell exploded on the wire.
Despite their alarm at Mr. Banks retiring, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg never stopped hustling. Within three months, in fact, Mr. Reichberg was caught on the wiretap telling a deputy chief that with Mr. Banks out of the way, he was angling to get Michael Harrington, now a deputy chief himself, promoted to chief of the department.
To accomplish the task, Mr. Reichberg told his friend that he would reach out “to the mayor.”
“Nobody will turn down the mayor,” he said.
The men had known Bill de Blasio since before he entered office. Though Mr. Rechnitz had at first supported one of his rivals, William C. Thompson Jr., in an early stage of the 2013 mayor’s race, after Mr. de Blasio won the Democratic primary, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg switched their allegiance and became major donors to the de Blasio campaign.
In deciding to back Mr. de Blasio, the men had followed the advice of Fernando Mateo, a local politico who was also an owner of La Marina restaurant in Inwood and worked for a city taxi union. Mr. Rechnitz said that he was introduced to Mr. Mateo by Deputy Chief Colon, Mr. Peralta’s friend. Once Mr. de Blasio secured the nomination, Mr. Mateo boasted that he had “an in with Bill de Blasio,” Mr. Rechnitz said. And when Mr. Mateo promised to arrange a meeting with the campaign, Mr. Rechnitz sensed an opportunity.
“We had the police going for us,” he later said in court. “Now it was time to get into politics.”
Indeed, within days, prosecutors say, Mr. Rechnitz and Mr. Reichberg had an audience with Ross Offinger, Mr. de Blasio’s campaign fund-raiser. As Mr. Rechnitz later testified, they told Mr. Offinger: “We’re going to become significant contributors, but we want access. And when we call, we want answers. When we reach out for things, we want them to get done.”
True to his word, in early 2014, Mr. Rechnitz donated $50,000 to the Campaign for One New York, Mr. de Blasio’s nonprofit fund-raising and advocacy group. Months later, Mr. Reichberg held a party for Mr. de Blasio at his home in Borough Park at which another $35,000 was raised. That same year, one of Mr. Rechnitz’s companies, JSTD Madison LLC, gave more than $100,000 to the mayor’s pet effort to flip the State Senate back to the control of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Rechnitz says that Mr. de Blasio gave him his personal cellphone number and email address and “told me to call if there’s anything I need — always be in touch.” Shortly after the election, both men were placed on the mayor’s inaugural committee with celebrities like Russell Simmons, Sarah Jessica Parker and Steve Buscemi.
But that was just the beginning, Mr. Rechnitz said, of their attempts to wrangle favors out of City Hall. As Mr. de Blasio got settled into office, Mr. Offinger was met with a barrage of calls from the two men. In one of those calls, Mr. Rechnitz said, he asked for help on behalf of a friend who owned a building on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn and was worried that the local police precinct might buy it out from under him for use as a stationhouse. In another, Mr. Rechnitz requested assistance for a cousin of his wife who ran a school on Manhattan’s east side and was having trouble meeting the city’s building code.
One of Mr. Reichberg’s friends had problems with his water bill, and Mr. Rechnitz himself had legal issues with Airbnb at his Madison Avenue property. In a particularly brazen move, Mr. Rechnitz tried at one point to get himself appointed to Mr. de Blasio’s new committee on fighting police corruption.
While city officials called and emailed to follow up on some of these pleas, many were rebuffed. Mr. de Blasio has adamantly denied that he did anything wrong. “Jona Rechnitz is a liar and a felon,” he said this fall, after Mr. Rechnitz pleaded guilty to honest services fraud and turned state’s evidence. “It’s as simple as that.”
But at the time, Mr. Rechnitz dreamed of the good turns he hoped to get in exchange for his donations.
“My mind was limitless,” he testified in November. “Jeremy had told me in the days of Giuliani, people made a fortune. I was focused on making money, getting my name out there, becoming a big player in town.”
The End Game
It all came crashing down within a few months in the spring of 2016.
On April 8 that year, Mr. Peralta was arrested in Georgia and charged with running what the government described as a $12 million Ponzi scheme. A few weeks later, in a stunning move, Mr. Rechnitz decided to cooperate with the authorities, betraying everyone he worked with. He was facing 20 years in prison and said he signed the cooperation papers “in the hopes of leniency” at sentencing.
Once he started talking, the dominoes kept falling.
On May 20, federal agents served subpoenas on Mr. Huberfeld’s hedge fund and Mr. Seabrook’s union. Three weeks later, both men were arrested and charged with fraud.
On June 20, Mr. Grant and Mr. Harrington, both of whom had since retired, were also arrested, accused of overlapping bribery and corruption charges. When the authorities showed up on the same day to arrest Mr. Reichberg, they caught his brother trying to make off with what they called potential evidence: several smartphones, a flip phone, eight compact discs, six thumb drives and a windshield placard saying that Mr. Reichberg’s wife was a friend of Mr. Banks.
Amid the arrests, Inspector Michael Ameri, another police official caught up in the inquiry, was found dead in his car of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head near a golf course in Long Island. Around the same time, Detective Milici, who had flown to Las Vegas with Mr. Grant and the prostitute, filed for retirement.
In spite of the roundup, though, the case so far has produced limited results. Mr. Peralta pleaded guilty in May 2017, and while he was imprisoned as his case moved through the courts, his restaurant was shuttered, his girlfriend left him and his father died of cancer. “I’m really broken,” he said when he was sentenced to five years in prison this September.
After fighting his own case for almost two years, Mr. Harrington pleaded guilty in March to dispatching police resources without permission. The charge was considerably less severe than the initial fraud and bribery counts the government leveled against him. (He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 11.)
Mr. Banks was never charged in the case. And in March 2017, after months of investigation, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan suddenly announced that it would not seek an indictment of Mr. de Blasio either. But in a rare public statement, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which had investigated a narrower set of issues, criticized the mayor for violating the “intent and spirit of the law.”
Mr. Seabrook and Mr. Huberfeld went on trial together in October, but the proceeding ended in a hung jury. The courtroom failure was partly blamed on Mr. Rechnitz’s cataclysmic testimony as a prosecution witness. At the trial, the defendants’ lawyers painted Mr. Rechnitz — successfully, it seemed — as “wheeler and dealer,” “a wannabe big shot” and “a straight-up liar.” As Mr. Seabrook’s lawyer, Paul Shechtman, said one day in court, “Jona Rechnitz and the truth have never been in the same room.”
Federal prosecutors have promised to retry the men in July, a few months after Mr. Grant and Mr. Reichberg go on trial. Mr. Rechnitz is scheduled to testify at both trials.
In the meantime, though, he has left New York. He now lives in Beverlywood, a neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, where he rents a house, he said, for $17,000 a month.
Diagram of the relationship between parties described

Questions

1. The Super Bowl: One of the two 49ers Super Bowl MVPs besides Joe Montana.
   
2. What to Hear: Katilyn and Keli by ASICS are bikini tops for this sport.
   
3. Baseball Rules: Two-Word term for a delivery “in a deliberate attempt to catch the batter off guard”.
   
4. Golf in a Major Way: This tournament was the last of the 4 major golf championships played in 2014.
   
5. Female Athletes: The first American woman to win 5 Olympic Gold Medals, she earned them in the Winter Games starting in 1988.
   
6. The Basketball Hall of Fame: 2011 inductee Goose Tatum joined this team in 1941 for a memorable decade.
   
7. Venues: The 2015 Mayweather Pacquiao fight took place at this Las Vegas site.
   
8. Trophies and Awards: Its first winner was University of Chicago running back Jay Berwanger.
   
9. Fans: Citizens of “Jr. Nation” are fans of this driver.
   
10. Power Hitters: On May 1, 2015, these 2 men, one active and one retired, had career totals of 660 home runs.
    
11. Hockey: In 1989, Wayne Gretzky broke this man’s NHL record for career points.
    
12. TV: Last name of the coach and his wife Tami on “Friday Night Lights”.
    
13. Logos: One of the logos of this NBA team is a music note.
    
14. Off the Field 2014: Roger Goodell wrote that the NFL fell “short of our goals” responding to an example of this two-word act.
    
15. Around the World: The 2015 Tour de France has 21 of these segments.
    
16. Tennis Talk: The right-hand half of the court, where you stand and receive to start each game, is called this “court”.
    
17. Olympic Athletes: He set an Olympic record in the 100-meter dash in the 2012 games.
    
18. Broadcasters: In 2014 Chris Fowler replaced this 74-year-old in ABC’s Saturday Night College Football booth.
    
19. Nicknames: It was the nickname of the potent offense of the 1927 Bronx Bombers.
    
20. 2014 Headlines: “O Fiasco” said a newspaper in this country about a defeat of its soccer team.
    
21. The Final Four: This 2010 Cinderella team was the first since 1972 to play in the Final Four in its home city.
    
22. Running: This proverbial barrier is encountered by marathoners around mile 20.
    
23. Golfers: This 44-year-old father of three endorses Enbrel, an arthritis medication.
    
24. Teams at the White House: In 2015 President Obama welcomed this college football team and one member gave him bunny ears in the photo.
    
25. It Happens Every Year: Name of an annual NHL outdoor game, like this one held Jan. 1, 2015.
    
26. Summer Olympic Cities: It was the Summer Olympics host after Sydney and before Beijing.
    
27. Websites: On her site, “V’s Favorite Things” include a restaurant where she eats every year during the Australian Open.
    
28. College Traditions: “WOOOOOOOOO. PIG. SOOIE!” holler fans of this school.
    
29. Basketball Coaches: He set an NBA record in 2014-15 for wins by a rookie head coach.
    
30. Guys in Suits: This two-word nickname of the retired MLB commissioner is also an Anheuser-Busch product.
    

If you find any errors with the questions, please post it below and I'll correct them as I see the posts.
(Also: I'm aware that a lot of people had errors and got a regular 50 question Jeopardy test; if you see that these questions aren't what you got on 19 May, you likely experienced the error and should contact Jeopardy about it. I was lucky, I suppose.).

Answers

1. Jerry Rice, Steve Young
   
2. Beach Volleyball
   
3. Quick Pitch
   
4. PGA Championship
   
5. Bonnie Blair
   
6. Harlem Globetrotters
   
7. MGM Grand
   
8. Heisman Trophy
   
9. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
   
10. Willie Mays & Alex Rodriguez
    
11. Gordie Howe
    
12. Taylor
    
13. Utah Jazz
    
14. Domestic Violence
    
15. Stages
    
16. Deuce Court
    
17. Usain Bolt
    
18. Brent Musberger
    
19. Murderer’s Row
    
20. Brazil
    
21. Butler
    
22. The Wall
    
23. Phil Mickelson
    
24. Ohio State Buckeyes
    
25. The Winter Classic
    
26. Athens
    
27. Venus Williams
    
28. University of Arkansas
    
29. Steve Kerr
    
30. Bud Lite
    

Again, if you find error with these answers or questions, please reply below.
Hope you did well! If the ratio for the (presumed) cutoff for the regular Jeopardy test holds true for this test, the cutoff would be 21. (35/50 = 70% and 70% of 30 is 21, for those wondering).

En este tema quiero recopilar todas las localizaciones que hemos ido averiguando y así si alguien tiene la suerte de hacer un viaje a Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Londres, Paris... le sea mas sencillo encontrar esos lugares donde MJ dejo su huella.
Eso si, a Los Angeles le he dejado un espacio por separado debido a la gran cantidad de localizaciones que hay...
LOS ANGELES TOUR
VIDEOCLIPS
-Casa de Thriller: 1345 Carrol V. Echo Park
-Calle de Thriller: 3701 E. Union Pacific Av. & Los Palos St.
-Palace Theatre (Cine de Thriller): 615 S. Broadway
-Rialto Theatre (Interior del Cine de Thriller): 1023 S. Fair Oaks Av., S. Pasadena
-Set de grabacion del Cementerio ye interior de la Casa de Thriller: 4300 Maywood Av, Vernon (Cerca de Union Pacific)
-Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio (Estudio de Baile donde se realizaron los ensayos de las coreografias de Thriller): 6514 Lankershim Boulevard
-Green Apple Market (Billares de Beat It): 300 E. 5th St.
-Cafeteria de Beat It: 416 East 5th Street (Actualmente demolido)
-Almacenes de Beat It: 5th St. Alameda, Los Angeles
-Pantage Theatre (Teatro de You Are Not Alone y Hollywood Tonight): 6233 Hollywood Blvd.
-Griffith Park (Bosque de Thriller): 2800 Observatory Rd. (entre la arboleda)
-Decorados de Smooth Criminal y Moonwalker: Universal Studios, 100 Universal City Plaza
-Union Hotel (Saloon de Say,Say,Say): 362 Bell St., Los Alamos
-Antiques Depot (Lugar del Show de variedades de Say,Say,Say): 515 Bell St., Los Alamos
-The Chimney Sweep Inn (Actualmente " The Wine Valley Inn". Hotel donde se hospedaba MJ durante las grabaciones del video Say,Say,Say): 1564 Copenhagen Way, Solvang
-Vasquez Rocks Natural Park (Escena de Black or White de Indios y Vaqueros): 10700 Escondido Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, CA
-Shilpark Mann Brothers (Lugar donde se realizaban las audiciones para TWYMMF. En este lugar MJ eligio a Tatiana para el video): 758 N La Brea, Hollywood
-Harbor Star Stage "Terminal Island" (Hangar donde fueron filmados los videoclips de Dirty Diana y The Way You Make Me Feel. Lamentablemente el hangar fue demolido en 1990): Term Island Cg Base, San Pedro, Long Beach CA 90731 (Direccion mas aproximada: US Coast Guard, 1001 S Seaside Ave # 20, San Pedro, CA)
-Salton Sea Recreation Area State Park (Lugar de filmacion del videoclip "In The Closet": Salton Sea State Recreation Area, 100-225 State Park Road, North Shore, CA (Cerca de Palm Spring)
-Calle por la que pasea MJ en "Stranger In Moscow": 4th St. con N. Main & Spring
-Set de grabación de Billie Jean: Ren-Mar Studios, Studio 7, 846 N. Cahuenga, Hollywood
-Set de grabación de Who Is It: Ren-Mar Studios, Studio 8, 846 N. Cahuenga, Hollywood
-Escenas de Moonwalker donde juegan en el prado y sobre el puente: Disney Golden Oak Ranch, 19802 Placerita Canyon RoadNewhall, Santa Clarita, CA 91321
-Jim Henson Studios (Estudio de We Are The World y Liberian Girl): 1416 N. La Brea Av.
-Carretera donde MJ baila con india en Black or White entre coches: 11779 Sheldon Street, Sun Valley
-Vídeo "Why" de 3T y MJ: Ennis House en Los Feliz, Los Ángeles, California, al sur de Griffith Park
RESIDENCIAS
-Neverland Ranch (Rancho de MJ): 5200 Figueroa Mountain Rd., Los Olivos
-Casa de Encino (Casa de los padres de MJ donde vivio durante la epoca Thriller): 4641 Hayvenfiurst Av., Encino
-Primera Casa de "The Jacksons": 1601 N. Queens Rd. / 1600 N. Queens Rd. & 8600 W. Hollywood Blvd.
-The Lindbrook (Primer apartamento en el que vivio MJ en 1981 antes de mudarse a la mansion de Encino): 5420 Lindley Avenue, Encino (Unit#9)
-Holmby Hills (Ultima casa de Michael): 100 N. Carolwood Dr., Bel-Air
-Casa de Diana Ross (Casa en la que vivó durante un tiempo MJ en su infancia): 701 N Maple Dr, Beverly Hills, CA
-The Hideout (El "Escondite" o "Piso Franco" de MJ): 2247 Century City
-The Lindbrook (Sesion de fotos de 1981 de Chris Walter en el apartamento de Encino comprado por MJ, lugar donde vivia con Janet mientras hacia reformas en la casa de Hayvenhurst): The Lindbrook, 5420 Lindley Ave, Encino
-Casa de la familia Jackson entre mayo de 1970 y mayo de 1971: 2430 Bowmont Drive, Beverly Hills
ESTUDIOS DE GRABACIÓN & DISCOGRAFIA
-Westlake Recording Studios (Estudio de Grabacion de Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad, Dangerous y HIStory): 7265 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood
-Ocean Way Recording Studios (Estudio de Grabacion de Thriller, Dangerous y HIStory): 6050 Sunset Blvd.
-Larrabee Sound Studios (Estudio de Grabacion de Dangerous y HIStory):4162 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
-Record Plant Studios (Estudio de Grabacion de Invincible y Dangerous): 1032 North Sycamore Av.
-Capitol Studios & Mastering (Estudio de Grabacion de Invincible): 1750 North Vine St., Hollywood
-Flyte Tyme Records (Estudio de Grabacion de Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis utilizados para grabaciones de HIStory): 8750 Wilshire Blvd.
-Jim Henson Studios (Estudio de We Are The World): 1416 N. La Brea Av.
-MJJ Productions, Inc (Discografica de MJ): 10960 Wilshire Blvd, Westwood
-"Marvin's Room" Marvin Gaye Recording Studio (Estudio de grabacion de las demos de Invincible): 6553 W Sunset Blvd.
-Allen Zentz Recording Studios (Estudios de grabacion de los Vocals de Off The Wall y Remasterizacion de Thriller, Billie Jean y Beat It): 1020 N Sycamore Ave, Hollywood
-Lion Share Recording Studio "Kenny Roger's Studio" (Lugar de grabacion de Eaten Alive, Goin Back To Alabama y arregos de We Are The World): 8255 Beverly Blvd
-Cherokee Studios (Lugar de grabacion de Off The Wall. Actualmente demolido y realizada una nueva construccion): 751 N Fairfax Ave
-The Wall, La Pared de la portada de "Off The Wall": Trasera de 7771 Beverly Blvd (A dos manzanas de donde eran los Cherokee Studios)
-Calle de la Portada Moving Violation: 101 N. Sycamore Av.
-Motown HitsVille West (Estudios de Grabacion de los Jackson 5): 7317 Romaine St., West Hollywood
-MCA Records "Studio 55" (Estudio en el que MJ grabó con Joe King Carrasco y donde The Jacksons preparaban el album LIVE): 5555 Melrose Av, Hollywood (frente a a Paramount Pictures)
-Todd A.O. Scoring Stage (Utilizado por MJ en HIStory): CBS Radford Studios, Studio City, Hollywood
ESTADIOS & AUDITORIOS
-Staples Center (This Is It y MJ Memorial): 1111 S. Figueroa St.
-Dodger Stadium (Victory Tour): 1000 Elysian Park Av.
-Los Angeles Memorial Sport Arena (Bar Tour): 3939 S. Figueroa St.
-Pasadena Civic Auditorium (Motown 25th "Nacimiento del MoonWalk", actuacion de Dangerous para el 50th Aniversario American Bandstand): 300 E. Green St., Pasadena
-The LA Forum (This Is It Rehearsals, Triumph Tour, J5 Tour): 3900 W. Manchester Blvd, Inglewood
-Shrine Auditorium (26th Grammy Awards 1984: MJ gana 8 Premios Grammy, Accidente del Spot de Pepsi, Interpretacion de "You Were There" en el Tributo a Sammy Davis Jr, Entrega del Grammy por "We Are The World", Aparicion con Madonna en los Oscars 1991): 665 West Jefferson Boulevard, Los Angeles
-Rose Bowl Stadium (Estadio donde tuvo lugar la mitica actuacion de MJ en la NFL SuperBowl XXVII): 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena
-Avalon Hollywood Palace (Lugar de la primera actuacion en directo en TV de los J5 "Diana Ross Presents..."): 1735 Vine St, Los Angeles
-The Palladium (Conferencia de prensa de "LA Gear": 6215 Sunset Blvd.
-Orpheum Theater ("A Celebration Of Love" Fiesta del 45 cumpleaños de MJ): 842 S. Broadway, Los Angeles
-Crest Theatre (Cine en el que fue presentada la Premier del video "Thriller"): 1262 Westwood Boulevard
TIENDAS, COMERCIOS & RESTAURANTES
-Golden Apple Comics (Tienda de Comics Favorita de Michael): 7018 Melrose Av.
-Moist Wear Men (Tienda de moda frecuentada por Michael): 7518 Melrose Av.
-The Collectors Paradise Gallery (actualmente una tienda de muebles) donde MJ compro el libro "The Art Of Walt Disney" y banco al que se subio para ver una mejor perspectiva de cómo quedaria colocada la gente en el evento "Hands Across America" que pasaria por esa calle: 12260-12262 Ventura Blvd
-Villa Sorriso Ristorante (Lugar donde la familia Jackson celebro el “Celebration of Life” tras el funeral de MJ): 168 West Colorado Boulevard, Old Town Pasadena
-Madeo Restaurant (Restaurante Italiano frecuentado por Michael y la familia Jackson): 8897 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles
-Akasha Restaurant (Restaurante de la que fuera Chef personal en los Tours de MJ durante años): 9543 Culver Boulevard, Culver City
-TiGeorges' Chicken (Restaurante en el que Prince Michael participo como voluntario en una obra de caridad para Perú): 307 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles
-Alter Ego (Tienda de Cosmetica visitada por MJ): 427 N Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills
-Lladró (Tienda de Porcelana visitada por MJ): 408 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills
-Book Soup (Libreria frecuentada por MJ): 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood
-Chasen's Restaurant "1980 AMA After Party" (Michael acudio a esta fiesta y se fotografio en su fachada. Actualmente es una tienda de ultramrinos): 9039 Beverly Boulevard, Beverly Hills
-Melrose Avenue (Calle preferida de MJ para hacer sus compras en los Angeles situada entre Beverly Hills y West Hollywood)
-The Record Collector (Tienda de discos frecuentada por MJ): 7809 Melrose Ave
-Ed Hardy Store (Boutique frecuentada por MJ y sus hijos): 7817 Melrose Ave
-Unica Melrose (Tienda de Moda frecuentada por MJ): 7524 Melrose Ave
-Off The Wall Antiques (Tienda de Antiguedades frecuentada por MJ): 7325 Melrose Ave
-Pink's Hot Dogs (Puesto de perritos calientes del descanso de la famosa sesion de fotos de los '70): 709 N La Brea Ave
-Golden Temple of Conscious Cookery (Actualemente "Rama Restaurant". Restaurante frecuentado por MJ en los '80): W 3rd St (Cerca de Fairfax)
-Inn Of The Seventh Ray Restaurant (Restaurante de Malibu donde MJ ceno con Brooke Shields y frecuentado por la familia Jackson): 128 Old Topanga Rd, Topanga
-Sherman Oaks Bookstore (Libreria frecuentada por MJ): 13351 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks
-Casa de Pets (Tienda de animales donde MJ compraba todo para us mascotas): 13323 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks
-Mo-C Antiques (Tienda de antigüedades frecuentada por MJ. La ultima vez fue en Abril de 2009): 239 South Robertson Boulevard, Beverly Hills
-DioDolce & Gabbana (Boutiques de moda visitadas por MJ acompañado de Christian Audigier en 2009): 315 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills
-Christofle Silver (Joyeria de articulos de plata visitada por MJ en 2009. Unas manzanas mas atras se encuentra la oficina del Dr. Klein): 9515 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills
-Le Dome Restaurant (Resturante cenaba a menudo MJ en los '80 con Liz Taylor, Diana Ross, Lionel Richie... Actualmente el restaurante se ha convertido en un asador): 8720 W. Sunset Blvd.
-Chakra's Indian Cuisine (Lugar donde cenaron juntos y se reunieron por ultima vez MJ y la familia Jackson en Mayo de 2009): 151 S. Doheny, Beverly Hills
-Towers Records (Antigua tienda de discos donde MJ se hizo algunas fotos para la campaña de Suzuki): 8801 W Sunset Blvd
-Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles (Restaurante visitado por MJ durante los ensayos del video "Remember The Time". El estudio donde ensayaba esta cerca del restaurante: (A espera de confirmacion)
HOTELES
-The Beverly Hills Hotel (Hotel frecuentado por MJ y sus hijos asi como por la familia Jackson): 9641 Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills
-L'Ermitage Beverly Hills Hotel (Hotel utilizado por MJ como Post-Operatorio tras sus intervenciones quirurjicas): 9291 Burton Way, Beverly Hills
-Hotel Bel-Air (Hotel frecuentado por MJ. Estuvo durante un tiempo viviendo en él en 2008. Meses antes del 25J asistio a un concierto de piano de Antonio Castillo de la Gala en el Salon del hotel "Champagne Bar"): 701 Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles
-The Beverly Hilton Hotel "Jesse Jackson's 66th Birthday Bash" (Fiesta de Cumpleaños del Reverendo Jesse Jackson a la cual MJ asisitio): 9876 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills
MEMORABILIA
-Estrella de Michael en Walk Of Fame: 6927 Hollywood Blvd.
-Estrella de The Jacksons en Walk of Fame: 1500 N. Vine St.
-Grammy Museum: 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Ste. A245
-Disneyland Park Anaheim (Ubicacion del especial Disneyland 25th Anniversary): 1313 South Disneyland Drive, Anaheim
-Museo Madame Tussauds Hollywood (Figura de MJ): 6933 Hollywood Blvd.
-Wax Museum (Figura de MJ): 6767 Hollywood Blvd.
-Guinness World Records Museum (Figura de MJ y Articulos de Memorabilia): 6764 Hollywood Blvd.
-Mural por el pintor Levi Ponce: 4900 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood
MEMORIALES
-Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Cementerio donde descansa Michael): Holly Terrace, 1712 South Glendale Avenue, Glendale
VARIOS
-Griffith Observatory (Lugar de la imagen descartada que iva a ser la portada de Off The Wall): 2800 Observatory Rd. (En la parte alta del edificio)
-Gardner St. Elementary School (MJ Auditorium y Escuela de MJ de 6º Grado): 7450 Hawthorn Av.
-Montclair College Prep (Instituto donde estudiaron Michael, Marlon y La Toya): 8071 Sepulveda Blvd, Van Nuys
-Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center (Hospital donde transladaron a MJ el dia de su muerte): 757 Westwood Plaza
-Sesion de Fotos de la Campaña Suzuki: 6656 W. Sunset Blvd.
-Motown Billboard (Esquina Billboard): 8782 W Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood (Sunset Blvd & Holloway Dr.)
-Leo Carrillo Beach (Sesion de fotos de The Jacksons con los deportivos): 35000 W. Pacific Coast Hwy., Malibu
-Corte de Santa Maria (Lugar del Juicio de MJ): 312-C E. Cook St., Santa Maria
-USA for AFRICA (Asociacion Benefica en la que participo MJ con We Are The World): 5670 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles
-Ziffren Et Al: Branca John G (Despacho del abogado de MJ, John Branca): 1801 Century Park W # 7, Los Angeles
-The Buckley School (Escuela en la que estudian Prince Michael y Paris): 3900 Stansbury Avenue, Sherman Oaks
-Knotts Berry Farm (Parque de Atracciones visitado por MJ en los '80. Lugar de la famosa foto con Snoopy): 8039 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park
-Hollywood Park Horse Track (MJ y Elizabeth Taylor asisten a la inauguracion de la nueva temporada de carreras de caballos en 1986): 1050 South Prairie Av, Inglewood
-Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (Sesion de fotos de los J5 baja la escultura roja): 5905 Wilshire Blvd
-Empire West Condo Building (Sesion de fotos de los J5. La clasica imagen de los 5 en el cesped con el edificio al fondo): 1100 Alta Loma, West Hollywood.
-Noe Restaurant (Fiesta del 46th cumpleaños de MJ con la familia Jackson): 251 S. Olive Ave
-Womphoppers Restaurant (Actualmente "Saddle Ranch Universal". Afterparty celebrada en 1983 tras un concierto de Liza Minelli. MJ estuvo presente junto a Quincy Jones y Liza Minelli entre otros...): Universal Citywalk, 1000 Universal Hollywood Dr., Universal City
-The L.A. ZOO (Visitado por MJ y Emmanuel Lewis en 1984 una semana despues del accidente de Pepsi): LA ZOO 5333 Zoo Drive, Los Angeles
-Campaña Suzuki en Fisherman Village (MJ de blanco junto a la Suzuki en el muelle de FV): Fisherman's Village, 13755 Fiji Way, Marina del Rey
-The Park Beverly Hills (Sesion de fotos de Jim Britt en 1973 donde MJ posa tras una fuente en el parque. Algunas de estas fotos aparecen en el MJ Opus): The Park Beverly Hills, Santa Monica Blvd. (cerca de Carmelita)
-Will Rogers Memorial Park (Otro de los parques de la sesion de fotos de Jim Britt en 1973 donde MJ posa. Algunas de estas fotos aparecen en el MJ Opus): 9650 Sunset Blvd (Entre Canon y Beverly).
*Gracias a Moonwalking Around Los Angeles por muchas de las direcciones facilitadas *
EEUU TOUR
VIDEOCLIPS
-Estacion de Metro del video BAD: Hoyt-Schermerhorn Station (Linea G con AC), Brooklyn, NYC
-The Masters School (Universidad de MJ en el video BAD): 49 Clinton Avenue, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
-New York State Pavillion (Exteriores de la pelicula "The Wiz" Munchkinland): Flushing Meadows Corona Park, 11101 Corona Ave, Corona, NY
RESIDENCIAS
-Hogar Natal de la familia Jackson: 2300 Jackson St. & 23rd St., Gary, Indiana
-Lugar de naciemiento de Michael Jackson: St. Mary's Mercy Hospital: 555 Polk St. Gary, Indiana
-Apartamento de Bobby Taylor. Lugar donde durmieron los J5 en el suelo antes de su audición con Motown: 1300 E Lafayette St Detroit, MI 48207
ESTUDIOS DE GRABACIÓN & DISCOGRAFÍA
-SteelTown Records (Estudio de las primeras grabaciones de los J5): 4544 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL
-Kaufman Astoria Studios (Estudio de Grabacion de la pelicula "The Wiz"): 34-12 36th Street, Astoria, NY 11106
-Sony Music Studios (Grabaciones para sesiones de HIStory e Invincible): 460 W. 54th St., at 10th Avenue, Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, NY
-Future Records Studios (Antiguos Estudios de Grabacion de Teddy Riley donde se grabaron vocals y demos para Dangerous, Invincible y el tema "Shout)": 4338 Virginia Beach Blvd, Virginia Beach, Virginia
-The Hit Factory Studios (Antiguos Estudios en los que se grabaron sesiones para HIStory e Invincible): 421 West 54th Street, New York
-The Hit Factory Criteria Studios (Estudios utilizados para completar el album "Invincible"): 1755 NE 149th St. Miami, Florida
ESTADIOS & AUDITORIOS
-Teatro Apollo (Lugar de la Consagracion de "The Jackson 5"): 253 West 125th Street, Harlem, NYC
-The Madison Square Garden (Lugar de actuaciones como el 30th Anniversary 2001 y el Bad Tour '88): 2 Pennsylvania Plaza New York, NY
-Radio City Music Hall (MTV VMA donde se besaron MJ y Lisa Marie): 1260 Avenue of the Americas, New York
-Carnegie Hall (Conferencia de "Heal The Kids"): 881 7th Ave, New York
-RFK "Robert F. Kennedy" Memorial Stadium (Gala United We Stand. MJ junto con varios cantantes interpreto "What More Can I Give"): D.C. Armony, Independence Ave and 22nd St in Southeast, Washington D.C
TIENDAS, COMERCIOS & RESTAURANTES
-Virgin MegaStore (Actualmente Disney Store)(Firma de Discos de Invincible): 52 East 14th Street, New York
-Modern Times Beer: Mural MJ&Bubbles de Post-It de 6.5 metros.
HOTELES
-The Mirage Hotel & Casino (Hotel frecuentado por MJ, lugar donde se vendia el CD de Siegfried & Roy con el tema "Mind Is The Magic" y ubicacion del Michael Jackson: The Immortal Cirque Do Soleil): 3400 S. Las Vegas Blvd.
-MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (Hotel en el que se reencontraron Michael y Lisa Marie meses antes de comenzar su relacion sentimental): 3799 Las Vegas Blvd S, Las Vegas
-Hotel Royal Plaza in the Walt Disney World Resort (Uno de los hoteles preferidos de MJ en Walt Disney World): 1905 Hotel Plaza Boulevard, Orlando, FL
-Hotel Hilton in the Walt Disney World Resort (Otro de los hoteles preferidos de MJ en Walt Disney World): 1751 Hotel Plaza Boulevard, Orlando, FL
MEMORABILIA
-Madame Tussauds Las Vegas (Figura de Cera de MJ): 3377 Las Vegas Blvd. South Suite 2001
-Motown Historical Museum "HitsVille U.S.A." (Antigua y clasica Sede de Motown Records): 2648 W Grand Blvd, Detroit, Michigan
-Addenbrooke Park (Replica de la escultura de Neverland "Snapshot"): 600 S. Kipling Pkwy, Lakewood, Colorado
-Replica de la escultura de Guangzhou: Overland Park Arboretum Botanical Garden 8909 W 179th St, Overland Park, Kansas
-Banco en memoria de MJ en el Brooklyn Botanical Gardens: 150 Eastern Parkway 990 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225
-EMP Museum: Hay una zona dedicada a John Landis con una pantalla en la que se habla de su trabajo y, como no, aparecen imágenes del making Thriller. Junto a ella, un traje de zombie del vídeo donado por Mick y Cinthia Garris. 325 5th Ave N, Seattle, Washington 98109, USA.
-Banco en memoria de MJ en el Brooklyn Botanical Gardens : 150 Eastern Parkway, 990 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225
-Modern Times Beer: La cervecería Modern Times en tiene un mosaico de 6.5 metros de altura creado con más de 10.000 notas de Post-It.: 3725 Greenwood St., San Diego, CALIFORNIA 92110
VARIOS
-La Casa Blanca (MJ visitó a los presidentes de EEUU en varias ocasiones): 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington
MEXICO
HOTELES
-Hotel Presidente InterContinental (Hotel donde se hospedo durante el Dangerous Tour): Avenida Campos Eliseos 218, Polanco, Mexico
ESTADIOS & AUDITORIOS
-Estadio Azteca (Lugar de Dangerous Tour): Calzada de Tlalpan, 3465, Col. Santa Ursula Coapa, Delegación Tlalpan, Mexico
VARIOS
-Hard Rock Cafe Mexico City (Visita de MJ): Campos Eliseos #290, Col. Polanco 11560 Mexico D.F., Mexico
CANADÁ TOUR
-New Westminster Museum (Anvil Centre): Allí tienen las gafas que MJ regaló a uno de los policías que le acompañaron en la visita al City Hall en 1984, la chaqueta del policía y un ejemplar de Moonwalk con la foto de MJ y los agentes. 777 Columbia Street, New Westminster, BC V3M 1B6, Canadá.
-Escalinata de la imagen de MJ con el Cuerpo de Policía de Vancouver: New Westminster City Hall 511 Royal Avenue, New Westminster, BC V3L 1H9, Canadá.
-Hard Rock Vancouver: Tienen uno de los spikey tops de Scream y varias vitrinas alrededor llenas de memorabilia de MJ. 2080 United Blvd, Coquitlam, BC V3K 6W3, Canadá.
EUROPA TOUR
VIDEOCLIPS
-Castillo de Buda (History Teaser, parte del desfile ante el palacio): 1014 Budapest, Úri utca 9, Budapest, Hungary
-Plaza de los Héroes (History Teaser, escena de la estatua): 1146 Budapest, Hősök Tere, Hungría
-Disneyland Resort Paris (Michael estuvo de visita algunas veces en el parque): 77777 Marne-la-Vallée, Paris
ESTADIOS & AUDITORIOS
-Wembley Stadium (Lugar del mitico concierto del Bad Tour '88. El estadio antiguo fue demolido y eregido el nuevo estadio en el mismo lugar): Wembley, London, HA9 0WS, Reino Unido
-Stadionul National (Lugar del mitico concierto del Dangerous World Tour '92): National Arena 35-37, Bucharest, Rumanía
-Olympic Stadium (Lugar del mitico concierto del HIStory World Tour '97): Spiridon-Louis-Ring 21, 80809 München, Alemania
-The O2 Arena (Conferencia de prensa de This Is It y lugar elegido para la realizacion de los conciertos): Peninsula Square, City of London, London SE10 0DX, Reino Unido
HOTELES
-Hotel "Bayerischer Hof" (MJ se alojó en muchas ocasiones): Promenadeplatz 2-6, Altstadt-Lehel, 80333 Múnich
-The Grand at Oudezijds Voorbugwal (Hotel en el que se alojaba Michael en Amsterdam durante la gira HIStory 1996): Oudezijds Voorburgwal 197, 1012 Ex Amsterdam, Nehterlands
-Hotel Jardin Botanico (Lugar en el que se alojaba MJ durante el Dangerous WT en Tenerife): Avda. Richard J. Yeoward, nº 1,Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, España
-Hotel The Westin Palace (Hotel Preferido de MJ para alojarse en Madrid): Plaza de las Cortes, 7, Madrid, España
-Hotel Le Meridien (Hotel Preferido de MJ para alojarse en Barcelona): Ramblas, 111, Barcelona, España
-The Hempel Hotel (Hotel donde se alojo MJ en 2006): 31 Craven Hill Gardens W2 3, Londres
-Hotel The Lanesborough (Hotel en el que, supuestamente, MJ se desperto de madrugada y deambuló sonambulo por los pasillos): Hyde Park Corner 0, Myfair, Londres
-Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin (Hotel donde MJ asomó a Blanket por la ventana y causo la famosa polemica): Unter den Linden 77 10117, Berlín, Alemania
-Hard Rock Hotel (Estatua de en honor de MJ): PenangBatu Ferringhi Beach, 11100 Penang, Malaysia
MEMORABILIA
-Madame Tussauds London (Figura de cera de MJ): Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LR
-Museo Astrup Fearnley (Figura de Ceramica de MJ & Bubbles): Dronningens Gate 4, 0152 Oslo, Noruega
-Estatua de HIStory: Eindhovenseweg Zuid 595681 Best, Países Bajos
MEMORIALES
-Estadio de Futbol Fulham (Estatua en honor de MJ por Mohamed Al Fayed): Craven Cottage, Stevenage Rd, Hammersmith, London SW6 6HH, Reino Unido
-Monumento frente al Hotel "Bayerischer Hof" (Decorado por fans de MJ como memorial desde 2009): Estatua de Orlando di Lasso Promenadeplatz, 80333 Munich, Alemania
-Estatua Tributo a MJ: Vainer St.(delante del Greenwich Shopping Mall), Yekaterinburg, Rusia
VARIOS
-Monumento Vittorio Emanuele II (Visita de MJ a Roma 1988): Piazza Venezia, 3, 00187 Roma, Italia
-Sony BMG London "Sony Sulks"(Michael realiza su protesta contra Sony Music subido a un Bus Inglés): 9 Derry St, London W8 5HY, Reino Unido
-Los Musicos de Bremen (MJ se fotografia junto a esta figura en su paso por Alemania en la gira HIStory): Am Markt, 28195 Bremen, Alemania
-Parque de Atracciones de Liseberg (Visita de MJ en la epoca BAD. Hay una estrella en su honor y las hullas de sus manos): Örgrytevägen, 402 22 Göteborg, Suecia
ASIA TOUR
ESTADIOS & AUDITORIOS
-Yokohama Stadium (Lugar del mitico concierto del Bar Tour '87): 3302-5 Kozukue, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama City, Japon
TIENDAS, COMERCIOS & RESTAURANTES
-Heaven 'n Eggs (Restaurante en el que se ha hecho un menú en honor a MJ): Glorietta 4. Unit 104 G/F, Glorietta 4, Ayala Center. Makati City, Filipinas
-Cafe & Bar MJM (Bar con tematica dedicada a MJ): 1-57-1, Chofu, Tokio
MEMORIALES
-Heaven 'n Eggs (Restaurante en el que se ha hecho un menú en honor a MJ): Glorietta 4. Unit 104 G/F, Glorietta 4, Ayala Center. Makati City, Filipinas
-Escultura en Honor a MJ: 545号 Xiatang West Road, Baiyunqu, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
VARIOS
-Wild Wadi Water Park (Parque Acuatico alquilado por MJ): Bahrain City Centre, Manama Bahrain, Dubai
-Studio Coast (Evento Premium VIP Party 2007. Michael llego vestido con el famoso traje negro con leoncitos amarillos): 2-2-10 Shinkiba, Koutou-Ku, Tokio, Japon
SUDAMERICA TOUR
VIDEOCLIPS
-Fabelas Morro Santa Marta (Lugar donde se rodó "They Don't Care About Us"): Rua Marechal Franciso de Moura, 234, Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22260-140, Brasil
VARIOS
-Oficialia del Estado Civil de la Segunda Circunscripción de La Vega (Lugar donde se casaron de manera civil MJ y Lisa Marie): C/Manuel U. Gómez, no. 86, Edif. Juzgado de Paz, La Vega
-Park Hyatt Hotel (ahora llamado "Four Seasons") Mansion "Alzaga Unzue" (anexa al hotel, donde MJ se hospedo durante su estadia en Argentina en el 93): Avenida Alvear, 1661 Buenos Aires, Argentina
MEMORIALES
-Estatua y Mosaico de MJ (En la misma zona donde fue rodado TDCAU): Espacio Michael Jackson, Morro Dona Marta, Rio de Janeiro
OCEANIA TOUR
MEMORIALES -Muro Tributo de los Candados de Amor (Tributo a MJ): Parque de la bahía de Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Muchas gracias a la comunidad de MJHIDEOUT por los aportes prestados a esta genial guía.
Si alguien tiene más lugares interesantes sobre los pasos de MJ no dude en compartirlos!

Verified? (This bot cannot verify AMAs just yet)
Date: 2013-01-23
Link to submission (Has self-text)
Link to my post

Questions	Answers
Have you ever caught anyone cheating? Ever see someone cheating and not report it?	I have caught people cheating before yes. The most common are card counters and people stealing chips from other players. I highly recommend to not get completely trashed while gambling especially if you're a male and gambling by yourself as there are certain females who'd be more than happy to steal your chips while you're not paying attention.
	The only time I won't report cheating is when they're tipping. If they're a douchebag or stiff, I'll let my Pit Boss know immediately.
	Here's an interesting article on cheating in Vegas by the way.
How can you call card counting cheating?	Vegas has very liberal rules to their blackjack games compared to other cities that have casinos. Vegas offers double deck, stand on all 17s, moving down shuffle points, etc.
	I don't consider card counting cheating, but the casinos do. They are a private business. They can kick anyone off of the property for any reason unless it's illegal discrimination. The casinos don't want players to have an advantage over them.
	To be honest Vegas casinos don't care about card counting unless you're playing on a double deck. You want to play a six or eight deck shoe? It's all yours. But they want no advantage players on a double deck.
You won't report cheating if you are getting tipped, but you will report it if you don't?	I'm talking about card counting. Most card counters are douchebags because they already think they're smartemore arrogant than everyone else though so it's very rare that I'll keep my mouth shut.
We don't consider card counters cheating. We just refuse service to those who can count.	I think you're mixing up "card counting" with actually counting cards.
Who sets the specific rules of the game for say Blackjack, such as how many decks, what the little pre bet rules are, etc? Is there like a standard across Vegas? When would they ever be using a double deck?	It depends on the casino and what type of clientele they cater to.
	Certain higher end casinos will have better rules for the player while the lower end casinos will have terrible house rules.
I am not a professional card counter just good at math, what are the specific rules that you keep the deck even?	Link to en.wikipedia.org.
	The most basic system is the Hi-Lo card counting system.
	10, J, Q, K, & A = -1.
	2, 3, 4, 5, 6 = +1.
	7, 8, 9 = 0.
	With enough practice, you'll be able to figure out the count in real time.
My casino doesn't consider card counting cheating 1) because it's next to impossible to prove & 2) because with a 6 deck shoe it gives negligible advantage. i'm relatively sure that very few casinos if any consider card counting cheating.	Casinos (should) only care if you're card counting on double deck.
It seems like being able to call the odds is just part of the game and what it means to be skilled at it. I don't see how that can be called cheating.	Card counting is a dying art now anyways. With the technology casinos have their disposal, card counters can't get away with it anymore.
Can a card counter win while playing single deck?	You could, but it would be more luck than skill. Most casinos only allow 6 hands to be dealt on a single deck. Not a lot of hands to make a move imo.
I work in a casino in Melbourne Australia. . 6 deck automatic shuffler where the cards are fed back in whenever there is roughly a deck out. . and people have still tried. . its quite funny.	Seems legit.
	It's such a waste of time to try and count cards. I never gamble, but this is what I do...go with friends, get completely smashed, expect to lose the money, and have a good time.
What was the biggest tip you have ever gotten from someone?	The biggest tip I received was $250,000 from a customer. He won $10 million playing baccarat.
What is the usual tips you get from the players?	The usual tips? Most of the time I've dealt on a $100-$500 blackjack game. I'll usually make a couple hundred from each player give or take. I'll usually make 1-5 units of whatever they're playing with whether it'd be $5 chips, $25 chips, $100 chips or $500.
Do you get to keep all that?	I wish. We pool our tips every 24 hours and everyone gets a share of it. I ended up making $1000 that night. We never make money like that so don't think this is a normal occurrence for us.
	I did meet up with the customer at the strip club when I got off of work. One of the most amazing nights I've ever had.
Should have told him to keep it and tip you later that night at the club. Rookie mistake.	My regular customers do when I go to dinner or go out with them.
Are you allowed to keep all of that tip, or do they take a cut/something else?	We pool all of our tips every 24 hours so I did split it with everyone else.
How was your reaction at the table when recieving a $250,000 tip?	It threw me off. I thought he wanted change at first, but then again it was 10 $25,000 chips.
Let me get the details.	Customer paid for everything. Ended up spending about $50,000 that night mainly on alcohol. Never drank so much champagne in my life.
Could you theoretically tell the big winner to tip you when you're off the clock and keep the $250k for yourself?	I wouldn't because I would lose my job as it would be considered "hard hustling".
You had to share that with over 250 people?	The big casinos on the Strip have a lot of dealers in a 24 hour shift.
	At Cosmo, on the weekdays there are about 150 dealers in a 24 hour shift. On the weekends, it can be close to 250-300 dealers and Cosmo is a small casino compared to the rest.
Does this violate any policy the casino might have about interacting with customers?	Technically no. The only thing the casino reminds you is to not be seen gambling with the customer at other casinos and that you're still responsible for your own actions.
You must have been real popular that night.	Bitches love money especially strippers.
Yeah I notice whenever I tip a dealer he/she puts in a slot, so I was thinking how would they know how much each dealer got,	Regardless, it's still the right thing to do if they're providing you a service. Thanks for tipping :)
I'm curious. Since on a night where you received an exorbitant tip and only made $1,000, what is your average tip out per day/week/weekend? Also, what is the largest amount that you yourself have walked out with in a single night? Are you tipped out daily, or is it added to your paycheck? If it is done by paycheck; largest tip out at the end of a paycheck?	At the big casinos (Wynn/Encore, Cosmopolitan, Aria, Caesars) the dealers usually make $150-$200 a night during the weekdays. On the weekends, they'll make around $200-$300+.
	The medium casinos (Bellagio, Planet Hollywood, Paris, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand) will make around $120-$150 during the weekdays, $150-$200 on the weekends.
	I personally can't accept tips while at work. Outside of work, regular customers would throw me some extra cash on the side on top of whatever they gave me at the table while they were playing. The most someone gave me outside of work was $1000. It was a regular customer.
Of all the celebrity players you've dealt to, which one seemed the most genuine and cool person to interact with.	Coolest would easily be Matt Schaub. 99% of athletes are douchebags, but he's super nice and super cool. Awesome tipper too. Down to earth and extremely humble. Runners up goes to Chris Evans. Captain America can't handle his alcohol and is an arrogant prick too. "Do you know who the fuck I am?" was probably his most overheard line while I was dealing to him. 2nd runners up goes to Chef Tim Love. He's a stiff and a cry baby. Constantly boasts about all the $10,000 bottles of wine he drinks.
Who was the worst and why?	Ironically the worst would be Will Farrell. The guy is a huge asshole when he's gambling and the camera's off. Huge prick.
As a huge Redskins fan, I notice DeAngelo Hall has some attitude issues on the field. Was he any nicer when you dealt to him?	Really nice guy. From my experience, he plays by himself and doesn't have a huge entourage like most athletes do. Even when he loses, he doesn't have an attitude problem.
That's pretty disappointing. Will Farrell is one of my favorite actors and I always assumed he'd be a cool, down to earth guy off-camera. Oh well, it's not like I'll ever see him in real life anyway. But if I do, I'll know to punch him in the balls.	You know who is also a cool guy that surprised me? Rush Limbaugh.
	The guy is an awesome tipper and kind of cool to talk to even though he's an extreme right-winger.
If a celebrity ever said "Do you know who the fuck I am?", I would instantly say something along the lines "Why should I give a fuck who you are?"	I pretty much said that to Chris Evans every time he said that.
Maybe in public but go have dinner with his family in Springfield, MO-- Racial slurs everywhere!	Any stories you'd like to tell me?
What was your impression of D Rose?	Derrick Rose is a cool guy. Played a little bit of blackjack and roulette with Durant.
	Hope is ACL is good to go now :(
Doesn't Tebow know gambling is a sin???	I wasn't going to ask him that especially with the Broncos offensive line surrounding him.
How many times have you heard someone say 'Vegas baby!' or 'you're so money' when Vince Vaughn was at the tables?	Never.
	You know what I hear the most and is like nails on a chalkboard for casino employees?
	"WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!"
I am going to go to every single casino and scream winner winner chicken dinner. When I finally get punched in the face I'll know it's you. Then we can go party with some celebs at the strip club. Deal?	Seems legit.
Do you get the asians who yell monkey who want a 10 in blackjack? It seems like 90% of asians in the casino I frequent do this.	Gamblers scream out monkey regardless of their race. White, black, asian, spanish, etc.
Whats the most money you've seen lost by one person in a day?	Craps - $5 million.
	Blackjack - $5 million.
	Baccarat - $10 million.
	European Roulette - $2 million.
Just out of my own curiousity, was it an asian person that lost $10 million on baccarat?	You are correct. A Chinese businessman to be exact.
Holy shit that's crazy! How often do you see someone lose money in the millions?	I deal to million dollar players quite often. But getting their ass handed to them? Not that often. I want to say like every 3-4 weeks.
	Players win often and players do lose often, but it's rare to see them tap their line.
What's the usual reaction when someone loses money > million?	I've seen customers smash glasses, break things, punch the wall, punch the roulette readerboard, etc. They usually keep their cool most of the time, but once in a while...
	"OMG WTF ARE YOU KIDDING? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING DUDEITSPANDA! THIS IS SOME FUCKING BULLSHIT. I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME. YOU ARE THE WORST DEALER EVER. YOU GIVE ME THE WORST FUCKING HANDS ON BLACKJACK. WHY DO I EVEN PLAY THIS STUPID FUCKING GAME!!!"
WHY DO I EVEN PLAY THIS STUPID FUCKING GAME!!!	Most players like to play Captain Obvious or Captain Hindsight.
Maybe the only important thought the person should be considering. Hah.	"DAMN IT I SHOULDN'T HAVE BET THAT MUCH. DAMN IT I SHOULD HAVE BET MORE!"
Heh, I've seen that happen at the $5 tables in Indian casinos in Michigan while waiting for a seat in the poker room.	I usually just giggle whenever a $5-$10 players loses $100-$200 bucks.
	"Is it really the end of the world losing $200?" is typically what I tell them.
How are high-limit dealers paid? Salaried? Benefits? Would you be willing to say how much (ballpark) high-stakes dealers make in a year? what about low-stakes? Are dealers allowed to gamble in the casino they work for? Thanks, this is a sweet AmA.	Dealers are paid the same regardless of what games they play and it's minimum wage. Yes you heard it...casinos only pay us minimum wage. We rely completely on tips.
	Casinos are normally run businesses so full time employees are offered insurance, 401k, vacation time, etc.
	Dealers are NOT allowed to gamble in the casino they work for. It's mainly to prevent collusion. Dealers are allowed to play slots in the casino they work for, but cannot play anything with a progressive jackpot (Megabucks, Wheel of Fortune, etc.). Dealers are allowed to play whatever they want in any other casino.
I think it's pretty awesome that dealers get a 401k and insurance. That plus the decent money you mentioned below make dealing sound like a pretty awesome job.	It isn't that bad of a job, but dealing to douchebags and degenerates wears on you after a while.
What are the best casinos and hotels in Las Vegas? As in the top 5 casino/hotels? What is your favorite and why?	Wynn Las Vegas/Encore
Oh and why are there hundreds of Mexican people handing out those cards for prostitutes on the street and allowed to just litter the whole strip with them?	The loiters have first amendment rights basically. They changed the law this year so now whenever cards they pass out fall to the ground, they're supposed to pick them up. I was never too happy with the escort ads on the Strip. 1. The girls don't actually provide the service most of the time. They're just there to rip off guys. 2. It puts a negative light on the city.
Thanks for the answer. I was in vegas for about 3 days staying at circus circus (don't laugh) and the first night we walked the whole strip (i had no idea it would take that long) and it really annoyed me to see the streets just littered with the prostitute cards.	We Vegas locals don't like it either trust me. We also don't like those stupid street performers that are on the Strip. The only one that's cool in my book is the guy that will let you kick him in the nuts for $20.
How much do you think the avg "street performer" say for example, the dudes wearing Mario and Luigi costumes r the Tranformer guys would make in a night?	No clue. Maybe get one of them to do an AMA?
This might be a longshot, but one time I was there, there was this older black guy in a motorized chair that had this little speakemic/beatbox thing and would freestyle about you and your group (for a tip) and he was phenominal. It was a hightlight of the trip. I've been back a couple of times and always look for him but never find him. Do you know if he's still around/popular?	Nope. Never seen the guy.
What's your flexibility on game pacing, in Blackjack for example?	There is plenty of flexibility on game pace. Casinos instruct dealers to deal at a moderate pace. Not too fast where you seem like a robot and not slow enough where players will fall asleep at the table.
Tl;dr: does the house allow you to deal fewer hands-per-hour in high-limit? If so, why are some dealers doucheclowns about it?	The best scenario for you if you want to play slightly high limit blackjack are blackjack pits that are outside of high limit. It's basically high limit without the title. They're usually $100 6-deck shoe games that stand on all 17s.
Baccarat, on the other hand... shit, I need a book to pass the time. Whoever installs video poker machines into Baccarat tables is going to make a killing.	Dealers are going to be douchebags no matter what. From my personal experience, if I deal fast...I'm trying to get rid of you.
Though my restaurant right now doesn't have it, we do have tip outs to runner ,bussers and bar. Do any casinos impliment this policy? Do you see yourself making a career out of this?	Casinos have tried to implied a tip out policy as a way to subsidize other wages with dealers tips, but it has failed. Wynn Las Vegas/Encore is in court with the dealers right now over it. Wynn won initially, but it got overturned and looks to stay that way. I don't see myself making a career out of it. Casinos are now run by corporations. The way they treat their employees is ridiculous. They show no dedication to us.
In your opinion - what's the best strategy for Craps?	Pass line with full odds. Come bets with full odds as well.
Pass line bets and taking odds on it after the come out? Boxcars, Snake Eyes, Big 6's, Horn High Yo's?	You can place bet, but the edge is still high for the house.
I'm curious too hear what a dealer thinks about this.	Stay away from the prop box at all times. The only time I'll mess around with the prop box is if I throw let's say $1 hardways and ask to parlay at least once if it hits.
Do you know of other dealers who have ever completely lost their cool at a high risk table when either a large amount of money has come into play, or some big time celebrity has come to their table?	Happens all the time. I've seen dealers sweat profusely like they just finished doing cardio on the treadmill, seen dealers completely freeze up or seen dealers crack under the pressure.
	I've seen a couple get in trouble because they tried to take a picture with them after they go on break. That's a huge no-no.
Are the high limit tables the most desirable tables to work? Are dealers sometimes reprimanded by removing them from a high limit table and placing them at a low limit table? (similar to getting a shitty section in a restaurant/bar)	Physically yes. You'll most likely be on a reserved game. The customer doesn't play the majority of the time while you're on shift. So instead of dealing for 8 hours straight, in high limit you might deal one or two hours. The rest of the time you're just hanging out and watching whatever they have on the TV.
Are you a gambler yourself? If so, has working as a dealer improved your game any?	Dealers do get reprimanded and sometimes even get kicked out of high limit for a extended period of time. It has never happened to me, but one day you'll see a dealer dealing to a BIG player. They make a huge mistake and the next day they're on casino war or the Big 6 wheel.
They make a huge mistake.	In the business we call it a jackpot. Jackpot is basically a small mistake that turns into a big mistake.
Like what?	Dealer make mistakes all the time. Wrong payout, messed on the procedure, etc.
What route would you recommend for anyone wanting to get into working as a dealer? Can you give us a brief outline of your rise to the high stakes table?	Go to a dealers school. Learn the basics of dealing, handling chips and game protection. I learned blackjack and craps. It takes about four-eight weeks depending on how fast of a learner you are and how often you show up to school to practice. It took me about five weeks.
	Once you're sufficient enough, you can apply to audition at a low end casino also known as a "break in house." Historically, casinos Downtown such as the El Cortez are well known break in houses for new dealers. Shitty local casinos are also considered break in houses as well. You don't make any money, but it doesn't matter. The whole point is to get experience dealing on a real live game.
	While you're dealing at the break in house, you can learn how to deal all the other games. That's how I learned baccarat and roulette. Once you get enough experience, you start trying to move to better casinos until eventually you get a good, full time job on the Strip.
How long did it take you to move up from a "break in house" to the limelight on the Strip? What's the average?	For most dealers it takes forever. They don't have the skill set or have the connections...aka "juice" as we call it in the business.
	It only took me about two-three years, but for most it can take from five-ten years.
I love playing blackjack at the El Cortez! $5, single deck, 3:2 games.	El Cortez is fun. I love hanging out at the bars next to it.
"You don't make any money"... can you give us a ballpark on what you made at the break-in and how much you make now, including tips?	Break-in dealers barely make $30,000 a year.
Wow, that's a long time to work your way up to a (relatively) low paying job. You said in an earlier reply that high end dealers only make $200-$300 on a weekend night, right? I made close to that in my first bartending gig when I was still in college.	You're probably right. But like I told you, the best dealer jobs pay around $85k a year. It's about $325 a day give or take.
What would you say set you apart from the other dealers? Are you more talented (by which I mean you're just naturally smartebetter) or is it a difference in work ethic or what? If it's a work ethic thing, do you think that had you applied yourself to something else with the same level of dedication you could have succeeded, or have you just been in the right place at the right time consistently?	Glad that you enjoyed the AMA.
Also, as someone who generally does not like AMAs in the last ~2 years, yours has been both informative and interesting. Cheers.	What sets me apart from most dealers is that I have the skill to deal the games properly while being quick on my feet with calculations and knowing what the players feelings are like at the time. Sometimes dealers can talk to the players while sometimes players just want you to shut up and deal. Just got to know when the situation is right for certain things.
Ever seen a grown man cry?	Yes. It's pathetic that a guy can guy from gambling, but yes I have.
Ever hear about someone killing themselves after walking away from your table?	Yes. I tell them they're full of shit which they are 99.9% of the time. They're desperate for attention after they lose.
How funny was Will Ferrel?	Not funny. I was expecting Elf or Stepbrothers, but got Casa de Mi Padre.
Could you tell us how the upper management of the casino works? I guess start with the dealers. I know you guys have pit bosses, but then who is above them? Who reports to who? Who is in contact with the surveillance room? I don't care about the hotel management.	Dealers report to Floor Supervisors. Floor supervisors report to Pit Boss. Pit Boss reports to Shift Manager. Shift Manager reports to Table Games Director.
Did you ever get beat up by joey porter at applebees?	For those that don't know, here's my interaction with Joey Porter.
	I haven't got jumped by Joey Porter...yet. He liked me and other dealers on his game that night. I think he still wants to beat the shit out of my shift boss and pit boss. My shift boss still hasn't eaten at a Applebee's or even a Chili's yet since then.
Yo, man. I been looking for you!	DO YOU EVEN LIFT BRO?
How was Joe Flacco?	He was cool. Not a big player. Kept asking me where he can find a $15 blackjack game haha.
NBA fan here. Did you have any memorable interactions with either James, Wade, or Durant? How was Derrick Rose?	No real memorable interactions. I just loved busting LeBron's balls before he got his first ring.
	I remember before Derrick Rose got serious media attention, I remember telling him two years ago "I like how you're an amazing basketball player, but no one recognizes you right now". Not the case now.
	Kevin Durant is a nice guy.
Have you seen or heard of any casinos that actually rig games?	Nope. Even though most casino managers are idiots in my opinion, they wouldn't be stupid enough to rig a game. Not only would they would lose their gaming license, the casino would get a huge fine and could possibly lose their license as well.
	One thing I tell players if they're gambling...gamble only if there's a gaming commission. You don't even know how many times I've heard stories of players getting screwed over by Indian casinos or cruise ships because there are no gaming commissions overseeing them.
UK here - what's the deal with Indian casinos? clearly they're less regulated - are native Americans known for running 'shady' joints?	I'm not saying that Indian casinos are completely shady...they just do shady things once in a while when the players aren't noticing it.
I always wondered how casino workers were able to handle working in a smoking environment all day. Is there a high rate of respiratory problems with casino workers? Tips for dealing with the smoke?	I don't smoke personally. It's brutal. I try to do more cardio than weightlifting to make up for it.
	My allergies have gotten worse since I started dealing. Whenever I'm on a game, I just try to move the ashtrays in a certain position so I don't get hit with all the smoke.
Obvious question--what kind of experience do casinos require before you're given the keys to a high stakes table?	It's mainly just being able to handle the high action. Dealers tend to freeze up a lot when they see big numbers in front of them. It's also being able to control your game regardless of who is playing on it and regardless of how much they're betting.
Do they make you do a whole back ground check and a lie detector test like they show in movies? i know.. stupid question. just curious.	We get background checked when we apply for our gaming card and when we apply for a new job. We also get hair drug tested and have a credit check done as well.
	Casinos only hire employees with good credit. It shows that the employees are responsible with their money and less susceptible to collusion.
I have a strong interest in playing and dealing cards. Have since I was a kid. How much does dealing become a grind as opposed to something you don't mind doing? I haven't hit that point yet dealing in home games.	It honestly becomes a grind the second you start working. It's exciting the first couple of years because you're seeing new bets or action you haven't dealt with yet on the game, but after a while it becomes the same.
Which of the soccer players that you dealt with won the most?	Probably Rooney. I think he won like $300k. Soccer players aren't big gamblers generally. They just like to hang out at the pool, go clubbing once in a while and do a little bit of gambling.
What was Wayne Rooney like in person? He always seems like a dick to me. Also, how much do you earn?	He's a nice guy. Takes pictures with fans and socializes with everyone.
	Dealers at the most popular casinos (Aria, Wynn/Encore, Cosmopolitan, Caesars) can make $80,000+ a year.
	Dealers that work at the medium properties (MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, Paris, Planet Hollywood) make around $60,000-$80,000 a year.
What is the most you have seen a person win?	$10 million on baccarat. The customer was playing $175,000 a hand on baccarat.
Baccarat didn't seem to big when I was in Vegas a few years ago, has it picked up?	Baccarat has picked up a lot in Vegas. All the big casinos have baccarat now.
I was a dealer in Australia, high stakes as well and the average for some customers was $2000+. Not bragging or anything, just wondering if Vegas is working on getting the Asian baccarat junkets a bit harder these says.	The problem with baccarat junkets is that the players just rotate between casino to casino. They take advantage of baccarat tournaments and whatever promos they have. The junkets technically don't bring in any new business and they get paid a huge chunk of whatever the player's theoretical is.

Last updated: 2013-01-27 19:42 UTC
This post was generated by a robot! Send all complaints to epsy.