The longtime Tony Spilotro associate survived prison, a 1990 shooting and decades on Nevada’s casino exclusion list.
LAS VEGAS, NV — Joseph “Joey” Cusumano, a longtime Las Vegas figure linked by law enforcement and gaming authorities to organized crime and closely associated with Chicago Outfit enforcer Tony Spilotro, died Oct. 20 at age 90, closing another chapter in the city’s fading mob era.
Cusumano’s death comes four decades after the violent collapse of the Spilotro organization and long after corporations and modern gaming regulation transformed Las Vegas. Nevada records still listed Cusumano among people excluded from casinos at the time of his death. He had been placed on the state’s List of Excluded Persons, commonly known as the Black Book, on June 21, 1990. His obituary said he remained a Las Vegas resident. A specific cause of death was not publicly disclosed.
Born Nov. 8, 1935, in New York City, Cusumano moved into Las Vegas circles during an era when organized crime groups from Chicago and other cities maintained interests in Nevada gaming and related businesses. The Nevada Gaming Control Board identifies him as Joseph Vincent Cusumano and lists “Joey” and Joseph London among his aliases. Historical law enforcement accounts described him as an organized crime associate, while later reporting identified him as one of Spilotro’s closest associates in Las Vegas.
Spilotro became one of the most notorious figures in Las Vegas organized crime during the 1970s and 1980s. He oversaw Chicago Outfit interests in the city while drawing increasing attention from federal and local investigators. His activities and the broader mob presence in Las Vegas later helped inspire parts of the 1995 Martin Scorsese film “Casino.” Spilotro and his brother, Michael, were killed in 1986, and their bodies were found buried in an Indiana cornfield. Their deaths became a symbol of the violent end of an earlier period of organized crime influence in Las Vegas.
Cusumano’s place in that world was less public. Authorities and organized crime researchers described him as a trusted associate who often remained behind the scenes. The Mob Museum has reported that after the Spilotro brothers were killed, Cusumano was considered a possible successor in overseeing Chicago-linked street rackets in Las Vegas but did not take the role. Geoff Schumacher, a senior official at the museum, told NBC Chicago that Cusumano may have recognized that the old system was disappearing as corporate ownership and tighter regulation reshaped the casino industry.
Cusumano also faced federal prosecution. Nevada gaming records state that he was convicted in 1987 of conspiracy, interstate travel in aid of racketeering and aiding and abetting. The case involved allegations that money was improperly taken from a life insurance program connected to the Culinary Union. He served time in federal prison. After his release, Nevada gaming regulators voted to place him in the Black Book, barring him from entering the state’s casinos.
Former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who worked for years as a criminal defense attorney before entering politics, represented Cusumano during the exclusion proceedings. Goodman later remained a friend and was an outspoken critic of the decision to ban him from casinos. Cusumano chose not to pursue a later effort to have his name removed from the list, according to interviews published over the years. The Nevada Gaming Control Board’s current online records continued to identify him as an excluded person in 2026.
Only months after his exclusion, Cusumano survived one of the most dramatic episodes of his life. In 1990, a masked gunman opened fire as Cusumano was entering or leaving the garage area of his Las Vegas home, according to historical accounts. He was struck several times but survived and drove himself for medical treatment. Reporting on the attack described it as a suspected mob hit, but the identity of the shooter and the motive were never publicly established. Cusumano lived for another 36 years.
During those later decades, he largely avoided the kind of public criminal cases that had defined his earlier years. He played tennis, spent time with friends and family and maintained ties with prominent Las Vegas residents. His life also crossed into the entertainment business. The Las Vegas Review-Journal and Mob Museum reported that Cusumano worked on Francis Ford Coppola’s 1984 film “The Cotton Club.” Coppola later provided testimony supporting Cusumano during his fight against placement in Nevada’s Black Book.
Cusumano’s friendship with Goodman remained especially visible. He helped with the menu for Oscar’s Steakhouse, the restaurant bearing Goodman’s name at the Plaza hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas. Because Cusumano remained on Nevada’s exclusion list, he could not legally enter the casino property to dine there. The unusual situation illustrated how his later life straddled two versions of Las Vegas: one that increasingly marketed its mob history and another that still enforced the regulatory restrictions created during the crackdown on organized crime.
His death also highlights how few people remain from the generation that witnessed the Chicago Outfit’s Las Vegas operations firsthand. NBC Chicago described Cusumano as possibly the last Chicago mob figure of that era still living in the city. Organized crime did not disappear from the United States with the end of mob-dominated Las Vegas, but the structure that once connected Midwestern crime organizations to major casino interests was dismantled through federal prosecutions, regulatory action and changes in casino ownership.
Cusumano’s obituary lists a visitation for Nov. 13 at Palm Mortuary-Cheyenne in Las Vegas, followed by a funeral Nov. 14 at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church and a committal service at Bunker’s Memory Gardens. His death leaves many details of his years around Spilotro and the Chicago Outfit known mainly through investigative files, court cases and the accounts of people who lived through that period.
Author note: Last updated October 28, 2026.