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There was evidence of skimming, the system used to siphon millions out of the casinos in order to dodge taxes. Last summer, state officials looking into the accounts of the Hughes-owned Sands Hotel turned up $186,000 in "markers," some of which were lOUs signed with fictitious names. Hughes' managers wanted to write off the $186,000 as bad debts, a request that the state officials bluntly refused. Mob-connected men settled down comfortably in the Hughes organization. One of them: John Roselli, who was imprisoned in the '40s for shaking down Hollywood movie producers and later was convicted of conspiring to fleece wealthy card players in rigged gin-rummy games at the Beverly Hills Friars Club. Roselli, who holds a gift-shop lease at Hughes' Frontier Hotel, boasts that he collected a large finder's fee when the Desert Inn was sold to Hughes and recently dealt himself in on the kickbacks paid by entertainers at the Hughes casinos.
Many of Hughes' Nevada enterprises were not paying off as handsomely as the owner had expected. Some were barely breaking even−or losing. That could be attributed partly to the nation's economic slump. Still, the suspicion lingered that at least some of Hughes' losses consisted of funds going into the pockets of his employees. All in all, the operating expenses of the Maheu-managed hotel-casinos were far higher than those in rival operations.
Private Eyes. Largely for those reasons, Hughes ordered a force of attorneys, auditors, and casino experts to look into his gambling operations. Separately, the managers of Hughes Tool Co. in Houston hired their own private investigators to check up on Maheu. Aware of the probe, Maheu brought in his own private eyes to delve into the affairs of his Houston rivals and to keep watch outside Hughes' suite. At about the same time, various agencies of the Federal Government, the state of Nevada, Clark County and Las Vegas were all prying into the Hughes businesses. So many gumshoes were lurking around the Hughes operation that quite a few of them spent most of their time investigating one another.
Early this year, Maheu's relations with Hughes started to cool. The handwritten memos from Hughes to Maheu became less frequent. Not until Hughes was on Paradise Island, though, did the Hughes Tool Co. ("Toolco") executives from Houston−Holliday and Gay plus Lawyer Davis, who frequently act for Hughes on business unrelated to the tool company−make their move against Maheu.
They gathered at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles two weeks ago and summoned a Maheu aide from Las Vegas. They made no charges, but told him that they had a Hughes proxy and demanded Maheu's resignation within four hours. Said Maheu's aide: "Give us a bill of particulars. Show us your authority. How do we know you are speaking for Hughes?" To that, Toolco's Holliday replied: "We are going to fire 155 people−all of the Maheu crowd, all of the Hooper crowd, and others."