Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump keeps saying everything is rigged? Well, that's because he knows how to rig things; some of which were his casinos. Have you ever wondered if he was a Mafia capo? Just when you thought you knew everything about Donald Trump, the truth of how the Mafia, the Atlantic City casino industry, and Donald Trump stole billion$ "Without a Gun" off naive tourists and gamblers by rigging the games and controlling their employees with psychological head games boarding on strong-arm tactics.
This riveting tell-all follows the book's author, from infancy to young adulthood, as he tries to figure out the reality around him. While attending college, eight miles west of Las Vegas east (Atlantic City, New Jersey), at the age of 19, our protagonist signs up to be a casino craps dealer to make extra spending money on the weekends, only to find out that the games are fixed like a Boardwalk carnival game and he is working for the Mafia.
From 1984 to 1991, Lou Levite, Jr., is working for three separate casinos; the last three years for Donald Trump at his flagship casino and Atlantic City centerpiece, Trump Plaza. He describes in detail, working in the business, recalling the gamblers, the celebrities dealt to, how the games are rigged, and how the employees were expected to act. Lou runs into legal problems with his daughter's mother, Mary, an ex-Caesar's craps dealer who at the time is working for a lawyer who was the son of the well-known Atlantic City Mafioso member Paul 'Skinny' D'Amato. She uses her connections to get rid of Lou, but he's not going willingly. Add to that the many years working in the casino industry, and he is taken to attempt suicide. After yelling at his family from behind a locked door one morning about how sick and tired he is of stepping on buttons and hitting switches to steal from people to make Donald Trump look like a hero when he is nothing but a mafia crook, his door is kicked in by two police officers who bring him to the nut ward to silence him. After two weeks, Lou is released from the hospital, where he turns to extortion against Mary to make his life brighter. It works, but only lasts a year and Mary goes back to trying to get rid of Lou. He later meets Frank, a man dating his mother boasts that he's been twice arrested for murder and that he used to run the Trump Castle casino, was a good friend of Ivana Trump's, and to have been Donald Trump's roommate at the Wharton School of Business. Frank offers to help him out of his predicament, but by then it is too late. After feeling cornered and about to be killed by the Mafia, Lou leaves his family and friends behind, going underground in the hopes of surviving this contract he believes Donald Trump has a hand in. Is Donald Trump a Mafia Don? Maybe. But Lou is only alive today to tell this unbelievable story because he changed his name and spent many years in hiding. An interesting read as you watch this young man plan for and make his escape from Donald Trump and the Mafia in a world before computers, the Internet or cell phones. A must read for Trump enthusiast under the age of forty and the rest of us as well.
