Ray Ryan Should Not Have Cheated Nick the Greek - Poker News

Johnny Hughes · 04-04-2010, 01:32 PM

Ray Ryan was this larger than life gambler, expert card player, great memory, and he did cheat Nick the Greek and maybe others. He won $250,000 from H.L. Hunt on a cruise. Hunt started out as a Texas poker player and was one of the richest men in the world.

Nick the Greek and Johnny Moss played in early 1949. In the fall of 1949, Nicholas "Nick the Greek" Dandolos, often spelled Dandolas played heads up low ball and gin rummy off and on for fifteen days or more against Ray Ryan at the mob controlled Flamingo and one other joint, I will remember. Jeane Martin, Dean's wife could come out and watch them. Jerry Lewis already owed the mob joints a bunch of money.

Ryan won $550,0000 and this all is known from court records. The Greek found out Ray Ryan had a confederate looking at the Greek's hand with binoculars, and sending a signal to a short wave device worn at Ray Ryan's waist. In his oral history, Benny tells about taking Nick the Greek out to pay off "five hundred thousand and somethin" for a poker loss.

I believe Nick the Greek basically stayed broke from 1949 until his death in 1966. Sometime, maybe 1951, Nick the Greek lost 200 large at the Horseshoe on credit. He wrote markers and lost at the Golden Nugget, strip casinos, and in Reno, and L.A. He was in debt the rest of his life and tried to borrow off many people.

Nick the Greek was from Chicago. He went to mob bosses Sam Giancana and Tony Accardo to ask for help in getting his money back from Ray Ryan. They sent in Marsall Caifano, a sadistic killer, with a string of mob hits behind him. Ray Ryan refused. He was a real high roller, a major bookie, the major developer of Palm Springs, an oil man, and he owned with actor William Holden a safari club in Kenya. Ryan refused to pay Caifano anything.

In 1960, when I first went to Las Vegas, I saw Nick the Greek shooting dice at the Sands. I "heard" he was broke and playing house chips at all the mob joints on the strip. He was a shill.
Marsall Caifano and the Greek were still mad about the poker cheating in 1949. Not mad at Benny Binion and Johnny Moss, but mad at Ray Ryan.

In 1963, Charles Delmonico and Marshall Caifano took Ray Ryan for a little ride in Palm Springs. Delmonico hit Ray Ryan in the chest to show they meant business. This enraged Ryan. When Ray Ryan was staying at Moe Dalitz' starship casino, the Desert Inn, Marshall Caifano, Nick the Greek, and Charles Delmonico tried to kidnap Ray Ryan. Ryan ran out of the joint and the FBI arrested all three. Nick the Greek agreed to cooperate with the FBI, he becamed a un-indicted co-conspirato, and did testify. He also filed a $1 million and a half dollar law suit againt Ray Ryan for the binocular poker cheating in 1949. It was thrown out. Mob utility innfielder Johnny Roselli told Ray Ryan that if he testified, the Internal Revenue Service would hound him his whole natural life because of the large sums mentioned. That was more than true, because they continued to hassle his estate after his death. Marshall Caifano went to prison until 1972. His big sponsors were dead, in the joint, or Witness Protection. They put him in charge of low level porno. He kept petitioning higher ups to have Ray Ryan killed. This is all known from FBI records, and informants years after the fact.

Nick the Greek left Vegas for the low limit Gardena games. His testimony against a mob guy may, I said may, have been why. He died in 1966 at 84.

By 1977, the Internal Revenue trials had Ray Ryan divesting his interests in some fifty business places. All the big gamblers of the era, Nick the Greek, Ray Ryan played with mob guys because they had the money. He also booked very large and laid off to mob guys. He was an associate and testifying against a mob guy was vain, pig-headed and suicidal in a way.

Ray Ryan was killed by a massive car bomb in 1977. Many years later, FBI informants said that it was Marshall Caifano's work.

That one heads up poker and gin rummy match in 1949, haunted Ray Ryan and Nick the Greek for the rest of their lives. Marshall Caifano lived to be 92, a rarity for the Mafia guys of the day.