Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Mob Museum makes huge payment in cash, mafia style

Mob Museum Cash Payment

City of Las Vegas

This image provided by the city of Las Vegas shows, from left, Mayor Carolyn G. Goodman, Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian, Oscar B. Goodman and The Mob Museum Executive Director Jonathan Ullman, displaying the $1.5 million in cash paid to the city at a council meeting on April 16, 2014.

Mob Museum Opening

Members of the San Diego Police Museum Association pose on a 1928 Ford Model A before the Mob Museum's grand opening in downtown Las Vegas, Tuesday February 14, 2012. The building, a former federal courthouse and post office, was completed in 1933 and is listed on the Nevada and National Registers of Historic Places. It is also one of 14 sites in the nation that hosted the 1950-51 U.S. Senate Special Committees to investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, also known as the Kefauver hearings. Launch slideshow »

Former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman took a cue from the mob in making a huge payment on behalf of the city's Mob Museum.

Goodman presented $1.5 million in cash to the City Council at a meeting on Wednesday. The $100 bills bundled up and stuffed in suitcases are the first of four annual payments the two-year-old museum plans to make to the city.

Las Vegas invested $33 million into renovating a historic former federal courthouse and post office in downtown and launching the museum that leases the space. Executive Director Jonathan Ullman says the nonprofit museum planned to pay back $6.2 million of the city's original investment, and is on track to do so.

The museum has welcomed nearly half a million visitors since launching on Valentine's Day 2012.

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