David Groover first saw Joey Cusumano at a distance back in the early 1980s. It was his job. Groover had him under surveillance.
As a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Intelligence Bureau detective assigned to the Chicago squad, Groover and partner Gene Smith kept an eye on Cusumano and a mug book of others as part of the department’s bruising investigation of Anthony Spilotro’s criminal crew. In those dangerous days, Spilotro was mentioned in the newspapers more than the mayor.
“He was a New York guy who hung with the Chicago crew,” Groover recalls. “I guess if you were a politician, you’d say he caucused with the Chicago crew. Maybe he was an independent. I don’t know, but it was always strange that you had this New York guy who notably holds a position with that group.”
It was strange, but then New York City native Joseph Vincent Cusumano was a Las Vegas enigma. He once owned a restaurant on the Strip, Joey’s New Yorker. He bounced in and out of the casino business in the 1970s, and he worked in Hollywood as a line producer on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club.
But all that, of course, is not what he was known for. Cusumano survived a murder attempt, a stint in prison for federal insurance fund fraud, and inclusion in Nevada’s casino black book. He’s remembered by those who knew him as a gentleman charmer who played tennis daily and never betrayed a confidence.
