The pair formed their own criminal collective, the Bugs-Meyer Gang, of Jewish mobsters. In 1918, Siegel made an important friend: Meyer Lansky, another young street rough. He soon fell in with the neighborhood’s culture of crime. No matter their ethnicity or national origin, everyone in Williamsburg was poor and hungry.
His parents were Jewish immigrants, but Siegel was raised in Williamsburg, a troubled neighborhood that, at the time, had been home to many Irish and Italian gangs. The Flamingo’s founder, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 28, 1906. The Man Behind the Flamingo: Early History Bugsy Siegel in 1928. It’s not the new ownership’s fault, though-it isn’t easy to shake the legacy of the larger-than-life Bugsy Siegel… especially when his spirit refuses to leave the premises.
Though the Flamingo has since tried to minimize Siegel’s legacy, its many renovations haven’t managed to remove the mobster from the resort. After all, the Flamingo was the brainchild of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, one of America’s most infamous gangsters. The legendary Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, in the heart of the Strip, is notorious for its checkered history.
