A Winter Afternoon at Mount Airy Casino in the Poconos

An insistent opposition has dogged the development of a slots machine casino at the former Mount Airy Lodge in Mount Pocono, PA. Among the residents of the area where the resort is located are a contingent of casino opponents who protest just about any mention of the casino in the local newspaper forums. Many consider themselves experts in "organized crime" and tell anecdotal stories which might have been plagiarized from rerun Soprano episodes.

Why the term "organized crime" is tossed about in many of these discussions is because the idea of the Italian mafia occupies a permanent spot in the American imagination. The notion was certainly popularized in Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather series of films. Though presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is Italian and had no small role in mafia prosecutions in New York City, the concept of a society being run by an invisible shadow army of fedora wearing outlaw Italians is both tempting and abiding.

Mr. Louis DeNaples, who owns businesses ranging from auto parts, sanitation, and banking and who was the driving force behind the Mount Airy Casino, pleaded "no contest" to falsifying documents related to federal flood recovery efforts in the 1970s.

When Louis DeNaples applied for a gambling license, he was asked whether he had any associations or connections with organized crime. He said "no," but he might have instead said something like "that depends on what you mean by organized crime and what you mean by connections with." Or maybe a better answer would have been:

"Sure. I loaned bulldozers to the indicted county commissioners in Wilkes-Barre."

While Pennsylvania gambling laws prohibit anyone with a felony conviction from holding a gaming license, the law does not apply to convictions more than fifteen years old. The award of the gaming license to DeNaples could be revoked if it is determined that he perjured himself when claiming he had no connections to organized crime. The prosecution team is trying to prove that Louis DeNaples had connections to an alleged mob leader named William D'Elia.