United States v. Roselli, 432 F.2d 879 (9th Cir. 1970)

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions of John Roselli, Maurice Friedman, Benjamin Teitelbaum and Manuel Jacobs for a scheme to cheat at high-stakes gin rummy at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills, using observers at ceiling peepholes who signaled the cards.

Date: 1970-09-28
Kind: court-opinion
Source: CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Docket: 432 F.2d 879 (9th Cir. 1970); Nos. 24220, 24289, 24290, 24300
Rights: Opinion of a United States court. Works of the federal judiciary are in the public domain in the United States. The text was read on CourtListener.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, September 28, 1970. The appellants were John Roselli, Maurice Friedman, Benjamin Teitelbaum and Manuel Jacobs.

The court describes a scheme to cheat at high-stakes gin rummy at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills, in which observers at peepholes in the ceiling signaled the players’ hands, prosecuted under the Travel Act and the stolen-property statute. It records that Roselli was identified as present at several of the rigged games, and that he was also convicted of filing a false income-tax return for a $10,000 payment received in Las Vegas. The convictions were affirmed, except that Friedman’s conviction on Count 19 was reversed.

The opinion does not describe Roselli’s Chicago background. The FBI’s report of the 1968 verdict and the 1969 sentence is filed as Roselli Part 08.

itemFBI Los Angeles report, 1968-1969: John Roselli convicted as an unregistered alien and in the Friars Club case (Vault Roselli Part 08)A Los Angeles report records Roselli's May 23, 1968 conviction for failing to register as an alien, after FBI evidence that he was born in Italy as Filippo Sacco, his December 2, 1968 conviction in the Friars Club case, and his February 1969 sentences.