Ginji Yasuda; Owned Vegas’ Aladdin Hotel

Ginji Yasuda, the flamboyant international playboy who was the first foreigner ever granted a Nevada gambling license when he took over the troubled Aladdin Hotel, has died, it was confirmed Monday.

Andy Vanyo, chief of the enforcement division of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, said Yasuda died Dec. 3 in a cancer treatment center in Los Angeles, but he did not know which one.

A Yasuda family attorney in Los Angeles did not return phone calls.

His death came three months after a bankruptcy trustee was appointed to operate the Aladdin in Las Vegas.

Yasuda, 57, the Korean-born son of a wealthy Japanese businessman, had purchased the hotel and casino for $54 million out of bankruptcy after the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund had foreclosed its loans.

Yasuda operated the hotel but not the casino for more than a year while gaming officials investigated his background. The investigation was lengthy because of difficulty in tracing Yasuda’s years in Asia.

In February, 1987, Yasuda made history as the first foreigner to receive a Nevada casino license. The Nevada Gaming Commission put a two-year expiration on the license and required Yasuda to appoint experienced casino managers.

He spent millions more on improvements and remodeling and hired a professional management team headed by Dennis Gomes, now president of the Golden Nugget casino. But Yasuda and Gomes could not agree on operation of the resort, and Yasuda fired the Gomes management team in September, 1987.

The trouble-scarred veteran hotel on the Las Vegas Strip had undergone a series of earlier owners, including entertainer Wayne Newton, and had also been investigated by the gaming board for giving free rooms, food and drink to many known mobsters.

Yasuda, whose Korean name was Sam K. Park, was known on the Strip as a high-stakes gambler who was a breeder of racehorses and an avid skeet shooter. In the 1960s he drove on the international sports-car circuit.

More recently he had commuted between Japan and his palatial home in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles. He also owned a ranch in Bradbury where he raised racehorses.

He supposedly inherited a fortune from his father and used the proceeds from a $120-million sale of a downtown Tokyo property to purchase the Aladdin.

As early as 1986, even before Yasuda was able to reopen the Aladdin casino, there were reports that he was unable to pay some vendors for their goods.

This summer, Yasuda’s lender put the hotel property in foreclosure for past due mortgage payments and set Sept. 6 as the date for a public auction. In August, Yasuda lost his gaming license and filed for bankruptcy, listing $121 million in debts and $83 million in assets.

The resort is being operated by a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee. Jeff Silver, a Las Vegas attorney familiar with the restructuring, said an auction of Aladdin property has been scheduled in April but chances also remain good that a new buyer will be found.