Jean-Dominique Fratoni; ‘Napoleon of the Gaming Tables’

Jean-Dominique Fratoni, 71, who reigned over the casino tables of Nice in the 1970s and then spent 14 years in exile. Fratoni’s mastery of the casino tables earned him the nickname “Napoleon of the Gaming Tables” during the 1970s, when he reigned over the Cote d’Azur casino crowd. But the mysterious disappearance in 1977 of Agnes Le Roux, the daughter of rival Nice casino owner Renee Le Roux was the start of the “casino wars”--a struggle between the two families--and marked Fratoni’s fall from power. Fratoni had paid Renee Le Roux for her shares in her father’s casino, which Fratoni hoped to buy. She has never been found. Between 1978 and 1985, Fratoni was convicted of a series of crimes ranging from fiscal fraud to confidence abuse. Fratoni had fled France in 1980 to escape the law, spending time in Latin America and Marbella, Spain. In Lugano, Switzerland, on Aug. 5 of cancer.