LOST VEGAS: Las Vegas’ Only Ever (Reported) Celebrity Trick-Roll

Posted on: February 17, 2025, 02:01h. 

Last updated on: February 19, 2025, 09:21h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

Only one celebrity — that we know of — has ever fallen victim to a Las Vegas trick-roll. That’s a targeted robbery by an illegal sex worker, usually of cash and/or an expensive watch.

Only about 10% of trick-rolls get reported to Las Vegas police — both because the clients of prostitutes in Las Vegas usually don’t want their families or professional contacts knowing about their little hobby, and because they could potentially face solicitation charges themselves. (Though prostitution is legal in several Nevada counties, it’s not in the ones that contain Las Vegas or Reno.)

That 10% estimate came from former Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sgt. Ron Hoier, who told the Las Vegas Review-Journal back in 2012 that $2.2 million was stolen each year from men reporting trick-rolls. (If that number kept up with inflation, we can assume it’s now $3.1 million out of $31 million in total.)

Celebrities have even less incentive to report a trick-roll, due to potential damage to their reputation that could cause diminished bookings, boycotts and, today, even cancellation.

So Who Was It?

The only reason we know that Tommy Smothers, the silly half of the Smothers Brothers comedy duo, was tricked-rolled for $600 cash in 1981 is because he actually told us!

Apparently, he thought it would make good press for the duo’s then-current stint at the Aladdin.

Smothers opened this interview with a United Press International reporter by repeating the same cockamamie story told by nearly every john reporting a trick-roll since  the very first one was reported in Las Vegas by George Wood in 1915…

The comedian, then 44, insisted that he didn’t realize the true intent of the skimpily clad beautiful lady offering to join him in his hotel room for a price.

In Smothers’ case, there were two ladies. He claimed he met them in the Aladdin’s casino after his gig and they credibly passed themselves off as comedy writers.

“I was walking around with my road manager and a couple of girls came up and said our act was kinda slow and were we interested in a couple of jokes?” Smothers told the UPI reporter. “I said, ‘Sure.’ They said it’ll cost me $50. I said that was reasonable for a couple of jokes.”

What Smothers said next suggests why he thought making this admission wasn’t a horrible idea…

“We went up to my room and had a couple of drinks and I asked them for the jokes,” Smothers continued. “Then they said, ‘We can show you a trick for $200.’”

Smothers thought he could turn the episode into a funny joke! Ready for the punchline?

“I didn’t know the trick was that they would take my money,” he said.

Of course, Smothers probably wouldn’t have been so eager to share this story had he been married at the time. But he was five years out from his second divorce and would not wed his third wife, Marcy Carriker, for another nine. (They had two children and remained married until his death on Dec. 26, 2023, following a cancer battle at age 86.)

According to Jeff Burbank’s 2005 book “Las Vegas Babylon,” there was more to the episode that Smothers understandably didn’t share, because it wasn’t that funny.

“Tom, feeling woozy, was able to punch her (the hooker who emptied his wallet) in the face on his way down to the floor,” Burbank wrote. “The women had slipped a mickey into his drink and he slipped into darkness, sleeping for hours after the ladies split the scene.”

“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.