Vegas Comic Hit Up Audiences to Fund His Gambling Addiction for 20 Years
Posted on: September 16, 2025, 01:41h.
Last updated on: September 16, 2025, 03:08h.
- Vinnie Favorito was once touted in Las Vegas as the next Don Rickles
- In addition to being a hard-working comic, Favorito was also a hardcore gambler known for hitting up his audience members for money
- A new documentary shines a spotlight on Favorito’s career and gambling addiction
In the days of the Rat Pack, if a cocktail server needed financial help for a family emergency, Frank Sinatra would gladly tip her a hundy. In the early 2000s, it was the reverse — at least for some who attended the thousands of Las Vegas Strip performances by comic Vinnie Favorito.
The former Strip headliner would ask pretty much anyone he perceived as having money to loan him some of it.
“Vinnie Plays Vegas: The Con Man of Comedy,” now streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV, is a documentary exploring the rise and downfall of an entertainer who preyed on gullible audience members to fund his gambling addiction.
“I wanted to pay everybody back,” Favorito came clean to director Brian Burkhardt, his friend and fellow comedian, in the film, “but you get deeper and deeper and deeper like a drug, and you’re lying. You’re lying all the time.”
An insult comic once touted as the next Don Rickles, Favorito has always leaned heavily into crowd work. That’s when you ask audience members where they’re from and what they do for a living before crafting appropriate zingers.
But unlike Rickles, Favorito was fishing for marks as well as comedy material.
After his shows, he approached the audience members who identified themselves as having six-figure jobs and hit them up. They were usually good for $1,000 to $15K each.
“It’s kind of [the] same skill,” said Mike Weatherford, a co-writer of the film, who documented Favorito’s exploits during his time as the entertainment reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The guy who was a doctor was the one he’d made sure to shake hands with after the show and, say, ‘Hey, why don’t we play golf?’”
Favorito performed this act (and con) at venues including Binion’s, O’Shea’s, the Flamingo, and the Westgate for nearly 20 years.
Even after the Flamingo fired him for borrowing from one of their waitresses, he continued. Some of the victims who spoke in the documentary recalled giving him money on multiple occasions.
“I’m not trying to make an excuse,” Favorito added. “But when you’re trying to chase the money and make that easy shortcut, everything goes south, and you don’t realize how deep you get. Now I’m so behind with people, and you’re trying to keep track of your own story … I’ve got to play the carnival game that you can hit a jackpot hand on. But the dream never came.”
Comic Relief
In September 2016, Favorito declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy to give himself a fresh start. More than 60 creditors jockeyed for pennies on the more than a million dollars he officially owed. There’s no telling how much more he owed to friends, co-workers, and fans unofficially.
How many people out there have a credit card that they couldn’t pay, years ago or now?” Favorito asked. “It’s kind of the same thing. You’re borrowing money, you know you don’t have the money to pay it, and later on, you’re going to end up trying to get out of the card.”
Weatherford told Casino.org that he doesn’t feel that merely coming clean about his addiction will be adequate to restore Favorito’s reputation — “unless he’s doing an apology tour and raising money for Gamblers Anonymous.”
And Favorito doesn’t seem to disagree.
“I’m the biggest piece of shit in the world for what I did,” he told Burkhardt. “I’ll always be looked at as the gambler. Don’t lend Vinnie money. You can’t escape that.”
Favorito still performs in Vegas. His show is at the 170-seat Robin Leach Lounge at the Notoriety Live theater downtown.
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