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LAS VEGAS -- Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has opposed gambling for more than a century, its members have been historically tied to the casino industry.
In 1845, church leader Brigham Young lectured saints in Nauvoo, Ill., to "put down" gambling, an activity he called an "abomination."
Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, in a 1986 speech, said "gambling tends to corrupt its participants. Its philosophy of something for nothing undermines the virtues of work, industry, thrift and service to others."
Yet such warnings have not prevented active members of the LDS Church from working throughout the burgeoning legalized-gambling industry.
In the late 1960s, billionaire recluse Howard Hughes was known as the "King of Las Vegas" for his extensive casino, airport and land holdings in the gambling mecca. Mr. Hughes surrounded himself with so many Mormon confidants that the upper management of Hughes Nevada Operations became known as the "Mormon Mafia."
In his ninth-floor penthouse headquarters at the Desert Inn casino on the Las Vegas Strip, the eccentric megalomaniac had several devout Mormon aides: Roy Crawford, Howard Eckersley, George Francom and Levar...