Las Vegas Mob Tour Stop #11: 'Fat' Herbie Blitzstein's former and last business before being whacked

This is the former Any Auto Repair, 3055 E. Fremont St., Las Vegas, a front for Las Vegas mob associate Herbert 'Fat Herbie' Blitzstein's real businesses: loan sharking, auto insurance fraud, and selling used and stolen cars with rolled-back odometers. Joseph DeLuca, a business associate of the Buffalo and Chicago crime families, owned a Las Vegas auto repair business and shared office space and profits with Blitzstein. Any Auto Repair was in a space rented from Robert Panaro, whose business, Any Auto Brokers, was in the same building. The three of them bought and sold stolen cars and split the profits.
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Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein began his life of crime as a loan shark for Chicago mobster Tony 'The Ant' Spilotro and a key member of Hole in the Wall gang. Blitzstein helped Spilotro run a jewelry store and pawn shop in Las Vegas. The store, called the Gold Rush, was a front that allowed Spilotro to send illicit profits to his Outfit bosses.
The relationship between Blitzstein and DeLuca soured around November 1996 when DeLuca suspected that Blitzstein was making money on the side and not sharing it as per their agreements. That's when DeLuca, Panaro and others began plotting how they were going to take over Blitzstein's loan-sharking business. DeLuca wanted to get Blitzstein out of the way and sought permission to have him killed from Panaro, whom prosecutors painted as a higher-ranking member of the Buffalo group. DeLuca helped the killers gain access to Blitzstein's Las Vegas condo by giving them a spare entrance key that Herbie had entrusted him with. On the late afternoon of January 6, 1997, the 62 year-old Blitzstein was ambushed inside his condo by his killers, Richard Friedman and Antone Davi, who laid in wait for him as he arrived home from work at Any Auto. One of the hitmen pulled the trigger of a small-caliber hand just after exiting the bathroom as Herbie entered through the front door with his main key, and walked in past the kitchen to his TV room. He was shot twice in the head at close range, the second shot after he did not immediately die. Herbie was found by police dead on his knees, his upper body lying across a leather recliner chair with a cell phone still in his hand that he had carried into the condo. Blitzstein put his hands on his face and asked “Why me?” before dying from a head wound. Friedman and Davi rifled through Blitzstein’s pockets before leaving. They were paid a cut-rate sum of $3,500 for the hit. Later, during proceedings in federal court, each would blame the other for firing the fatal shot. Herbie Blitzstein's shooting was the last major murderous organized crime hit in Las Vegas.
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