Bob Gans

Robert Joseph "Bob" Gans (October 27, 1887 – September 17, 1959) was the "slot-machine king" of the Los Angeles underworld during the interwar period, and later a philanthropist and civic leader. For many years, he ran the board of Mt. Sinai Hospital, now Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Gans was one of the most circumspect figures in the history of organized crime in southern California, but he was associated with both Charlie Crawford's City Hall Gang of the 1920s and Guy McAfee's Combination in the 1930s.

The slot-machine kingdom was a family business built by Bob Gans with his older brothers Joe Gans and Charlie Gans, Bob's son Cliff Gans, and his nephew-in-law Abe Chapman. The finances of the business are poorly understood but the amalgamated best guesstimates of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the handful of local crime-beat newspaper reporters who were not personally graft-adjacent seems to suggest that the Gans operation may have had gross revenues over 20 years of approximately US$200,000,000 (equivalent to $4,488,836,105 in 2024) and top-line profits for the proprietors over the same period of, at minimum, US$15,000,000 (equivalent to $336,662,708 in 2024).