New Delhi, June 26 -- LAS VEGAS - The Nevada Gaming Commission cleared two men from the state's most feared gambling watchlist on Thursday, not because they had been rehabilitated or had mounted a legal challenge, but because they were dead.

Ribaste from COVID-19 complications in spring 2021, Cammisano of the same disease in 2023, believed to be 73 years old.

The removals carry no legal consequence. The men never returned to Nevada's gaming floors after their bans, and neither mounted any known legal challenge to their exclusion. What the commission's vote does close, quietly and without ceremony, is one small chapter of a longer story: the story of how the Kansas City crime family's fingers once reached into Las Vegas's most profitable...