Although Peter Maheu loved to tell exciting stories about his late father, international spy Bob Maheu, and even worked for his father’s company, managing reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes’ vast Nevada gaming interests, he was determined to carve out a career of his own and a name for himself.
Peter Maheu, a licensed private investigator in Nevada and California, became a world leader in assuring regulatory compliance in the gaming industry. He wrote articles and lectured extensively on preventing business fraud. And he became involved in the emergence of overseas gaming, focusing on keeping organized crime out of casinos in those burgeoning markets.
Maheu, 73, was the president of Global Intelligence Network and oversaw thousands of intelligence investigations, including background checks of individuals seeking key casino jobs and positions in other businesses in more than 70 countries. He died Sunday of a heart attack at his Las Vegas home, it was announced Monday by Joseph W. Brown of the Fennemore Craig law firm.
Peter Maheu was photographed Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015, in the Greenspun Media Group studio. Maheu, who died Sunday, April 3, 2016, was the son of Robert Maheu, Howard Hughes' one-time top associate. Peter Maheu was featured in two stories in The Sunday focusing on Hughes and his connection to the Watergate scandal.
A celebration of his life will be at 11 a.m. Friday at the St. Viator Catholic Community, 2461 Flamingo Road. In lieu of flowers, a donation may be made in his name to the Honor Flight of Southern Nevada or the American Cancer Society .
“He (Peter) was a delightful man with a quick, wry wit and an in-depth knowledge of so many things,” said friend and business luncheon pal William D. “Billy” Weinberger, also the son of a famous Las Vegan, William S. “Billy” Weinberger, the revered dean of casino gaming. “(At business lunches) we compared notes and traded stories of the ‘good old days’ in Las Vegas, often filling in details of each other’s stories. I regret that our lunches have come to an end way too soon.”
Peter Maheu delivered lectures before some of the world’s most prestigious groups. Among them were the World Presidents’ Organization, the International Masters of Gaming Law Conference, the International Association of Gaming Attorneys Conference and the North American Gaming Regulators Association.
Early on, Peter worked for his dad’s company, Robert A. Maheu and Associates, where Peter played a major role in the management of not only Hughes’ gaming properties but in Hughes’ vast Nevada real estate and mining interests. Much of what are now high-end residential communities in northwest Las Vegas were built on land Hughes purchased as barren desert.
After breaking out on his own, Peter Maheu founded — and was president of — Trademark Protection Services, where he specialized in preventing trademark and copyright infringement on his clients’ brands.
TPS was said to have been at one time the nation’s largest firm of its type, with 30 offices nationwide that each employed a cadre of investigators and attorneys. Maheu’s clients included such business giants as 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co., Mirage Studios and Hard Rock Café.
Maheu was a former member of the Metro Police Use of Force Board. He also served as president of the Nevada Society of Professional Investigators. Other organizations to which Peter belonged included the International Masters of Gaming Law and the Southern Nevada chapter of the Honor Flight Network, of which he was vice chairman.
Maheu also taught courses on international organized crime and the gaming industry at the California Department of Justice Advanced Training Center.
At the time of his death, Maheu was chairman and CEO of QSI Specialists, a large Nevada mystery-shopping company.
But despite all he accomplished on his own, Peter Maheu was proud to be the eldest of four children of Bob Maheu and never minded living in the shadow of his famous dad who had traveled the world, engaging in espionage for the CIA. Peter was proud to have worked with the staff of The Sunday on a two-part story about Las Vegas’ connection to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, which involved secret Hughes memos that Bob Maheu gave to Las Vegas Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun for safekeeping.
One of those Bob Maheu adventures that Peter often shared with new friends involved his father representing the U.S. government at a secret meeting to plot the assassination of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Bob Maheu, meeting with mob bosses Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante and Las Vegas hood “Handsome Johnny” Roselli, told the gangsters that the CIA was willing to pay them $150,000 to have Castro killed. The CIA later called off the assassination plan and the mob bosses killed Roselli, stuffed his body in a sealed barrel and set him adrift on the ocean to cover their tracks.
In testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1975, Bob Maheu defended his role in the Castro assassination scheme as an act of patriotism.
Later, serving as Hughes’ alter ego, Bob Maheu bought more than a dozen Strip hotels on Hughes’ behalf — a move that is credited with beginning the efforts to drive the mob out of the local gaming industry, which Peter often spoke of with great pride. It was the inspiration for Peter working so diligently to keep organized crime out of growing overseas gaming interests.
But perhaps Peter’s favorite story about his dad was the time Bob Maheu was given a license to kill billionaire shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis by then-Vice President and future U.S. President Richard Nixon to stop Onassis from cornering the market on shipping Arab oil and thus controlling world gasoline prices.
“If you think paying $3 or $4 a gallon for gasoline today is bad, you can imagine what we would be paying if my father did not play a major role in scuttling that deal?” Peter Maheu told the Sun for his father’s obituary, published Aug. 8, 2008.
After a public meeting with Maheu, Nixon took Bob aside and, according to the 1986 Onassis biography “Nemesis” by Peter Evans, said, “And just remember, if it turns out we have to kill the bastard (Onassis), don’t do it on American soil.”
Peter said his father, a devout Catholic, preferred to use his keen skills of trickery rather than break one of God’s commandments by putting a bullet in a target’s head — even with the vice president’s OK. Peter said Bob instead masterminded a smear campaign that discredited Onassis with Saudi Arabian oil officials who nixed the Onassis monopoly on shipping Arab oil.
Peter Maheu’s was preceded in death by his sister, Christine of Las Vegas. He is survived by his wife, Rosemary, of 52 years: sons Peter, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., Mark, of Corona, Calif., and Jeffrey, of Las Vegas; grandchildren Marissa, Jacob, Mariah and Nolan; and brothers William, of San Diego, and Robert, of Huntington Beach, Calif. survivors include his wife, Rosemary. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
Ed Koch is a former longtime Las Vegas Sun reporter.
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