{"id":143982,"date":"2025-09-17T20:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T20:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/143982\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T20:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T20:08:10","slug":"vegas-comic-hit-up-audiences-to-fund-his-gambling-addiction-for-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/143982\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegas Comic Hit Up Audiences to Fund His Gambling Addiction for 20 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Posted on: September 16, 2025, 01:41h.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n Last updated on: September 16, 2025, 03:08h.\n <\/p>\n

\"Avatar <\/p>\n

Vinnie Favorito was once touted in Las Vegas as the next Don Rickles
\nIn addition to being a hard-working comic, Favorito was also a hardcore gambler known for hitting up his audience members for money
\nA new documentary shines a spotlight on Favorito\u2019s career and gambling addiction\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the days of the Rat Pack, if a cocktail server needed financial help for a family emergency, Frank Sinatra would gladly tip her a hundy. In the early 2000s, it was the reverse \u2014 at least for some who attended the thousands of Las Vegas Strip performances by comic Vinnie Favorito.<\/p>\n

\"\"Vinnie Favorito poses in 2006, when he was at the top of his career game and the bottom of his craps one. (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n

The former Strip headliner would ask pretty much anyone he perceived as having money to loan him some of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cVinnie Plays Vegas: The Con Man of Comedy,\u201d now streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV, is a documentary exploring the rise and downfall of an entertainer who preyed on gullible audience members to fund his gambling addiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to pay everybody back,\u201d Favorito came clean to director Brian Burkhardt, his friend and fellow comedian, in the film, \u201cbut you get deeper and deeper and deeper like a drug, and you\u2019re lying. You\u2019re lying all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The promotional art for a new Amazon Prime documentary about Favorito. (Image: Amazon Prime)<\/p>\n

An insult comic once touted as the next Don Rickles, Favorito has always leaned heavily into crowd work. That\u2019s when you ask audience members where they\u2019re from and what they do for a living before crafting appropriate zingers.<\/p>\n

But unlike Rickles, Favorito was fishing for marks as well as comedy material.<\/p>\n

After his shows, he approached the audience members who identified themselves as having six-figure jobs and hit them up. They were usually good for $1,000 to $15K each.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of [the] same skill,\u201d said Mike Weatherford, a co-writer of the film, who documented Favorito\u2019s exploits during his time as the entertainment reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. \u201cThe guy who was a doctor was the one he\u2019d made sure to shake hands with after the show and, say, \u2018Hey, why don\u2019t we play golf?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Favorito performed this act (and con) at venues including Binion\u2019s, O\u2019Shea\u2019s, the Flamingo, and the Westgate for nearly 20 years.<\/p>\n

Even after the Flamingo fired him for borrowing from one of their waitresses, he continued. Some of the victims who spoke in the documentary recalled giving him money on multiple occasions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not trying to make an excuse,\u201d Favorito added. \u201cBut when you\u2019re trying to chase the money and make that easy shortcut, everything goes south, and you don\u2019t realize how deep you get. Now I\u2019m so behind with people, and you\u2019re trying to keep track of your own story \u2026 I\u2019ve got to play the carnival game that you can hit a jackpot hand on. But the dream never came.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comic Relief<\/p>\n

In September 2016, Favorito declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy to give himself a fresh start. More than 60 creditors jockeyed for pennies on the more than a million dollars he officially owed. There\u2019s no telling how much more he owed to friends, co-workers, and fans unofficially.<\/p>\n

How many people out there have a credit card that they couldn\u2019t pay, years ago or now?\u201d Favorito asked. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of the same thing. You\u2019re borrowing money, you know you don\u2019t have the money to pay it, and later on, you\u2019re going to end up trying to get out of the card.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weatherford told Casino.org that he doesn\u2019t feel that merely coming clean about his addiction will be adequate to restore Favorito\u2019s reputation \u2014 \u201cunless he\u2019s doing an apology tour and raising money for Gamblers Anonymous.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Favorito doesn\u2019t seem to disagree.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the biggest piece of shit in the world for what I did,\u201d he told Burkhardt. \u201cI\u2019ll always be looked at as the gambler. Don\u2019t lend Vinnie money. You can\u2019t escape that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Favorito still performs in Vegas. His show is at the 170-seat Robin Leach Lounge at the Notoriety Live theater downtown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Posted on: September 16, 2025, 01:41h.\u00a0 Last updated on: September 16, 2025, 03:08h. Vinnie Favorito was once touted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[2973,66566,10845,2332,66567,7696,102,3302,1906,6623,56,54,55,66568,66569],"class_list":{"0":"post-143982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-comedy","9":"tag-con-man","10":"tag-documentary","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-flamingo","13":"tag-gambling-addiction","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-las-vegas","16":"tag-mental-health","17":"tag-mentalhealth","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-unitedkingdom","21":"tag-vinnie-favorito","22":"tag-vinnie-plays-vegas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}