Dennis Gomes, Atlantic City Casino Operator, Dies at 68 Dennis Gomes, who had investigated the gambling industry in Las Vegas before joining it in Atlantic City, where he helped run a major Boardwalk casino while trying to resuscitate gambling there, died on Thursday in a Philadelphia hospital. He was 68 and lived in Margate, N.J. Associated Press Dennis Gomes, who was known in the industry for unusual publicity stunts, at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in 1991. The cause was complications of kidney dialysis, said Aaron Gomes, vice president of operations at Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, which his father co-owned. He told The Associated Press that his father had developed kidney problems after breaking his back last year. As head of the audit division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board in the 1970s, Dennis Gomes pursued Mafia connections to Las Vegas's gambling industry. The 1995 Martin Scorsese film "Casino," based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, drew on Mr. Gomes's investigation into how Las Vegas mobsters had embezzled more than $20 million from the Stardust Casino. Mr. Gomes said he started working at casinos "because I knew the business from the inside out." Two years ago, after operating more than a dozen casinos and resorts across the country - among them the Indiana Live in Indianapolis, the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas and the Tropicana and the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City - Mr. Gomes joined Morris Bailey, a New York real estate investor, to buy the Resorts Casino Hotel. They paid $31.5 million. Time at the tables and a stroll along the Boardwalk were not enough to attract tourists to Atlantic City, Mr. Gomes believed. "I like doing things that capture people's attention," he told The Star-Ledger in Newark last September. By then he had heavy-metal music blaring in the showroom at Resorts, along with aerialists in black push-up bras and bikini bottoms swinging from the ceiling - part of a revue called "Cirque Risque." He had the casino refurbished in a 1920s style to reflect the city's rakish past, with female beverage servers wearing skimpy flapper costumes. For a burlesque show called "Moonlight Follies," he unveiled a billboard near the casino showing a female posterior covered only by a G-string and beads. In July, Mr. Gomes opened a nightclub called Prohibition that is believed to be the first full-time gay bar at any big American casino. "I feel like I'm doing something that needs to be done, but it's perfect because the right thing to do is the lucrative thing to do, too," he told The New York Times. Before his co-ownership of Resorts , Mr. Gomes had become known in the industry for unusual publicity stunts. To promote the casino in Indiana, he hired a Barack Obama look-alike to urge gamblers to bring their "change" to the gambling hall. At the Tropicana in Atlantic City, he pitted a live chicken against customers in games of tick-tack-toe. Although Resorts was still losing money, its cash-paying businesses - food and beverage sales and hotel rooms - were up 40 percent from the previous year, he told The A. P. "It takes time to turn the corner, and they were definitely on the road to making money," David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said in an interview. There was a downside to Mr. Gomes's management. More than 200 workers were laid off and nearly 500 others had their pay cut by as much as 52 percent. On many weekends, the casino workers" union staged protests outside the casino. Dennis C. Gomes was born on Jan. 11, 1944. His Web site said he had earned a bachelor's degree in accounting and a master's in finance, but a spokeswoman for Resorts said she could provide no further information. In addition to his son, Aaron, he is survived by his wife, Barbara; three daughters, Mary, Danielle and Gabrielle; and three grandchildren. "I believe that we are now in the beginning stages of bringing Atlantic City back to what it used to be - the ancient glories," Mr. Gomes said in 2003. But he himself had gambled at a casino only once in his life, he said. He lost $2,500 at craps in Las Vegas, he recalled, and never went back to the tables.