He was well-liked by the media, but not by the authorities.
Cornero was an excellent marketer who used airplanes to advertise his most well-known boat, the Rex, with inscriptions in the sky. He was a former smuggler who arrived in Santa Monica with the intention of emptying Los Angeles residents’ pockets on the water. Tony Cornero was one of the most well-known gaming operators. The operation of these ships was often attempted to be stopped or interfered with, but gambling operators were able to successfully fend off most of these efforts in court. This did not sit well with local law enforcement and public morality advocates, who saw it as a violation of state laws. The ships were so profitable that by 1930, a sort of small fleet of gambling ships was anchored a few miles off the coasts of Long Beach and Santa Monica. Since gambling was not prohibited by federal law, floating gaming operators only needed to anchor three miles away. Despite the fact that gambling was prohibited in California, the state’s authority extended only three miles offshore. The first gambling ships appeared off the coast of Los Angeles County in 1928. From the turn of the century until the 1920s, poker games continued to be played, both legally and illegally. In 1891, the legislature banned all types of gambling by law, listing card games by name but with the exception of Draw Poker.
