---
category: "Organized Crime"
tags:
  - Person
  - PROMIS
  - CIA
summary: "Gambino Crime Family associate who lent $50,000 to Dr. John Philip Nichols to start the Cabazon Casino."
---

[[Tommy Marson]] was a known [[Gambino Crime Family]] associate. He was observed by the Indio Police Department in August 1981 meeting with [[Dr. John Philip Nichols]], the Cabazon Administrator, and other [[La Cosa Nostra]] underworld figures. The writer Cheri Seymour wrote that these meetings involved financial transactions. The [[Miami Herald]] reported in May 1983 that Marson's wife loaned $50,000 to [[John Paul Nichols]] in November 1980 to help finance the Cabazon casino.[^1] In 1985 John Paul Nichols said that the $50,000 was a personal loan to him from Marson's wife, and that Marson had no dealings with the tribe.[^2] Seymour wrote that Marson lent Dr. John Philip Nichols $50,000 to start the card room on the Cabazon Indian Reservation, which she described as the first Indian card room in the nation.[^3] The Miami Herald series described Marson as a close associate of major organized crime figures who had spent five years in federal prison on a counterfeiting conviction in 1950.[^1]

### Footnotes

[^1]: *The Miami Herald*, May 29, 1983 (series on Indian bingo and Wackenhut Corporation). Reprinted in FBI Los Angeles file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1, https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols
[^2]: *The Press-Enterprise* (Riverside, California), 1985, "Cabazon leader scoffs at report." Reprinted in FBI Los Angeles file 183A-LA-1746, Section 1, https://archive.org/details/JohnPhilipNichols
[^3]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.