Posted on: December 17, 2024, 12:47h.
Last updated on: December 17, 2024, 12:47h.
A gambling ship that once belonged to murdered restaurant and casino tycoon Gus Boulis’ is sitting abandoned in a Florida dock – and it’s still decked out with slot machines and gaming tables with casino chips intact.
These extraordinary images were taken by photographer and urban explorer Leland Kent, who has long been fascinated by abandoned places and showcases more in his books and on his website, abandonedsoutheast.com.
They show the Blue Horizon casino cruise ship, which once took gamblers on “cruises to nowhere” – or at least out into international waters, where Florida’s gambling laws do not apply. The vessel last sailed in 2016, just before its then owner, PB Gaming, went bust.
The Blue Horizon was once known as SunCruz VI when it was part of Boulis’ SunCruz fleet. Boulis was the founder of the Miami Subs sandwich restaurant chain and the SunCruz casino cruise business, which once sailed gambling trips out of Jacksonville, Key Largo, Port Canaveral, and Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Boulis was murdered by the mafia in 2001, gunned down as he sat in his car.
Who Was Gus Boulis?
Born in Kavala, a city in northern Greece, Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis joined the merchant marines in the 1960s as a teenager. He jumped ship in Canada, arriving in North America with nothing but the shirt on his back.
His first job was a dishwasher at a Mr. Submarine sandwich outlet in Toronto. By the time he was 25, he had been made a partner in the business and he helped expand it into a chain with 200 outlets. Boulis sold his stake in the business, which made him a millionaire while still in his twenties.
He made his way to Florida, where he founded Miami Subs and other restaurants, before stumbling on the idea of casino cruises. In 1994, he purchased a ship, The Winston Churchill, for $2 million, and SunCruz was born.
SunCruz was a big hit with Florida’s gamblers, although not so much with local, state, and federal authorities, who were forever on Boulis’ back.
The U.S. government eventually got him on an obscure federal statute that requires owners of fleets to be American citizens. The law was enacted in the 1920s to protect U.S. shipping interests from foreign competition. Boulis became a U.S. citizen in 1997 but purchased most of his fleet before that.
As part of a settlement with the U.S. government, Boulis agreed to pay $2 million in fines and to divest himself of the SunCruz fleet over the ensuing three years.
Boulis agreed to sell the fleet to the notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associate Adam Kidan for $147.5 million.
Abramoff and Kidan were later imprisoned for fraud over the deal. They were found to have used a fake wire transfer to dupe lenders into believing they had made a $23 million down payment on SunCruz so they could obtain a $60 million loan.
‘Big Tony’
Kidan had brought Gambino mobster Anthony “Big Tony” Moscatiello in on the deal. But when Boulis heard about the phony wire transfer, he tried to pull out. Prosecutors later argued Moscatiello had Boulis killed because the latter was trying to wrestle control back of the fleet.
Since Boulis’ death, the SunCruz VI has passed through a succession of owners and gone through several name changes before becoming the Blue Horizon, but it rarely sailed as a casino cruise ship for a more than a couple of months with each new owner.
Gambling expansion in Florida by the powerful Seminole tribe has made the business far less lucrative, and cruises to nowhere are no longer going anywhere.
