The building is the first exhibit
The museum occupies downtown's former federal courthouse and post office — the room where the Kefauver Committee held its Las Vegas hearing on November 15, 1950 is its historic courtroom. The museum's own virtual tour tells the Vegas chapter from that room: Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo through Howard Hughes's arrival. It opened on February 14, 2012 — Valentine's Day, the anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, whose actual wall is among its artifacts (acquired, per the anniversary panel film, when a North Las Vegas homeowner offered it up by phone).
The visit, priced honestly
The visitor walkthrough calls it 'far bigger than it looks,' running Prohibition to the modern FBI: about $35 entry when filmed, less with a Go City pass, parking extra, interactive extras costing more. It also warns fairly that some exhibits — recreated execution displays and mob-hit photography among them — are graphic but skippable. The official 'About' film makes the museum's pitch in miniature: 'the story of the other people who built America,' from the producers behind the International Spy Museum.
Downstairs, and the present day
In The Underground, the basement speakeasy and working distillery, a distiller walks a tour group through moonshine made on-site behind glass — off the still at 140 proof, cut to 100 for tasting. Prohibition history you can drink. And the newest frontier: the Digital Underworld exhibit, profiled with its content developer — cybercrime framed as modern organized crime, told through physical artifacts to the present day. Bosses and button men upstairs; botnets down the hall. The museum earns its 'one of the city's most fascinating attractions' billing by refusing to stop in 1960.
Sources: the six videos on this page — a visitor walkthrough, the museum's virtual tour, its 10th-anniversary panel, its official introduction, an Underground distillery tour, and a cybercrime-exhibit profile — summarized from their entries in our catalog.