Once again, that was a estimate on gross wagers over the period of the investigation. In other words, how much money was bet. Same for the $2 billion in wagers that had been cited in the 2007 Lucchese bust in Jersey. And even then, all of these wagers are probably going through the same offshore wirerooms which are involved in several operations with different families. Not to mention the fact that when we're talking about how much money they "made," the net profits from bookmaking - as long as the books are balanced - are about 10% or so.



The Locascio crew ran two scams from 1996 until the time they were indicted in 2003 - phone cramming and internet scams advertising free trials for phone sex, online adult websites, etc. and then adding additional charges on the credit cards of millions of buyers. The total take was estimated to be upwards of $750 million over the 7 years. In short, while they made a lot of money, it was one of those one-off things. Not something that's still going every year.