Tony Grosso: Numbers Kingpin
Pennsylvania's undisputed illegal
lottery kingpin, Anthony "Tony"
Grosso, 76, dominated Pittsburgh's
numbers-betting community for more
than 40 years and built a large illicit
gambling organization which grossed
more than $30 million annually. In
October 1986, he pled guilty to 68
counts of a federal grand jury presentment.
The charges alleged that
Grosso, of Mt. Lebanon, operated a
numbers organization with several
thousand writers scattered throughout
the Western Pennsylvania region.
Grosso was sentenced by a federal
judge in January 1987 to 14 years in
prison and later to 10 to 20 years in
prison by an Allegheny County Court
judge. During one hearing, Grosso
testified that he had not filed a tax
return since 1973. Grosso agreed to
testify against a State Police corporal
who had been charged by a state
grand jury with receiving more than
$100,000 over several years in bribes
and other illegal gratuities from
Grosso. The corporal, who committed
suicide shortly before he was
scheduled to stand trial, was in
charge of a State Police vice detail
operating in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Grosso has been arrested over 20
times between 1938 and the present.
Relatively few of those arrests have
resulted in incarceration. Prior to the
70
1980s, he served short jail terms for
gambling-related convictions in 1943,
1950, 1964, and in the mid-1970s.
Grosso, who never used a bank
account, testified that he did not
know how many individuals were in
his gambling operation because he
had established it in a pyramid fashion
with himself at the top. He said he
did not know the identity of "runners
and writers" near the bottom of the
pyramid, nor did they necessarily
know his identity. He said that his
operation had many telephone girls
who each made about $ 500 per week
and that each phone girl would have
10 to 20 writers "working the street."
Grosso paid his writers on a percentage
basis. Should a writer offer
500-to-one odds to a customer, the
writer would get 40 percent. A 600-
to-one odds bet would provide the
writer with 30 percent. On the average,
a writer who turned in about
$1,000 per week in business would
earn about $300 per week, tax free.
Grosso said his organization would
gross at least $400,000 weekly. His
annual income, estimated by the IRS,
was $1.5 million to $2.1 million.
Grosso apparently operated without
paying "direct" tribute to the Pittsburgh
LCN, primarily because of his
political contacts. Because of his
favorable affiliation with local political
and police officials, however, Grosso
was expected to do "favors" for the
LaRocca/Genovese Family-such as
providing information on an ongoing
investigation or an upcoming raid.
Grosso's incarceration, in turn, has
contributed to the F-~mily' s dominance
of illegal gambling in the Greater
Pittsburgh area. Today, the bulk of
Grosso's numbers business has been
taken over by Robert "Bobby I"
Iannelli; and two brothers, Adolph
"Junior" Williams and Salvatore "Sal"
Williams, all of Pittsburgh. Iannelli
and the Williams brothers are associates
of the LaRocca/Genovese LCN
Family.