When the press and LE sources throw out numbers like $100 million dollars they're blowing smoke.
Hank Messick, a tabloid journalist, published a book on Meyer Lansky, calling him the most powerful organized crime figure and putting his worth at $300 million. Lansky's biographer, Robert Lacey, said Messick told him he never researched that figure, but published it because it was "big." Lacey estimated that Lansky was worth no more than $5-6 million at his peak, and died almost broke.
