Steubenville, OH

Who ran Steubenville and how much activity went down there? Cleveland? Pittsburgh? I watched a doc on Jimmy the Greek and it was saying how he got his start in gambling there.

Dino Crocetti was the boss. Then Jerry Lewis heard him singing in the shower. The rest is history.

thats funny

I think maybe Pittsburgh, but not sure. I worked with a hot little piece of tail who grew up in Steubenville and said that when she went to school in Pittsburgh, all her mobbed up had a lot of family there. But, I dunno. From what I've read, Cleveland and Pitt were always fighting over Youngstown. Maybe it was the same in Steubenville.

Yea, geographically Steubenville is a lot closer to Pittsburgh than Cleveland. But it seems Cleveland was the more powerful family. I'm sure Youngstown had a lot more activity than Steubenville though.

Now that I think back on it, maybe Cleveland. If not then Pittsburgh out of Canton with Pat. I know for sure Wheeling with Paul there. But I never heard much about Steubenville. Just my 2c's.

James Tripodi and Cosmo Quattrone ran Steubenville for the LaRocca family ages ago. Basically their job was to provide vice for the workers there back when it was a thriving industrial hub.

The city has lost population at a rate faster than any other in the country in the 80s and 90s. They're gonna start fracking there soon though and that will bring in 10,000 jobs and maybe restore the town to some of its past glory. So hooray for fracking I guess.

This article and map are helpful. Thanks to JCB for finding this. Scroll up top for the map.

Link here.

Hello Friend of Henry (My Antones Buddy) and Ivan:

The guy who still runs gambling in Steubenville/East Liverpool is Jack DeSarro, has controlled the illegal numbers and sports betting there for over 40 years. He was a very close friend of Mike "Cyrak" Serrecchio from Youngstown. He is in his 80's and still alive. Check out this link:

https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/16/16.F3d.1222.92-3872.html

Hi JCB...Hopefully all is well!

I forgot all about Jack. Can imagine he's still alive, let alone still "running things". However if you say so, then it must be so.

Needless to say: I met Jack for "coffee" in East Liverpool, with my special friend, several times.

Hi Friend of Henry,

Jack still gets his envelopes, however, I believe his son(s) have taken over most of the operations. My dad and I used to meet Jack when I was a kid over at Cyrak's Tavern on Oak Street in Youngstown, just before Cyrak closed the bar down to open Mr. A's eatery. Mike Serrecchio (aka Cyrak) and Jack DeSarro were very close...they both shared a common interest; They HATED Strollo, but even more so, Jeep Garono!!!

Steubenville was always under the control of Pittsburgh. Cleveland had part of Mahoning County and all of Trumbull, Pittsburgh had most of Mahoning County and everything south of Youngstown.

This is an old topic but I found this info about this place:

During this era, many stores in Steubenville were fronts for mob rackets; bookmaking, numbers, pool, illegal drinking, and illegal gambling rackets. Steel mill workers from Steubenville and nearby Youngstown, Ohio would frequent these stores after their shifts, spending their meager paychecks for this entertainment. Craps and Barboot, a Greek dice game, were the games of choice at these places. The gambling halls would hire "mechanics", specialists in manipulating the dice and cheating, to police their craps games. The mechanic would ward off undesirable customers, break winning streaks of lucky customers, and hustle those with lots of money to lose.

We never knew why our friends dad picked that town to move his family to, all we knew was after we visited the town, we called it Stupidsville. Nothing but cardboard tasting pizza, no such thing as a buttered roll and they talk funny like "the light bulb needs changed" or "the car needs fixed"

Who ran places in Ohio in the 1920s and 1930s sort of close to PGH like the Youngstown area and all the small towns near it, was that mainly black hand or LCN, or both together?

Did the mob in Steubenville and the larger Youngstown area consist mainly of people in the black hand, Sicilians involved in LCN, or both that combined and joined forces?

I do not know much at all about the black hand. Were members of that Sicilian, from Calabria, or from Naples/Cammora?