With me,its all down to how they look and how they act. You don't wanna work for people like Genovese, Capone, Giancana or Gotti, so here's my list:

Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo.
Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa. (Accardo Front Boss)
Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno.
Paul "Big Paul" Castellano.
Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo.
Frank "The Prime Minister" Costello.
Carlo "Don Carlo" Gambino.
Vincent "Chin" Gigante.
Thomas "Three Finger Brown" Lucchese.
Carmine "The Enforcer" Persico.
Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno. (Gigante Front Boss)


There will be more, but this is just the general pattern, if the Boss is quiet, then he is respected by the troops, unlike Amuso and Casso!

IF i had to choose one man to work with,it would be Meyer Lansky, the brains in the Mafia and a man you could trust.

Meyer Lansky is definately the best Jewish gangster there ever was.

Some would say he was the best of them all, Jew, Italian,

He made over $100million, that is a feat. He hardly ever lost his temper and kept going, even in Cuba when Castro took over and threw him out.

He is one of a kind. The other great Jewish Gangster were Abner "Longie" Zwillman.

And I know he is'nt Jewish, but Llewelyn "The Hump" Humphreys was also a great one, he was Welsh.

It seems that the "super gangsters" were mainly non Italian!

His personal fortune is a myth, didn't have the millions the press made him out to have. He was nearly broke when he died..

re: Meyer Lansky and his gangster life by Robert Lacey

You said Lansky had the brains. He must have made more than $50million at least.

ALL ABOARD.... NEXT STOP - $25 MILLION!

to hard to guess hard much he made..

Very true. Even though I think Lacey was lowballing the number, I don't think Lansky was worth the $300 million I've seen others estimate.

Lacey was questioning this in the book, Lansky always denied that he was worth so much, suppose he would.

Lanskys disabled son buddy was on Goverment support towards the end of his life, so Meyer must have had litrally nothing when he died..

Lansky was one of the very few gangsters to have a competent biographer--Robert Lacey. Lacey tracked down the $300M figure to Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Greenspun admitted that he'd heard the figure second-hand, and printed it because it was an impressive number. And so did every other writer. That's one of the reasons it's so tough to do research on gangsters.
Lacey says Lansky was worth $5-6 million at his peak--not chickenfeed then or now, but hardly the stuff of $300 million. And he did die nearly broke. Lacey says the reason that Lansky lived to 81, and died peacefully, was that he wasn't as rich or powerful as most people thought, and thus never attracted the jealousy that's so often fatal in the Mob. "He was the accountant, not the boss," says Lacey.

I agree. From my readings, Lansky played an important mob role, but as some of us have posted elsewhere, Lansky didn't have troops. The mob determined Lansky's importance to it and it, in turn, gave him influence and put him in a position to ask it for favors.

Except for Cuba, I don't see him as an investor such as mob members were. So, no investment, no return on investment. Thus, no wealth beyond what Lacey notes. Also, by the 70s, his heyday appeared to be over and he was under government suveillance. So, no opportunity for investment.

And even in Cuba, he wasn't a big investor. When Batista returned to power in 1952, he invited Lansky to run gaming because the previous operators were so crooked that tourists were staying away in droves, and Lansky had a reputation for giving the suckers a fair shake. But Lansky (and his brother Jake) came in on a salaried, not ownership, basis. Finally, he built the Havana Riviera with $11 million--$6M from Batista, the other $5M from an investment group that Lansky put together. Some of his own money was in the $5M, but not much--most of it was from others, like Santos Trafficante. The Riviera opened in 3/58 and made money from Day One. Then Castro closed it in 1/59. Sic transit Lansky and Cuba.

Curly Humphries/Jake Guzik
Deanie O'Bannion
Mickey Spillane

Costello