A question for the forum...

I don't think Omaha had a traditional LCN Family
But 2 names that come to mind are Thomas Dennison and
A African American named William Crutchfield

It seemed like back in those days the Irish Americans
Had strongholds In the political machines of Kansas City ,Omaha
But I'm surprised Chicago or Kansas City didn't attempt
To place their mafia flags In those cities
Considering they had the same vices as so back East

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_J._Biase

Anthony Biase was an independent mobster from Omaha,Nebraska,he died in 1991. Anyway Civella wasnt interested to expand his territory because should have problems with the Outfit and the Milwaukee family while Vegas was an open city and can make more money in Vegas.

"Where the hell is Omaha?" Joe Valachi.

I was just there, I didn't see any.

There was definitely some activity. But by comparison they were a bleep on the criminal screen of Omaha

Isn't Omaha one of the places that they relocated Henry Hill when he was in the Witness Protection Program?

There's your answer.

https://www.americanmafia.com/cities/omaha.html

Meanwhile, the influence of Italians in Omaha’s underworld was growing. For decades, Italian immigrants had crowded into neighborhoods around the stockyards and switchyards of South Omaha. There had been some early incidents of Black Hand extortionism in these communities, and during the Prohibition era, much of the city’s bootleg liquor had been produced here; but by and large the Italians had always kept to themselves. That began to change in 1930, when Tom Dennison placed a Sicilian named Frank Calamia in charge of liquor syndicate operations on the South Side. Calamia’s influence outlived that of his mentor. From 1946 to 1951, he controlled the C&C Publishing Co., which, as the local outlet of the national race wire service, distributed racing results received from the mob-controlled Harmony News Service in Kansas City.

Although the Omaha underworld maintained close ties to cities such as Kansas City and Chicago, it seems to have enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy. It is still unclear whether the April 1953 murder of gambler Eddie McDermott in a downtown parking garage was ordered by out-of-town interests or the local boys. In their 1952 book, U.S.A. Confidential, authors Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer listed gambler Alex Marino as the local front man for the syndicate and café owner Bennie Barone as one of the top boys in the area. Barone also had close ties to Des Moines rackets boss Louis Fratto, who was a frequent visitor to Omaha. In 1958, Omaha Teamsters Union Local No. 10 was investigated by the Senate Rackets Committee after driving a rival union out of a contract with the Midwest Burlap Bag Company of Des Moines. It was later revealed that Fratto had been active in the negotiations that resulted in the factory signing the back-door contract with Local No. 10.

It is the name of Anthony J. Biase, however, that has been most often associated with the Mafia in Omaha. Biase was identified in Ed Reid’s 1969 book, The Grim Reapers, as the "leading Mafioso in Omaha," and was similarly referred to as the "head of the Mafia in Omaha" in former Kansas City Police Captain Robert Heinen’s memoir, Battle Behind the Badge. Biase was born in Omaha in 1908 or 1909. His record dated back to 1922 and included convictions for assault with intent to rob and possession of burglary tools. Biase and his brother Benny owned the Turf Cigar Store (later re-named The Owl Smoke Shop) on 16th Street, which, like many Omaha cigar stores, was a front for a bookmaking operation. He had connections to organized crime figures in Kansas City, Las Vegas and California, and reportedly to New York mob boss Vito Genovese as well, although this connection is a bit murkier. Reid notes that Biase was tied to Genovese through a California narcotics trafficker named Louis Fiano. According to author Jay Robert Nash, Biase became a Genovese ally in 1957 when Genovese made a move to extend his influence to the western states. Nash goes on to say that Biase became boss of the Omaha faction of the national crime syndicate after his associate, Anthony Marcella, went to prison. Marcella, a scion of the Kansas City mob, was convicted of narcotics violations in California in 1959 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In March 1960, Tony Biase was indicted by a federal grand jury on eight counts of narcotics violations. At that time, officials of the Narcotics Bureau named him as the major narcotics supplier in the Midwest. Evidence against him had been gathered by an undercover narcotics agent and Kenneth Bruce Sheetz, a Kansas City hoodlum who had sold narcotics for Biase. As soon as word got around that Sheetz had turned informant, a $5,000 contract was put out on him, allegedly at Biase’s request.

On June 20, 1960, Sheetz was ambushed and shot four times by two gunmen outside his Kansas City home. Although not expected to live, he managed to pull through and identify his attackers as Felix "Little Phil" Ferina and Tony "Tiger" Cardarella, both associates of Kansas City’s Civella crime family.

In December 1960, Biase was convicted of violating the Federal Narcotics Act and was sentenced to 15 years in Leavenworth federal prison. He was also convicted, along with Ferina and Cardarella, of conspiring to kill Ken Sheetz. On this charge, Ferina and Cardarella were sentenced to 10 years each and Biase was assessed five years, but a federal appellate court later reversed Biase’s conspiracy conviction, leaving him with only the 15-year sentence. He was paroled from Leavenworth in 1970, and although he apparently remained active in gambling, he was never in serious trouble again. His last arrest was in 1986, when he was fined for possession of gambling records. Otherwise, he lived quietly in his South Omaha neighborhood until his death on September 21, 1991.

In January 1974, the Omaha World-Herald reported that Omaha’s multimillion-dollar illegal bookie business was controlled by eight men. They were identified as: Joe Digilio, Ross "Soddy" DiMauro, Anthony Manzo, Clarence Matya, Sam "Peggy" Nocita, John Salanitro, and two men whose names were not released because police had been unable to make a case against them in recent years. One of these men was described as a 66-year-old south-central Omaha resident whose record had vanished from police files in 1965. After an arrest in July 1974, this man was identified as A.J. "Tony" Higgins, a longtime Omaha gambling figure. The other man was described as a 64-year-old pool hall owner. This mystery man was undoubtedly Max Abramson.

Russian-born Max Abramson, known in gambling circles as "The Little Giant," had long been a leader in local gambling. His record of gambling-related arrests dated back to the 1930s. A veteran prosecutor once referred to him as "the elder statesman of local bookies." Abramson, who ran a pool hall called The Rocket at 16th and Farnam, was a semi-independent bookie who occasionally had dealings with operations run by Ross DiMauro and John Salanitro. In December 1970, Abramson, along with a dozen of the nation’s biggest bookmakers, was indicted by the Justice Department in a 26-city gambling and racketeering conspiracy case that dragged on for several years. Eventually the indictments were thrown out because Attorney General John Mitchell had failed to sign the case’s wiretap orders.

Ross DiMauro was a high-volume bookmaker who also dabbled in real estate. In 1971, he received a three-year prison term for criminal contempt of court after refusing to answer questions of a federal grand jury. The sentence was later reduced to three years probation. The questions DiMauro had refused to answer had to do with his relationship with Chicago mob figure Ralph Pierce.

With a bookmaking business approaching $500,000 a week, John Salanitro was said to be the kingpin of one of the largest illegal gambling rings in the country. The son of an immigrant shoe repairman, Salanitro was orphaned at the age of 14 and had to go to work to support his sisters. His name began appearing in print in 1959 when he was arrested with Bennie Barone in a gambling raid on a downtown apartment. By 1973, his gambling operations extended to Des Moines, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver and Kansas City. Bookmakers from these cities relied heavily on Salanitro’s operation to accept layoff bets. Transcripts from a Colorado gambling case showed that Carol Jean Reeb, the girlfriend and future wife of Denver mobster Clarence "Chauncey" Smaldone, laid off $11,800 in bets with Salanitro during one week in November 1973. In 1971, Salanitro had served part of a one-year prison term for perjury after telling a grand jury that he did not know either Paul Villano or Clyde Smaldone, members of the Denver crime family.

In March 1975, Salanitro and 17 of his associates, including Max Abramson and Ross DiMauro, were indicted by a federal grand jury for participation in an illegal gambling conspiracy. During the investigation and subsequent hearings it was shown that Salanitro’s ring had conspired with public officials to obtain tip-offs on gambling raids. A municipal judge and an assistant city prosecutor were accused of helping the ring cover up their operations in exchange for alcoholic beverages, nightclub entertainment and automobiles. Although U.S. Attorney William Schaphorst was careful to say that the ring wasn’t linked to the Mafia or organized crime, the connections of Salanitro, DiMauro, and Abramson to top mob figures in other cities call this into serious doubt. If nothing else, as one city prosecutor later put it, "the number of people involved in this activity (local bookmaking) constitutes organized crime." One FBI organized crime expert called the Omaha operation "one of the slickest in the country."

On April 15, 1976, John Salanitro was found guilty of involvement in a gambling conspiracy and sentenced to 15 months in prison. He appealed his case, but it would never come back to court -- on July 24, 1976, he suffered a massive heart attack and died at the age of 44. In all, 18 men either pleaded or were found guilty of involvement in the gambling ring. All received prison time, except for Max Abramson, who received a $2,500 fine and probation.

After Max Abramson passed away in August 1981, Kansas City’s Civella crime family attempted to move in and fill the void left by the late gambling kingpin. Two Kansas City underworld figures, Patrick James O’Brien and John Anthony Costanza, were sent to Omaha to establish and oversee a bookmaking operation on behalf of the Civellas. They were assisted in Omaha by James "Barney" Bonofede, proprietor of Angie’s Restaurant, and bar owner Donald J. Quinn, who had been convicted in 1975 of trying to arrange a $10,000 bribe of a juror in a gambling trial. The ring handled nearly $500,000 in bets during the 1981 football season, with Costanza reporting directly back to Anthony "Tony Ripe" Civella in Kansas City, but it was knocked out of operation following a series of raids in November 1981. A major investigation by the FBI and Omaha law enforcement into the Kansas City connection led to the indictment of 11 people on federal gambling charges. In November 1982, O’Brien, Bonofede, Quinn and two other men pleaded guilty to operating an illegal gambling business and received sentences of up to two years in prison. Six others who were indicted with them pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. This case turned out to be one of the last federal gambling investigations in Omaha.

Illegal gambling seems to have fizzled somewhat when Omaha opened its city-sponsored keno parlors and Iowa legalized pari-mutuel wagering and riverboat casino gambling. In 1991, 100 years after Tom Dennison first arrived in the city, a company owned by I.B. "Izzy" Ziegman, a widely known local entertainment entrepreneur and the younger brother of the late Sam Ziegman, made an unsuccessful bid to be the sole operator of Omaha’s new keno parlors. The company’s gaming consultant was a self-described protégé of Eddie Barrick and Sam Ziegman -- former Omaha bookie and legendary Las Vegas casino pioneer Jackie Gaughan.

Today, police estimate that there are 20 to 25 large-volume bookmakers operating in Omaha, each pulling in about $30,000 a week in profits. These bookies are tied to each other and to organizations outside Omaha, especially in Kansas City, where many of them lay off their bets. Several of these individuals are the sons of old-time bookies who inherited their fathers’ business, but it’s unclear whether there is currently a "boss." In the past, wiretaps enabled the police to know who the local gambling kingpins were and how the hierarchy functioned. But due to a law passed by the stare legislature in 1988 that removed gambling from a list of crimes for which wiretaps could be obtained, police today aren’t even certain whether a gambling hierarchy exists.

"There probably is some kingpin in Omaha," said Sgt. Steve Clouse, head of the police department’s organized crime unit in a 1999 World-Herald story. "But we can’t determine that without the wiretap." Without the wiretap, it’s also hard for police to determine if any of Omaha’s top bookies are tied to organized crime. Maybe time will tell.

Good post Furio

"Hard to determine if any of these bookies are tied to organized crime."

How stupid are these agents?

There was indeed a Mafia presence in Omaha. Aside from a few others who operated there along with them, the four DiBiase brothers, better known as the "Biase" brothers, under the leadership of Anthony (Tony Biase) DiBiase, were most prominent. Tony had three younger brothers named Benjamin, Samuel, and Louis. Each was a devout hoodlum in his own right, but collectively they composed the most significant Italian underworld presence in Omaha, Nebraska.

Gambling, organized auto-theft rings, strong-arm, and narcotics were their prime rackets. They operated in tandem with Nick Civella's Kansas City "Outfit."

ButtonGuys just wrote a story profiling the Biases if anyone is interested in learning more about the Mafia in Nebraska.

www.thenewyorkmafia.com

There was no Family in Omaha Neb. There was some crime, and a few Italians were there, but nothing resembling a family, and nothing that lasted. As another person mentioned WITSEC used Omaha as a place to relocate people. Not just Henry Hill, but going back to 1970 when the program formed they sent informers who tesified there. I think if someone asked "Was there ever a Mafia presence on the Moon?" a few here and elsewhere would say yes, and try to make case for a mob family having operated there.

$3,441,417.53

$500,000 in 1970 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $3,441,417.53 today, an increase of $2,941,417.53 over 51 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.85% per year between 1970 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 588.28%

That is $13.6MM per Month
That is $163.2MM per Year

In 1976 the average income was $13,720.00
In 1976 The average cost of a home was $38,000.00

My guess is with this type of cash being generated that there were a decent presence of LCN,
And those "INDEPENDENTS" would be ripe for targeting...

Everyone else in the USA had to pay or was associated with or on record with

Seems to me like these guys were smart enough not to leave dead bodies in the street everywhere so they were able to operate "UNDERGROUND" for the most part.

Were any of them made?

I swear I read many years ago that KC's influence spread to Idaho. Wish I could remember if that were true.

There is no documentation of any of the DiBiase brothers or Benny Barone (another known Omaha hood) being made. But that doesn't mean they weren't. If anyone of them was, it was Tony DiBiase who was closely tied into key made members of the KC family and went on trial with them for narcotics traffic and murdering a potential trial witness.

You are overlooking this: "They were said to be making" Every news story greatly exaggerates the amounts taken in. Just read your own post, the amount of money is way out of line with what people had in those times.

The Biase beothers was like the Colacurcios in Seattle,just a criminals with an italian surname. The difference is that the Biases had ties with KC and Chicago.

The feds always inflate the #’s that is a fact.
That’s not the money they bring in that’s the amount of money that is bet.

They use that calculation to beef the up the #’s even more.

With that said we always accept the feds #’s on here because we have no way of knowing any better #’s.

So the feds #’s are accepted.

Otherwise we can question everything where would thy leave us?

Everything is debatable

If the fed indictment states the lottery lawyer scammed the winners out of $80MM
We know that’s probably not the real # however, we accept it.

Made or not these guys were all paying
You know how we know?

None of them were killed

The K.C. were the real deal
They weren’t going to take no for an answer

This wasn’t a voluntary situation where those bookie’s were given a choice
They paid or would have been killed.

That’s LCN in the 1970’s

They were close enough to the KC Family, and interacted with them in a significant enough way, for an educated hypothesis that the Biases were indeed at least Family "associates" of the Civella Family.

I just accidentally watched a video on you tube that stated the K.C. was the most corrupt city in America,