Many people on these boards, especially younger people, ask questions or make statements about Mob life that are often myths--not realities. I'd like to start a thread that helps clear up the myths. I'll post occasionally, and ask you to post your own ideas, thoughts, explanations. Here's the first:

BEING "MADE" IN THE MOB IS DANGEROUS TO LIFE AND LIBERTY

Many younger people believe that getting "made" in the Mafia is the ultimate glory. Nothing could be further from the truth: Getting "made" is just about the worst thing that could happen to anyone:

First you have to serve an "apprenticeship," during which you'll have to kiss the asses of every member of the crew you hope to join, and turn over most of your earnings to a boss who thinks you're lower than whale s**t. If you're "lucky," the apprenticeship will last for a decade or less. By that time, you'll have convinced the boss that you're dumb and compliant enough to be "honored" by being made.

So, you'll probably be assigned to kill someone you don't know, for a reason that's not explained to you; and take all the risk on yourself with no reward. If you manage to whack the guy without being killed, injured or arrested, your "reward" will be the famous "induction ceremony"--the fingers pricked so that your blood runs together with the Don's (just hope he doesn't have AIDS or some other STD); the burning saint's card, the oath, the kisses on the cheek, etc. Now you've got it made, right?

Wrong! Your troubles have just begun:
You'll be assigned to a crew chief whose purpose in life is to squeeze you dry. You'll be given a "living"--a sports betting operation, some numbers, drugs or loan shark action. But since the Mob is a pyramid scheme, your crew chief will give you a "nut"--an amount that you must kick back to him each week, whether or not your rackets generate enough profit to cover it. He'll set the amount so high that you'll have no time or opportunity to do anything on your own except work for him. And if you fail to meet the weekly nut, he'll hit you with the same "vig" that he charges his loan shark victims--six percent per week.

Oh, and let's not forget your new "brothers" in the Mafia--the guys who kissed you on the cheek when you got made, and now refer to you as "a friend of ours." Every one of them has contacts in law enforcement that they feed info to in return for being left alone to pursue their own rackets. As soon as your ceremony was completed, they were on the phone to their favorite cops, informing them of the newest member of the Mob. Suddenly you're going to get more attention from law enforcement personnel than a visiting head of state. Your "brothers" will see you as insurance for them when they commit high profile crimes: they'll tip off their police pals that you did the dirty deeds. And, if you manage to survive all of that, the Don'll evntually get nailed on a RICO charge, and he'll rat out you and your other "brothers" in return for a free pass to the Witness Protection Program.

"Honored Society"? You'd be better off washing dishes for a living.

Excellent post Turnbull. Well said.

And if I might add something, when you get made, you may not be lucky enough to be ordered to kill someone that you don't know. Many times, to test one's loyalty, the boss will order you to kill someone that you've grown very close to in the life, even if he's your best friend!

Not a way that I would want to live.

There's no glory in that life whatsoever.


Don Cardi

Exactly. When I first watched Goodfellas I became really intrested in the mafia, I admitedly thought WOW what a great life. After more research I found out that you can not trust anybody or rely on your 'friends'. Great thread TB!

Well, with washing dishes you don't have to worry about coming clean.

Good post, TB!

Ditto!

Great topic and thread.

DonPacino, I must commend you for your understanding and your maturity in realizing that the mob life is not all it's cracked up to be and that these people are not the kind of people that anyone should ever look up too.

It's very easy, especially for a young man your age, to become infatuated with the mob because of the way that hollywood glamorizes them and uses their magic to make you root for them. And there's nothing wrong in getting caught up in the moment or with the character that is being portrayed on the big screen. As long as when those credits roll, one realizes that it's not as glorious as it's made out to be in the movies.

Obviously we are all interested in mob movies and learning about real life mobsters, or we wouldn't be talking here. And being interested in the mob, it's people and how it operates is not a bad thing in itself. As a matter of fact it's very intruiging.

But as long as that interest stays at a level where it's only an interest in learning things and wanting to understand why they do the things that they do and operate the way that they do, and stops at that.

I am gald to see that a young man such as yourself has the mentality that you do and can differenciate the mobster life that's portrayed in the movies from the mobster life of the real world.


Don Cardi

What is a RICO charge?

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations

Changed the Mafia World,More to Follow....Turnbull your on.

Thankyou DC. I am very glad to hear your impression of me. I do get caught up in the portrayal of a character in a movie, but I know as soon as those credits roll the movies over. My mum hates me watching those films nut I have loads of them! But thankyou DC for you're kind words and I hope to be on these bords discussing mob films, and the mob itself for many years to come.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) was passed by Congress to eradicate organized crime in the United States. It means that it is unlawful for anyone to be associated with any organization engaged in the practice of racketeering activities.


In order for the governemnt to charge someone with RICO, it has to show a pattern of racketeering activity and requires at least two acts of racketeering activity committed within ten years of each other. The government must show that the racketeering predicates are related, and that they amount to or pose a threat of continued criminal activity.

If the government arrests a mobster, who is part of a mob family, for for comitting a crime, under the RICO act they can attempt to charge the bosses in that family with being a part of the conspiracy to the crime committed, even if those bosses physically did not commit the actual crime themselves. If the government can show that the person who committed the crime belongs to a mob family and committed that crime on behalf of the organization/family itself, then they can charge all those in the chain of command under the RICO act.

RICO changed the focus from prosecuting individual criminals to prosecuting individuals who committed crimes which benefited corrupt organizations such as crime families.




Don Cardi

Just to add to what DC said, if I remember correctly, the law was written but for what 5 or 10 years it was never used? It seemed like a law that would have appeared to be doing a lot against organized crime but prosecutors didn't know how to use it, so it was just laying around on the book for years before ever being used.

I believe that the firt use of the RICO act was against a mobster named Frank "Funzi" Tieri back in the early 80's.


And if I'm not mistake, former U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani was one of the first to use the RICO act against a non mobbed up businessman who was a junk bond trader and schemer named Michael Milkin. He was charged with Racketeering and fraud. First Ivan Boesky, a Wall Street mogual, was arrested for insider trading. He turned state's evidence and ratted on several of his cohorts including Michael Milkin. And the RICO act was used in prosecuting all those who Boesky ratted on.


Don Cardi

All true about RICO, guys.
The real impact of RICO is that, before it was passed, law enforcement had to catch a Mob guy in the act of committing a crime, and get more than one witness to it. RICO made it a crime, punishable by double-digit sentences, to be part of a "criminal conspiracy." "Conspiracy" is very important:" no corroborating witness is required for the government to obtain a conviction. And RICO also eased the burden of proof by simply requiring law enforcement to show that the accused was part of a "pattern" of crimes.
"Corrupt organization" is also very important. That means that if the Mob guy was influencing a labor union (a favorite of Mobs), the union could be characterized as a "corrupt organization."
Two other very important aspects of RICO:
1. A guy who was victimized by the Mob could be considered part of a "corrupt organization" because he "cooperated" with the Mob even though he was forced. So, if you were a degenerate gambler who was into a Mob loan shark for a lot of money that you couldn't pay back; and the Mob guy forced you to "bust out" your business to pay him back; then you could be charged under RICO because your busting out of your business constituted a "corrupt organization." Faced with a double digit sentence, you'd have a big incentive to cooperate with law enforcement against the Mob guy.
2. RICO for the first time specified iron-clad rules for obtaining phone taps and other forms of electronic surveillance that would stand up as evidence in any court of law. Previously, a lot of "bugs" were thrown out by judges as being illegal. Not after RICO, though.
And, yes DMC and DC: it's true that RICO languished for 10 years before Rudy Giuliani, as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, finally figured out how to use it. He invited Robert Blakely, the lawyer who wrote RICO, to daily brief his investigators and assistant prosecutors on how the law could work. Giuliani, a great fan of the GF Trilogy, called Blakely, "my consigliere." After his huge success in the famous Commission case, prosecutors all over the country figured out that they could heap glory on themselves by using RICO to prosecute the Mob.
The best source on RICO and how it works is Selwyn Raab's "The Five Families," IMO the best Mob book of the last 10 years.

This is a necessary and valuable thread.

Turnbull, thank you for starting it off.

For what it's worth, I feel it would be a good idea to keep this near the top of the threads in this forum, and it should be required reading whenever Don Malta opens the books to new GangsterBB members.

Signor V.

Good idea Vitelli. It is now on the top of this thread.



Don Cardi

For that alone, he deserves to be President of the United States!




Don Cardi

Thanks for the swell reception, guys! Here’s another entry:

DOES THE COMMISSION CONTROL ORGANIZED CRIME?

No. Contrary to what many people believe, the Commission does not adjudicate inter- or intra-family disputes, divvy up territories, sanction murders, or maintain a common treasury or army to punish renegades or law enforcement foes (like Joe Pistone). But Mafia families do cooperate when it serves their purposes:

The only thing Mob families have in common are greed, and distrust of their fellow Mobsters. But they try to avoid wars, which are wasteful and destructive, and they do agree on broad arrangements that suit them. Most often the arrangements are made between families, not at Commission meetings. And they are made only by mutual agreement. Dons are highly individualistic, and the Commission cannot force any family to do its bidding. Or, as Mario Puzo noted in the GF novel: Dons shared two characteristics--they were good listeners, and no one could bend their will unless they were persuaded by utmost reasonableness. Here's a little history:

Charlie Luciano formed the Commission after the Castellemmarese War of 1930-31. His vision of the Commission was not as a “governing body” for organized crime that would manage Mob affairs or even allocate territories. Rather, he saw the Commission as a kind of corporate Board of Directors that would meet occasionally to allow the rugged individuals to discuss broad matters of interest to all.

Luciano had his own agenda: Though born in Sicily, he was a thoroughly American businessman, and was dedicated to destroying the “Moustache Pete” mentality that led to the war and to Salvatore Maranzano declaring himself capo di tutti capi. He also saw that, with Prohibition’s days numbered, new opportunities would emerge that families could share in if they learned to cooperate. Luciano also recognized that help should be welcomed from any useful sources, including non-Sicilians and even non-Italians. That’s why he nominated Al Capone as chairman of the Commission, and included Jews like Meyer Lansky, Lepke Bucholter, Dutch Shultz and Bugsy Siegel in Commission meetings.

His forceful personality drove the Commission, but neither he nor the Commission as a whole ever micromanaged families’ affairs. They stuck with broad strokes. A representative accomplishment was to get agreement that Dutch Shultz’s plan to whack New York special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey was a threat to all Commission members, and to whack Shultz. After his imprisonment and exile to Italy, Luciano convened an important Commission meeting in Havana in 1946, at which Siegel’s fate was sealed and a general direction set for the future of Nevada gaming. This, too, was a broad stroke: the Commission didn’t divvy up territory, it simply ruled that no single family owned Vegas. What’s more, Jewish gangsters, not Mafiosi, dominated Vegas in the immediate postwar era.

The Commission declined after Luciano was run out of Cuba. Meetings were held every 18-24 months, and were usually dominated by an individual Don’s personal agenda. For example, the famously aborted Apalachin NY meeting of 1957 was called by Vito Genovese to bless drug trafficking, endorse his protégé Carlo Gambino as Albert Anastasia’s successor, and to anoint Don Vitone as de facto capo di tutti capi. But it was doomed to fail even before police busted it up because Joe Bonanno had recently cut a huge drug deal with Luciano in Sicily, and boycotted the meeting; and because Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky were already plotting against Genovese.

The Commission made a grandstand play in the early Sixties when a plot by Bonanno and his ally Joe Magliocco to whack Tommy Luchese and Gambino was uncovered. The Commission forced Magliocco to resign his Donship in favor of Joe Columbo (who betrayed the plot). Magliocco was seriously ill with heart disease and was ready to quit. But when Bonanno refused to appear before them, the Commission ordered him to step down and appointed Gaspar DiGregorio as his successor. A war ensued that not only wrecked the Bonannos, but also weakened the Commission, which failed to impose its will on a member family.

The “Banana War” was in effect the Commission’s last gasp. They met only sporadically after that. Paul Castellano called a meeting after Carlo Gambino appointed him his successor. Castellano recognized that he was not the man Gambino was; and with the Gambinos as the largest and most geographically powerful family in New York, he was looking for agreement to maintain the territorial status quo. He also wanted to placate his powerful underboss, Neil Dellacroce, and those Dons who favored “Mr. Neil” over Big Paul. John Gotti didn’t ask Commission approval to whack Castellano—and got away with it.

Mafia families did cooperate with each other during this period, and still do. Some rackets, like garbage hauling, concrete contracting and the former Fulton Fish Market, were and are big enough that all families share in them. Since their neighborhood operations abut each other, they often meet to delimit territories. But none of this involves the Commission.

Um, err.....what Mafia? Who said anything about the Mafia? There is no mafia. The mafia doesn't exist.

It's a myth.

(Nice thread, TB. Even though I have NO idea what you mean by this 'mafia' thing. )

Excellent thread guys. I would have weighed in earlier but there's a cable line down on my block and I'm without internet service for the time being. I'm actually in a Barnes And Noble with my laptop right now.

I'm glad to see that some of the younger guys here are smart enough to not be impressed by "the life". I have to admit, that as a younger guy, it impressed the hell out of me and believe me, as our friend Turnbull said, you truly are better off washing dishes. But you live and learn, acually you're very lucky if you live and learn.

Anyway, as far as RICO, listen to TB and DC. I have little to add other that the fact that it actually sprang from the McClellan hearings of the the late 1950's. It's roots being the Landrum-Griffin Act, kind of a working man's bill of rights, formed to protect union members from corrupt union officials.
However, union lobbyists quickly knocked it down. A furious John McClellan bit back by drafting the now famous RICO Act of 1970.

As stated earlier, it sat on the shelf, largely unused, until the Reagan administration and a gung-ho prosecutor by the name of Rudy Giuliani put it to use in the mid 1980's.

It was truly the beginning of the end for the mob as we'd come to know it.

I got my own family, pizzaboy.

I think this thread earned you your Button now as well

Here’s another in the series (BTW: please feel free to post your own myths vs. realities):

DOES THE MAFIA TAKE CARE OF “STANDUP GUYS”?
Nope. Not anymore--if they ever did...

The myth that the Mafia will support a made guy and his family if he honors omerta was expressed quaintly in the GF novel. Puzo wrote that a man sent to prison “had only to keep his mouth shut and his wife and children would be cared for…a warm welcome would be his when he left prison…a party…the best food and wine…all his friends and relatives gathered to rejoice in his freedom…perhaps even the Don himself would drop by to pay his respects to such a stalwart…”

This tale may have had some basis before World War II, when Mob economics were simpler. Soldiers did the grunt work that was most likely to expose them to arrest (the higher-ups got the white collar rackets). In the days before investigative journalism and instant electronic news media, it was far easier for the Mob to bribe politicians, judges and law enforcement—and for them to accept the bribes without detection. Often, Mob soldiers were caught in so-called “victimless” crimes, such as gambling, prostitution and illicit alcohol. And people hurt or killed in Mob shakedowns and violence were those that society didn’t care about—degenerate gamblers, drug addicts, crooked labor leaders, ethnic minorities, etc. So it was easy for a soldier who actually got arrested and convicted to receive a light sentence, or have a major charge reduced to a minor one. In those hard economic times, a soldier didn’t live a lot better than a regular working stiff, so his financial needs were small, and the payout to his family was small, too. The soldier needed his job, and it was in his interest to keep his mouth shut, suck up the light sentence, and go back to work after prison. And there was no Witness Protection Program to shelter him.

But the myth pales before the reality that today’s Mafia is an empire based on greed. Its financial structure is a pyramid scheme in which money flows upward to the Don, not downward to soldiers. A Don takes the attitude that the soldier knew the risks when he signed on. If he gets caught, it’s his problem. In today’s every-man-for-himself Mafia, the assumption is that he’ll turn rat anyway. So the imperative for the Don is to protect himself through “buffers,” not to buy silence by supporting the soldier and his family, which the Don would view as a sign of weakness on his part—in effect, setting himself up for potential blackmail.

John Gotti’s career provides real-life examples. Gotti had been in Carmine Fatico’s Gambino Family crew for about 12 years when he was arrested in 1968 for hijacking. He got a three-year sentence—and no help from the Gambinos. His family was forced onto the welfare rolls, and his wife almost divorced him. When he got out, he was made acting crew chief. But when he was arrested in 1974 after killing James McBratney, who had kidnapped and murdered Gambino’s nephew, he got no help directly from his Don. Instead, Gambino passed the hat around to his capos and crew chiefs. They reluctantly coughed up enough money to hire Roy Cohn, one of New York’s highest-powered lawyers, who got the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter. Gotti didn’t get formally “made” until he got out of prison four years later.

And that’s how Gambino, the most powerful Don, in the most powerful family in the US, treated a “standup guy” who later became the Don. Later, Gotti tried to get Sammy Da Bull to take the rap for the Castellano murder—which stimulated Da Bull to rat Gotti out.

There’s not only no honor among thieves, there’s no loyalty, either.

Another great post TB.

They've created more than one rat by propagating the notion that the families of imprisoned wiseguys would be taken care of while the wiseguy is in prison.

The disillusioned footsoldier, upon his release from prison, will often become an informant out of revenge.

TB, is the irish mafia the same?

Sorry, I don't know enough about them to answer, DP. But "no honor among thieves" isn't an exclusive Italian Mafia characteristic.

I would say that anyone or group that murders for fun and profit has the same level of morality as onyone else or any other group that murders for fun and profit.

It's interesting that the HBO series "Rome" has current episodes that illustrate the gangs of Rome in the B.C. era. Somethings about people never change.

During the 80's and 90's, every high profile mobster in Philadelphia were getting nailed by RICO. Nicky Scarfo (In a Super Max Prison will be out in 2033...he'll be 104), Ralph Natale (6 life sentences), Skinny Joy Merlino (current Boss, out in four years), Steven Mazzone (current Underboss out in '08), and George Borgesi (current Consigliere out in 2012).

As for the mob life...Hollywood makes these guys look somewhat regular people with a dark secret. In truth...their scumbags, guys you don't want to be around, big time low-lifes.

That prety much sums it up BDuff, good job.

As far as Philadelphia, I really think the currently imprisoned administration will all be re-indicted before their possible release dates. The government seems to have a hard on, in particular, for Merlino.

They put him away last time, largely on the testimony of former cop-turned wiseguy-turned rat, Ron Previte. The evidence wasn't very strong and they still got their conviction.

Sidebar about Previte - The main reason he turned informant ?

FBI wiretaps had him on tape bad mouthing the Genovese Family and Vincent Gigante, in particular. He knew that when the tapes became public, he wouldn't be long for this world.

"Sidebar about Previte - The main reason he turned informant ?

FBI wiretaps had him on tape bad mouthing the Genovese Family and Vincent Gigante, in particular. He knew that when the tapes became public, he wouldn't be long for this world. "

Very interesting, never knew that. You're right about the current Philadelphia hierarchy, they'll never get out. The FBI knows once those three (Merlino, Borgesi, and Mazzone) get out the Bruno Family will be back and up to old things. Philadelphia has enough on its plate as it is (65 murders so far this year) and doesn't need a Mafia rebirth taking place. The Philadelphia Faction had it's chance in the early 80s to become very powerful family, like a New York family, because of thier location near Atlantic City. But over 37 murders, greed, and paranoia left the family in shambles by '89.

It's not just Philadelphia, Scarfo just followed suit.

He and Gotti were cut from the same cloth, both very flashy and megalomaniacal. Throw in greed, and soldiers on everything from cocaine to steroids. Add in government surveillance, technology, and the newly enforced RICO law, and it was the beginning of the end for everyone, not just the Philadelphia family.

What's ironic about Philly was that the family was so low key and old school under Angelo Bruno, who much like Paul Castellano, didn't really believe that his capos posed that big a threat.

Boy, were they wrong.

A shotgun blast to the back of the head would suggest that. I live in Philadelphia and have always been interested in the Mafia history of it. As of now, the Irish control most of the narcotics, loansharking, etc. They're called the K&A Gang if you're not familiar with them. Pretty tough guys, Scarfo used them for hitmen for some hits and never tried to upset them.

K&A stands for Kennsington & Alleghaeny. In 2002 a mobster named Ray Matorano, upon his release from prison, had a plan to take over the Philadelphia Mafia. He requested backing from the Five New York Families. The K&A Gang got wind of this and he was killed on the way to his docotr's office. Motorano planned to finally rid Philly of K&A. Surprisingly, the Mafia Commission did nothing about the hit, since Philly has been a mess for quite some time.

As for Scarfo, the guy was a Psychopath. As a Boss he would go out with his guys on hits because he enjoyed the experience. Apparently during a hit, he grabbed a gun from a soldier started shooting the target and shouted, "I love killing people".

Yeah, I read that story about Scarfo in one of George Anastasia's books. He's to Philly what Capeci is to New York.

Scarfo reaching out to the Irish gang parallels Big Paul reaching out to the Westies in the early 80s.

Talk about crazy ? Read THE WESTIES by T.J. English, it's one of the great true crime books ever written.

The Westies was a fantastic book, and George Anatasia (spelling?) is a great mob author. A good Irish mob book is "Paddywhacked", chronicals the history of the Irish, some great stuff of Whitey Bulger, Mad Dog Coll, and Owney Madden.

They used to call Albert Anasasia "the Mad Hatter." Albert A was a model of sanity and reason compared with Scarfo--and Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso.

"Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso"

Who was he? Not familiar with the name....

Casso was once the underboss to Victor Amuso of the Luchesse family. He got the nickname "Gaspipe" because he used to use a piece of pipe to threaten his victims.

Casso & Vincent "The Chin" Gigante were the ones who conspired to have John Gotti killed for not getting "commission approval" for killing Paul Castellano by having a bomb placed under a car that Gotti was supposed to get into. (Whether or not that was the real reason for their conspiring to kill Gotti is another story and in my opinion it probably wasn't). But Gotti never got into that car and instead his underboss, Frank DeCicco, who did get into that car, was killed.

After Amuso was sent to prison in 1991, it was alledged that Casso became the acting boss of the family. During this crackdown on the mob, several gangsters began to turn rat, and Casso was named in several indictments and one of them included the charge of murder. So Casso went on the lam for several years. And when he was finally caught, he himself turned rat and agreed to testified on behalf of the federal government and was placed into the witness protection program. It turned out the the government felt that a lot of what Casso had told them was BS and would never stand up in a court of law. So Casso was removed from the witness protection program and sent back to prison where he is serving a life sentence.

At the time of his going into the witness protection program, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso tried to convince the government that two cops named Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa were dirty cops working for the mob, but the government felt that he was BSing them and would not be a believable witness in a court of law.

Ironically a few years ago the same two cops, Eppolito and Caracappa, were aressted and convicted for their involvment with organized crime.


Don Cardi

Theres a few chapters on "Gaspipe" in the Five Familes very interesting read

Thanks Don Cardi, I remember hearing about those two dirty cops in news a while ago. Pretty interesting stuff, surprised Casso wasn't whacked in jail.

This has been mentioned many times but i think both or one of the dirty cops had a small role in Goodfellas

Casso was so unpredictable that one prosecutor likened the idea of using him on the stand to using Charles Manson as a defense witness.

It's ironic that just about everything he said about the "mob cops" turned out to be true.

This here is just another example of a supposed tough guy mob boss living under the rules of la cosa nostra. When robbing, stealing and shaking down the average person, he had no fear. This was a guy who supposedly upheld a "commission rule" that a mob boss cannot be killed without prior approval and had no problem in conspiring to kill that person who broke that supposed rule. But when he himself finally faced murder charges and the possibility of getting wacked, he sang like a bird and ratted out anyone and everyone that he could. Now for his own selfish reasons, he threw every supposed mob rule that he ever advocated throughout his criminal life, right out the window!


Don Cardi

A recent book, "The Brotherhoods," by Guy Lawson and William Oldham, although not nearly as good as Selwyn Raab's "The Five Families," does provide a bit more detail about Gaspipe Casso's lunacy, including insane stunts he tried to pull off in prison. Louis Eppolito, one of the two crooked detectives who are the nominal subjects of this book, appeared in "Goodfellas" in a bit part as "Fat Andy," one of the guys Henry introduced in Sonny's restaurant near the beginning (Eppolito's one line was, "Howya doin', guy?").
DC, another story I read about Casso's nickname was that his father had a neighborhood racket of diverting gas pipes from paying customers to others so that they wouldn't have to pay. This story is too ridiculous to believe.

What about the myth of Lansky as this all powerful figure?
How did it start and why does it persist?

Is Hank Messick responsible?

Was Lansky himself partly responsible?
He and Luciano both started to tell tall tales when they
thought writing memoirs would give them some much needed income.

You hit on a good point about Lansky. As some of us here have often posted, mob figures aren't the types to leave their collected papers to colleges and universities so that people like us can study them. Most of what we get about them comes from newspaper accounts whose accuracy was sketchy to begin with, and often highly sensationalized. The few mob biographies published tend to run with the sensationalized stuff--and even one error gets repeated dozens of times.
In Lansky's case, he was reputed to be "the richest gangster who ever lived...worth $300 million." But Lansky was one of the very few gangsters to have a competent biographer. Robert Lacey, his biographer ("Little Man - Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life," a wonderful book!) tracked down the $300 million figure to Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, who admitted he heard it second-hand and printed it because it was a big, impressive figure--and it was picked up dozens of times. Lacey said that, at most, Lansky was worth between $5 and $6 million--not chickenfeed, but hardly the stuff of $300 million. The reason that Lansky lived stp 81 and died peacefully, says Lacey, was that "he was the accountant--never the boss." He never acquired the wealth and power that so often lead to jealousy and murder in the Mob.

lacey maintained that Lansky was worth considerably less than that. Lansky lost everything when Castro closed the casinos. What money he did have, he left to take care of his son Buddy.
The daughter blew that money. Jacob "Yiddy Bloom" Blumenfeld payed all of Buddy's hospital bills that first year after Lansky's death.

The "Bigger Than US Steel" remark came when Lansky repeated what he'd just seen on the David Susskind show.

Lacey said Lansky was worth $5-6M at his peak. He spent his last $50k paying for his son's (unsuccessful) operation.
Lansky did not "lose everything" when Castro nationalized the Havana Riviera and the other casinos. Lansky and a group of his investors put up $5 million, along with Batista's $6 million, to build the hotel. Most of the $5 million was put up by Lansky's partners, not him. He later prospered in Bahamas gambling.

I don't have the book in front of me but I seem to remember he put up 3 million for the Havana casino.
When he came back to the states, he'd lost most of his money.
He'd lost most of his nest egg, Carpet joints were no longer tolerated like they had been in the past and he was too well known to prosper in that business.
Lacey's point in that book was that Lansky had been successful in the Jukebox business(Wurlitzer yanked the distributership
away from him because of his rep)he had famous friends and he was as he said at the Kefauver hearings, a "Gambler."
He was not however, this all powerful mob boss.

The stories about Ben Siegel's murder are a good example
of the Lansky myth.
If anyone had Siegel killed, it was Dave Berman, Gus greenbaum,
Doc Stacher and Moe Sedway.

Here's another "myth vs. reality" entry--a rework of something I posted quite a while ago:

OF COURSE The Mob deals drugs--but don't get caught!

A durable myth of the Mafia is that that they "ban" drug trafficking, and decree the "death penalty" for dealers. Wrong! The Mafia has been dealing drugs since Day One. Don Vito Cascio Ferro came to NYC in the early years of the last century in part to establish a drugs pipeline between Europe and the US. Charlie Luciano dealt drugs as a young man, and is reputed to have ratted out a partner in return for getting a pass from the cops. Joe Bonanno's "vacation" in Italy in 1957 was really a meeting with Luciano and some Sicilians to make Bonanno the top drugs guy in America. The aborted Apalachin NY meeting that year was, in part, an attempt by Vito Genovese to outflank Bonanno as the top drugs guy. He and Joe Valachi went to prison on drug charges. John Gotti was the top earner in Neil Dellacroce's empire becauase he and his crew dealt drugs...and on and on.

Drug-dealing puts Mafia bosses in a quandary: They know that heavy penalties are a threat to them. But they love the money that drugs bring in. They also know that a “ban” on drug trafficking in their families would be unenforceable—there is too much money and greed to stop it. They’d be in the position of the Federal Government during Prohibition: passing a law that nobody obeyed and everyone disrespected—and a Mafia boss can’t afford any disrespect. They wouldn’t be able to effectively police their families: how could they know everything that every street guy was doing every hour of every day? They might be in the position of having to kill the wrong guy, or worse (from their viewpoint), a good earner. Finally, a real “ban” would simply drive the trafficking totally underground—meaning that they wouldn’t get their cut.

So the Mafia Dons fall back on the common denominator of Mob life: hypocrisy. They declare a "ban" on anyone caught selling drugs, with a death penalty for violators--and promptly look the other way. They figure that the threat will discourage the weaker soldiers, who are more likely to get caught. The more capable, ambitious guys are be willing to take the risks—and are less likely to get caught. The money continues to flow upward, which is all the bosses care about.

Now let’s look at how this might work in real life:

Vinny is an up-and-coming made guy in a NY family that officially “bans” drug trafficking. He’s a good earner, so he’s been given a slice of territory in Spanish Harlem, where he has some gambling, sports betting and loan shark action. One day, Jose, a neighborhood guy who’s an occasional borrower, asks Vinny to lend him $8k for two weeks. Whoa, says Vinny, that’s a lot—what do I get as surety for my loan (other than your kneecaps)? Not to worry, says Jose: I know a guy who knows a guy who’s a crewman on a freighter coming to NY from Lebanon. He’s bringing in a kilo of heroin. By the time we finish cutting the stuff and selling it, we’ll make $80k. Vinny says yes. Two weeks later, Jose (looking real dapper in new threads and gold chains) pays him his $8k plus $960 vig (6%/week for two weeks). Technically, Vinny didn’t violate the Family’s ban on drug dealing—he didn’t sell drugs. But he financed a drug deal that put a key of H on the street.

Like every other Mob guy, Vinny’s greedy: why should he make only $960 on a deal that netted a nobody like Jose more than $70k? Jose comes to him a month later and says he wants to borrow $40k because the sailor’s coming in again, this time with five keys of H. Vinny says that, for such a big loan, he’ll have to meet the guy. He tells Jose to bring the sailor, and his five keys, to a Mobbed-up bar near the waterfront. As soon as they meet, Vinny pushes Jose aside and tells the guy that he’ll buy the five keys, directly. He tells him he wants a “volume discount”: Since he’s buying such a big quantity, he’ll pay $5k per key, not the $8k that Jose was going to pay. The sailor starts to protest but Vinny replies: “Hey, you’re still makin’ a pile of money on s**t that didn’t cost you more’n a coupla grand in Syria or wherever you got it. You don’t like it, you can leave—feet first.” The guy catches the drift, takes Vinny’s $25k and hands over the five kilos of heroin. Vinny smiles: “Hey, I’ll take all the s**t you wanna bring in, anytime you come to NY. Just let Jose know when you’re gonna be here.”

Jose’s been too scared to say anything, so Vinny throws him a bone. He puts his arm around him and says, “Hey, ya done good tonite, Jose. I’m gonna let you have that H. It’ll cost you $20k per key—that’s my fee for hosting the sitdown and for protection. Don’t worry about sellin’ it—if the s**t’s as good as you said, you can cut it down more.” Where’s Jose going to get $20k/kilo? He can borrow it from Vinny! Now Vinny’s got two sources of profit: he quadrupled what he paid for the heroin—and he’s getting vig from the guy he cheated. He could make even more if he sold it on the street, but Vinny’s too smart to take that risk, and too busy to spend his time mixing milk sugar with the drug and selling dime bags to a bunch of lowlifes. He’ll let Jose do it.

Now, Jose’s really got to hustle to make his payments to Vinny. So he recruits some members of a local street gang to sell the dime bags. But those guys are ruthless—they’re not going to settle for making a dollar on every dime bag. Their leader kills Jose, takes the remaining dime bags, cuts them further, and sells them. This is just what Vinny was expecting. He lets a couple of weeks go by, then grabs the gang leader off the street. Vinny tells the gang-banger forcefully that he assumed Jose’s debt when he appropriated Jose’s stash—and he’s now two weeks behind in the vig. He smacks him around to reinforce his point. Then he smiles: “You can make up the vig, and make yourself more money, if you buy the rest of the s**t and distribute it. I’ll even make sure nobody interferes with your operation in this neighborhood.” The gang-banger, grateful for his life, accepts.

Vinny’s now making even more money. He kicks a nice piece of it upstairs to his crew chief. In turn, the crew chief passes a cut to his capo, who shares his piece with the Don. Pretty soon, that whole East Harlem operation, and everyone in it, is looking very good to the Don. But the Don’s not dumb—he has a good idea where the money originates. He hears about a drug bust that netted some members of a Jamaican posse in Brooklyn. He mentions to his capos, “Hey, it’s a real good thing that we have a ban on selling drugs in our borgata, and a death penalty for violators. Otherwise we’d wind up like them no-good, undisciplined mulinians over there.” The capos pass the word on down. Vinny’s crew chief, who knows what’s going on, says to Vinny, “Uh, by the way, you ain’t sellin’ drugs, are you?” “Me?” replies Vinny, indignantly. “Sellin’ f*****’ s**t to a buncha lowlifes on the street? Not on your f*****’ life!” Vinny told the literal truth: he’s not actually selling drugs on the street—he’s just wholesaling drugs to the guys who are selling them. As far as he’s concerned, he’s not violating the family’s ban on “selling drugs.” His crew chief is satisfied—and so’s everyone over him. They’re all getting their piece of Vinny’s action. As long as Vinny’s producing money, they’re content to look the other way. If he gets caught, he knows they’ll try to kill him before he can rat them out. Everyone knows the score.

The Irish mafia is similar, yes.

turnbull great explanation on how the drugs game would work and this thread is a very interesting read keep up the good work

Thanks!
Here’s another in the series:
DOES THE MOB CONTROL ALL RACKETS?

No…but they’ll try if they find out about your racket:

The Mafia (and other organized crime gangs), like the Robber Barons of a century ago, believes fervently that competition is bad, monopoly is good. While they guard their territories zealously, they also want to avoid costly, destructive wars. So, they often resort to “cartelization” such as divvying up territories with other mobs families or working out arrangements with other ethnic gangs. But they don’t tolerate freelance operations—if they find freelancers operating in or near their territories.

Let’s say you decide to open a racket that’s in or near Mob territory—gambling, loan sharking, distributing stolen goods, basically any criminal activity that’s not the occasional car theft or burglary. The local Mob guy, who watches his territory like a hawk, will spot you immediately. He’ll give you a couple of months to build up your business. Then he’ll descend on you, and, in menacing (but not yet overtly violent) terms, explain that you’ve committed a mortal sin for which the penalty is death. But, he can see that you didn’t realize the enormity of your crime. So, out of the goodness his heart, he’ll let you continue in business. But you have to pay him a “fine” of $50k for having violated his territory, and you need to come up with a “nut” of $5k/week as your “license” to operate. In return, he’ll “protect” you from interlopers and will keep the cops at bay.

If you’re smart, you’ll apologize profusely, eagerly agree to the terms—and pack your stuff, change your name and move to another state immediately. If you’re greedy and stupid (as are most criminals), you’ll think this is a pretty good deal. Woe is you! You now have to come up with his “nut” every week or, like his loan shark victims, pay 6% vig per week. You also become a potential patsy for his schemes with his police contacts, which all Mob guys maintain. So, your Mob “protector” will, perhaps, murder someone who owes him money and didn’t pay. He knows that the cops he deals with love to close big cases fast—they get glory, promotions, etc. So he’ll go to his friendly police contact and tell him that you did the crime, providing just enough detail to make it convincing without implicating himself. The cops will arrest you and charge you with the crime. You might hire a good lawyer and, after immense time and expense, be cleared. But by that time, your Mob “protector” will already have taken over the business you worked so hard to build up, and couldn’t look after while you were in jail awaiting trial.

Mobsters also regard anyone operating a racket that comes to their attention as fair game—and that applies even if you’re not in or near Mob territory. Suppose you operate a stock-fraud “boiler room” on Wall Street or in a suburban shopping mall. Sooner or later, you’ll defraud someone who knows someone who’s in the Mob—and asks his/her Mob contact for help. The Mob guy, under the guise of “helping” his friend whom you’ve victimized, will call on you and announce that you have a new partner. What are you going to do—call the police? Nope: pay or die.

However, Mob guys want to avoid wars. And they’re not very internationally minded—they are wary of ethnic gangs that they don’t understand and can’t muscle easily. So, if you’re a member of a recent immigrant group (Asian, African, West Indian, Eastern European), and you establish a racket within that ethnic neighborhood, you’d be wise to either recruit a gang of thugs from the neighborhood, or ally yourself with other gangs of your ethnic background. The first time a neighboring Mob guy comes calling, just “show your colors”—muster the troops. He’ll retreat gracefully, or return with a higher-up and negotiate a business deal that might actually work to your advantage--as long as you keep both eyes wide open.

I want to try a different tack in this series:
WAS JOE BONANNO REALLY KIDNAPPED IN 1964?

Not likely.

In one of the most bizarre and widely publicized events in Mob history, Joe Bonanno, one of the most powerful of the Five Family Dons, was kidnapped on a busy New York City street by two thugs who fired a warning shot at his lawyer. He disappeared completely, and was widely rumored to be dead. Then, 19 months later, Bonanno, apparently none the worse for wear, strolled into a Federal courtroom in New York and blandly announced to the judge: “Your Honor, my name is Joseph Bonanno. I hear that you are looking for me.”

Bonanno did not reveal any details of his disappearance until the 1983 publication of his autobiography, “A Man of Honor.” Here’s how he tells the story:
His cousin, Stefano Magaddino, the Don of Buffalo, NY, grew jealous and resentful of Bonanno’s success and popularity in the NYC Mob. Magaddino convinced the Commission that Joe was complicit in a plot by Joe Magliocco, the Profaci Family Don and an ally of Bonanno’s, to whack Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. The Commission summoned Bonanno to explain himself. When he refused, the Commission ordered him to step down as Don of his family, replacing him with Gaspar DiGregorio, Magaddino’s brother in law. This set off an internal war in the Bonanno Family between those loyal to Joe, and those who bolted to DiGregorio. To avoid potential assassins, Joe took to staying at various secret locations in and around NYC. Meanwhile, he was ordered to appear before a Federal grand jury investigating organized crime.

On October 20, 1964, the eve of his grand jury appearance, Bonanno had dinner in a NYC restaurant with his lawyers. William Maloney, his chief lawyer, invited Joe to spend the night at his Park Avenue apartment so he wouldn’t have to commute back and forth from Long Island. While strolling up Park Avenue, a car roared to the curb and two thugs grabbed Bonanno and forced him into the car. They pegged a warning shot at Maloney when he protested. The kidnapping and the shot drew the police, and the incident got page-one headlines in New York and elsewhere.

According to Bonanno, the thugs were Magaddino’s brother and son. They drove him to an upstate New York farmhouse, where Magaddino held him prisoner. The two cousins daily communed (there is no other word for it) via gestures and riddles in ways that Bonanno describes in such vague terms as to suggest surrealism. Finally, after six weeks, Magaddino set Bonanno free. He even ordered his son and brother to drive Joe anywhere he wanted to be. Bonanno says he ordered them to drop him off in El Paso, TX, the better to plant a hint that he might hole up in Mexico. Instead, he called an ally, who drove him to his home in Tucson, AZ. There Joe hid, grew a beard, bought old clothes and a cane, and shuffled around like a homeless man, eventually returning to NYC, where he did the same. He finally emerged, clean shaven and well dressed, in the Federal courtroom on May 17, 1966—19 months after the “kidnapping.”

In a word: this story stinks. If Bonanno had been hiding out at various NYC locales to avoid assassins, why would he suddenly decide to have a very public dinner in a very public restaurant with his lawyers, then take a very public stroll up a very busy street? How did Magaddino find out about his itinerary? If Magaddino had the wherewithal to get his brother and son close enough to “kidnap” Bonanno, whey didn’t they just shoot him in the street—thereby instantly solving Magaddino’s, DiGregorio’s and the Commission’s problem, and sending an unmistakable message to the remaining Bonanno loyalists: “The king is dead, long live the king”? What possible benefit could Magaddino have derived from kidnapping his cousin, holding him for six weeks—and then letting him go, presumably to cause him yet more trouble?

And, how very convenient that Magaddino, Bonanno’s mortal enemy, managed to “kidnap” him just hours before his scheduled appearance before a grand jury investigation organized crime. Gosh, what a coincidence!

The most likely story is that Bonanno had himself “kidnapped” by two loyalists in order to avoid appearing before the Federal grand jury investigating organized crime. Bonanno undoubtedly would have refused to answer questions, which would have landed him in jail for contempt of court, making him a sitting duck for Mob assassins. The “kidnapping” not only provided him with a ready-made excuse for not appearing before the grand jury, it also allowed him to continue to take it on the lam without appearing cowardly to the bulk of his remaining loyalists. The dinner with the lawyers set him up with an ironclad alibi: the next day, Maloney, his chief lawyer, would be able to face the judge and say, “Your Honor, my client had every intention of appearing before this august body. But, as Your Honor saw in the police report, and read in the newspapers, he was kidnapped by persons unknown and could not be here.” Faced with an eyewitness account from a member of the bar, the judge would be reluctant to issue a bench warrant charging Bonanno with being a fugitive from justice—thus keeping the FBI off Joe’s back and freeing him to wait until the grand jury’s term expired.

Bonanno cleverly won the battle, but he lost the war. His long absence left leadership of what remained of his family in the doubtful hands of his son Salvatore (Bill). The war continued, and murder and attrition whittled down his people. Bill went to prison on a wire fraud conviction (using an associate’s credit card) and Joe never truly regained control of what remained of his family. The Bonannos and their revolving-door leadership declined to the point that they no longer occupied a seat at the Commission’s table, until a measure of stability was restored by Joey Massino in the Nineties. And look where he ended up! Crime doesn’t pay.

Turnbull, I normally agree with everything you say but I must take exception with you saying "doubtful hands" of Bill Bonanno. How could he run a family while having to live up to his fathers expecations, not to mention keeping the secret of JFK's death, being CEO of Microsoft (so it hadn't been started yet, it was still his idea), AND Chief Advising Officer to the President of the United States at the same time. Bill Bonanno was the greatest leader of the family, just read his book, he'll tell you

Its the only book I had to put down and never went back to. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I wonder where he got his lieing ways from...

Funny DMC. Did you know that Bill Bonanno and Joe Pistone collaborated on a fictional mob book a few years back called THE GOOD GUYS ?

How those 2 egos fit in the same room to write the same book, I'll never know.

I did not know that, but both of their real life books were fiction enough......their fiction books must be what? Harry Potter?

You really wanna laugh ? It was the most entertaining book either one of them ever had a hand in. It's set in New York in the summer of 1985 and it's completely fictional. Pretty good.

Entertaining good or entertaining as in how bad it is?

Donnie Brasco was a good book but he got carried away at times, he's Joe Pistone not Ken Shamrock..

It was pretty good, then again, my expectations were low.

if the RICO act had been in place during Godfather, Part II, not even BUFFAS woulda helped Michael Corleone.

RICO was passed in 1970

Part II was supposed to have taken place in 1958-59.

oh yeah, I got the date of production confused

I don't understand this RICO stuff. What does a black-haired Puerto Rican guy in a pompadour wearing a powderblue tux over a ruffled shirt have to do with organized crime?

Here’s another in the series:

OUR GREED KEEPS THE MOB GOING

It’s an axiom that, as long as we want to do drugs, gamble illegally, patronize prostitutes, buy cut-rate goods that fell off the back of trucks, etc., Organized Crime will be right there to satisfy our illicit needs. But that’s just a start: how about when our own greed steers us right into the Mob’s hands? Here’s a not-atypical example:

Like most people, you hate to pay income taxes. And, you’re in a position to avoid paying your “fair share": You’re a Sky Cap, waiter or waitresses, a taxi driver who gets most of your income in tips; or you own a retail business and take in a lot of cash; or you’re a shrink or a chiropractor with many uninsured patients who pay in currency, rather than by check or credit card. Since cash is largely untraceable, you can hide a good part of your income if you’re not too greedy (a big “if”). But that’s only half the battle. Your hidden income can’t work for you if you stuff it in a mattress or hide it in a shoebox. And you can’t open a bank or brokerage account because your deposits and earnings will be reported to the government. What to do?

Sooner or later, greedy-you will find the local Mobbed-up loan shark. He’s got a lot of money on the street earning 6% weekly vig. So, you approach him about adding the hundred grand you’ve hidden from the government over the past decade to his capital. The Mob guy’s interested: He’ll give you 1% on your money, every week. Greedy-you balks: How come you’re getting only 1% when he gets 6%? The Mob guy explains, patiently, that he’s taking all the risks, doing all the accounting, breaking all the kneecaps, for his 6%. “All you gotta do for your 1% is to show up on this street corner every Friday at 11 to collect it,” he says.

Sounds like a plan to you. But you’re still wary. So you give him half your wad--$50k—to see what happens. You show up at 11 the next Friday—and there he is, handing over your $500 vig that you didn’t lift a finger to earn. He does it again the next week, and the week after that. This is pretty good, you think: If you can get $500 a week for doing nothing, $1,000 a week would be twice as good. So you hand over your other $50k. Now the Mob guy’s got your entire $100k.

You show up the next Friday, licking your chops for your unearned $1k. But your Mob “pal” isn’t there. Nor is he there the next week—or the week after that. Your sphincter is imploding. You search for him high and low. Finally, you locate him in his social club.

“Where’s my f*****g vig?” you shout. The Mob guy gives you the fish-eye. “What f****g vig?” he shouts back. “Lissen, pal, I don’t know you from a hole in the ground, or where you’re comin’ from…but you better get your ass outta here quick before you make me sore!” All the other espresso-sippers are starting to stir in their chairs. Discretion being the better part of valor, you split.

You’re in a bind. You can’t sue the guy because you never got a receipt for your $100k or a contract that specified interest payments. Complain to law enforcement?—all you’ll accomplish is to identify yourself for what you are: a felon who violated federal, state and local income tax statutes. And you can’t go after the Mob guy personally unless you get a gun, and a will.

You begin to realize that you’ve been screwed. And, if you’ve got any sense left to you, you’ll realize who screwed you: You, through your own greed.

So...uh....anyone want to give me 100K nand earn 1% interest each week?

Either noone got my joke or noone cares!

WOW!!!I just found this thread and can i say,Turnbull i feel so much more enlightened.My half brothers dad is in the Melbourne Mafia here in Australia.Im not sure what his rank is but i know he's a "shit kicker"(not sure if you have that saying in the states)Anyway i remember mom telling me stories about him and i was quite intrigued and even thought about asking him to get me involved once i was older.Eventually i grew out of that and i knew the mafia wasn't all it was cracked up to be.But reading this thread has opened up my eyes even more.So thanks again.

Here's a myth that I think is laughable:

JOHN GOTTI WAS RAILROADED AND SHOULD HAVE NEVER GONE TO PRISON

This has not been alleged on these boards, but I know a few people who actually believe that John Gotti was innocent. In fact, there's a fool on a local radio station who has been claiming it to be true for 10+ years. The trouble is that this radio personality has been spewing the same nonsensical allegations on a 50,000 watt station during drive time.

The state and federal government tried for years to put John Gotti away. Before he planned to whack Big Paul, Gotti's crew was dealing heroin, which was punishable by death according to Castellano. Big Paul referred to selling drugs as a violations of his first commandment: "If you deal, you die." Gotti's brother, Quack-Quack Ruggierio, and his crew were on wiretaps dealing heroin. John Gotti managed to keep his name away from law enforcement for the drug trafficking, but informants told cops that the crew would not be dealing without John's authorization.

Then the myth was magnified in the three trials when Gotti was found not guilty. Gotti, who had already done a prison stint for murder, was regarded by some as a persecuted target. It was not known until much later, but there was one juror who was bought to return a not guilty verdict in at least one case. Of course, it did not hurt that Gotti had a very talented and intense attorney named Bruce Cutler, who routinely destroyed the credibility of witnesses against Gotti. In another trial, it was obvious that the star witness was intimidated to recant his original charges. The witness testified that he "forgot" who beat him and that he would not testify against John Gotti. The case was dismissed.

Gotti, more than what nearly all previous mobsters, did not shy away from the spotlight. In part to feed his massive ego, he worked on projecting and polishing his public persona much in the same manner a political candidate would. He appeared on Time magazine's cover, which is something that Carlo Gambino or Trafficante would have never even considered. Another example is Gotti would hold an extravagant 4th of July fireworks display near his mob headquarters, launching his own fireworks and hosting illegal gambling games in the neighborhood.

Gotti also had a bit of luck, which helped him beat the allegations against him in the first three trials. He had a police informant in the intelligence division who fed Gotti information. The mole, detective William Piest, was injured off the job and lost his leg in a 1984 car accident. Piest had a cousin who fed information to a mobster named George Helbig, who was in regular contact with Gotti. Piest helped blow surveillance bugs and helped the mob steal a handwritten indictment against Quack Quack. Piest serviced Gotti for approximately five years and earned $500 per week for his information.

Probably the biggest reason that some say Gotti was innocent because it was the testimony of another mobster, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, that sent Gotti away for good. Sammy admitted to killing 19 men, including his own brother-in-law. But Sammy led the government through a step-by-step account of how Gotti planned and then executed the assassination of Paul Castellano and his bodyguard Tommy Bilotti. Gravano also corroborated murders that Gotti ordered, which were long suspected by the FBI. No doubt, Sammy was a rat. But the actions of Gravano do not lessen or negate the crimes that Gotti committed. I think that if the roles were reversed (Sammy was the Don & Gotti was the Underboss), then the government would have gladly taken the testimony to put away the Don of the most powerful crime family. I have never bought the argument that the feds were out to get Gotti, as much as they were out to get the head of Gambino Family, who just happened to be Gotti.

Thanks for contributing an entry, Goombah. And I agree with you completely: Gotti was not railroaded. He was guilty as charged. The authorities did go after him time after time--but that was because he committed crime after crime, and flung it in people's faces through his lunatic obsession with fame and publicity.

BUGSY SIEGEL (AND/OR CHARLIE LUCIANO, MEYER LANSKY, ALBERT ANASTASIA) FOUNDED (OR WERE MEMBERS OF) “MURDER INC.”

Short answer: No, but they did have some business with Murder Inc. Longer answer follows:

Jewish gangsters dominated urban rackets in the Twenties. But by the early Thirties, even before Prohibition was repealed, some of the big shots like the Bronfmans, Louis Rosenstiehl and Moe Annenberg went legit. Others, like Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz and Abner (Longy) Zwillman, transitioned to running big-time gambling. The rest fought ceaselessly for a share of the remaining rackets.

Brooklyn NY was one such scene of endless gang wars in the early Thirties. Among the winners were a mob that included Abraham (Kid Twist) Reles, Allie (Tick-Tock) Tannenbaum, Harry (Pittsburgh Phil) Strauss, Martin (Buggsy) Goldstein and Mendy Weiss. They hung out at Midnight Rose’s candy store on the corner of Saratoga and Livonia Avenues in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn (where I worked as an adolescent; neither I nor the candy store’s owners were aware of its shady past). They were basically small-timers, whose distinguishing feature was their utter ruthlessness, operating in a big population--Brownsville was New York’s most densely populated neighborhood, cramming 290,000 people into 1.5 square miles.

Enter Louis (Lepke) Buchalter:

Lepke, whose biography appears here:

http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthr...=true#Post20536
2

was the biggest gangster in America in the mid and late Thirties—maybe the biggest in history. He needed an army to protect and enforce his Garment Center-based criminal empire. His partner, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, born in Russia, grew up in Brownsville. They reached out for the Midnight Rose crowd (who were dubbed “Murder Inc.” by the press years later).

Lepke, a sharp businessman as well as a vicious thug, put them on salary rather than pay them per hit. The arrangement enabled them to pursue their own rackets when they weren’t doing violence for Lepke. And it tied them to Lepke, keeping them from his rivals.

Lepke also made alliances with Mafiosi. He cut Charlie Luciano into some of his Garment Center action; Luciano in turn doled out portions of his share to other Families, which cemented their loyalty to him. Lepke also had an arrangement with Albert Anastasia, an underboss in Vincent Mangano’s family whose turf was the Ocean Hill neighborhood to the north of Brownsville. Albert A shared in some of Murder Inc.’s revenues. In return, he supplied Mafia shooters (Harry “Happy” Maione, Frank “the Dasher” Abbandando, Louis Capone) and was one of their biggest customers. Another customer was Luciano: when he decided to whack Dutch Shultz before he could assassinate special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, Lucky gave the contract to Murder Inc. A hit squad headed by Charles “The Bug” Workman nailed Shultz in a Newark, NJ restaurant. So, Lucky and Albert A did business with Murder Inc., but did not found, run, or belong to the gang.

Nor did Lansky and Siegel. That myth stems from their closeness to Luciano. When Lucky ended the Castellemmarese War of 1930-31 by whacking the “Moustache Petes” Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, he reached for his boyhood chum Lansky to arrange the murders. Siegel and Anastasia were among the Masseria shooters (Joe Adonis may have been the third). Samuel (Red) Levine headed the squad that did in Maranzano. But those assassinations had nothing to do with Murder Inc.—they went down in 1931, years before Lepke formed the Brownsville gang in to Murder Inc.

Siegel’s brush with Murder Inc. occurred in 1939 when Harry (Big Greenie) Greenberg, a dimwitted NYC thug, tried to rat out several mob big shots and fled to the West Coast to escape them. Siegel was the Commission’s point man on the Coast. Luciano and Adonis ordered him to eliminate Greenie. They sent him two shooters: Tick-Tock Tannenbaum and Frankie (Mr. Gray) Carbo, who later ran the fight rackets for the Mafia in NYC. Bugsy planned the hit, found Greenie and drove the getaway car. Tick-Tock and Mr. Gray were the triggermen.

Early in 1940, Bill O’Dwyer, the Brooklyn DA, and his assistant, Burton Turkus, picked up Kid Twist, Tick-Tock and several other Murder Inc. killers and charged them with several assassinations. They turned rat. One of the hits they ratted out was Greenie’s. The Los Angeles DA arrested and indicted Siegel for the crime. But O’Dwyer refused to let Tannenbaum testify, fearing (no doubt correctly) that he’d never make it back from California alive. Then Twist, who was being held in “protective custody” in a Coney Island hotel, “jumped or fell” from a sixth-floor window while being “guarded” by eleven policemen—five of whom were in the room with him at the time of the “accident” (earning Twist the timeless sobriquet, "the canary who could sing but couldn't fly"). With no witnesses, the case against Siegel evaporated. He high-tailed it to Vegas, got interested in the hotel business, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Twist had a photographic memory. Before his “accident,” he gave Turkus’s stenographers 5,000 pages of notes, and resolved more than 50 murders—five of which involved Lepke. That info enabled Dewey to convict Lepke and send him to the chair in 1944—the only mob boss executed by The Law instead of by his peers.

While reading the book Mobfather, which details some of the shenanigans of the former Scarfo organization in Philly/Jersey, I came across an account of a fellow who was forced to betray his best friend in the manner that Don Cardi mentioned above.

And after having done this, his fellow gangsters came into the restaurant that he operated, stuck a quarter in the jukebox, and played the old Elton John song, That's What Friends Are For as a sort of practical joke...

I have a pretty sick sense of humor, I guess... because this made me laugh!

I read a little about the Philly fam and some guys borrowed a whole bunch of money from this loanshark, then used it to pay the guy to kill him.

That's what the educated call irony.

A similar thing happened in an episode of The Sopranos. I believe that one of the guys borrows money from Vito Spat because he knows Vito is going to get whacked and he won't have to pay it back. He even agrees to paying a higher vig!

These guys will do anything to get the edge and beat someone for money. They have no conscience, they have no souls!

IN JUSTICE, AS IN EVERYTHING ELSE, MONEY TALKS!

Despite many high-profile Mafia prosecutions, Mob guys enjoy the best legal protection in America: money. Even in the US, which prides itself on being a nation of “laws, not men,” money—not right or wrong--assures “justice.” Contrast how a poor defendant is treated in our system, vs. a Mob guy or anyone with a lot of money:

Let’s say you’ve been arrested for killing someone: a drug deal gone bad, a gambling debt, a personal insult…whatever. The charge against you is Murder in the Second Degree. If you’re like 95% of felony defendants, you don’t have the money to make bail or to hire a criminal lawyer (few attorneys specialize in criminal law precisely because most criminal defendants can’t afford to pay them). The court will assign you a Public Defender (PD): probably a young, recent graduate of law school gaining experience and contacts before embarking on a career with a law firm or corporation, who’s paid by the court system to represent indigent defendants. Your PD will spend about 10 minutes reviewing the paperwork in your case. Then, in the only visit to your jail cell, your PD will try to convince you to waive your right to trial and plead guilty to a lesser offense in return for a shorter sentence. The only time the PD will advise you to plead not guilty is if there’s a hole in your case big enough to drive a truck through: you have three witnesses who’ll swear that you were a thousand miles away when the crime was committed; or the arresting officer subsequently was dismissed from the force for falsifying evidence in cases like yours, or something equally obvious. And there’s almost no way the PD will bring your case to trial, even if the PD thinks that you might be innocent, or that a jury could be convinced to bring in a “not guilty” verdict.

Why? It’s not because PD’s are bad people. To the contrary: they’re usually young enough not to have developed that hard shell of cynicism that attaches to so may experienced lawyers. It’s because the criminal justice system is stacked against poor defendants:

First, the PD probably is carrying a caseload of at least 150 defendants, many of them charged with serious felonies like yours. All of them deserve the same shot at “justice” as you do, and the PD just doesn’t have time to try all those cases. And even if she or he did, how much attention do you think you’d get from a public servant carrying such a huge caseload? Would you want to be represented by a lawyer with so many distractions?

Second, the figure of merit in the court system is: Clear the calendar! This applies to judges, prosecutors and PD’s. PD’s who bring a lot of cases to trial are clogging the system, and will earn the wrath of prosecutors and judges who’re in a position to do favors for PD’s and their clients.

Third, during the trial the judge is supposed to act as an “impartial arbitrator,” assuring fairness. But when a guilty verdict is brought in, the judge in effect becomes an arm of the prosecution—judges always ask prosecutors what “the People” require as punishment for convicted criminals. The prosecutors in your case know this. So they tell your PD: “Hey, look, we’ve got your guy cold on Murder Two. Penalty is 20 years to life. If your guy makes us go to trial, he will be convicted—no two ways about it. The judge’ll ask us what we want for a sentence. We’ll say life, you’ll plead for ‘leniency’—and the judge’ll give him fifty years. But if you convince your guy to waive his right to trial, we’ll let him plead to Manslaughter Two. The penalty is two-to-ten. We’ll ask for five, you’ll ask for probation, and the judge’ll give him three. Now, what’s it gonna be: fifty years or three years?”

Fourth: While a defendant is “presumed” to be innocent until proven guilty, the reverse is true in the minds of most jurors—especially if you, like many defendants, are nonwhite and have a prior record. People who’ve been arrested or convicted of crimes can be excluded from juries. So, the only brush with the law that most jurors have experienced was to receive a traffic ticket. Their mindset likely will be that you must have done something to make the police arrest you. So, even though the law requires that the prosecution prove you guilty beyond reasonable doubt, the reality is that you and your PD have a truly uphill struggle to convince the jury that you’re not guilty.

Finally, law is a competitive business. Lawyers will bend over backward for out-of-court settlements in civil matters, and plea-bargains in criminal cases. But once a case goes to trial, the issue isn’t innocence or guilt, or even right or wrong: it’s who wins and who loses. And lawyers hate to lose—it makes them look bad, especially when they move on to high-paying positions in law firms and corporations. Prosecutors (who also are mostly young, recent law school grads) that lose trials have an out when they interview for “real” jobs: “Aah, the bleeding-heart judge let that defendant off…aah, stupid cops screwed up the evidence.” PD’s have no such outs with interviewers. It’s far better for a PD to tell an interviewer: “During my two years as a PD, I represented nearly a thousand defendants, and I got reduced sentences for all of them” than to say, “I brought more than 200 cases to trial, and won acquittals in 25% of them.” A 25% acquittal rate would be astoundingly good, given the odds against the kinds of poor defendants PDs represent. But law firms and corporations seldom litigate cases; and when they do, they hire outside counsel. The interviewer hearing that likely would think: “What the hell’s wrong with this person, bringing all those s**theels to trial? Never heard of a plea bargain? With that kind of poor judgment, there’s no way I’m letting him/her near my clients!”

But if you have money—plenty of money—the odds shift dramatically in your favor, even if you’re a Mob guy. Now you can hire a “superlawyer” like Bruce Cutler, Gerald Shargel, Barry Slotnick, Ron Kuby or Albert Krieger. Attention isn’t an issue because, at $600 an hour and up, they’ll spend all the time in the world on your case. They have political and judicial clout up the wazoo, so they’ll invariably work out a bail figure that you can afford.
Prosecutors are afraid of their fearsome reputations, so if they offer you a plea-bargain, you can bet it’ll be on better terms than if you were poor. Judges, too, are afraid of your superlawyers. They know that, even if you’re found guilty, you’ll appeal. Then your lawyers will use your money to hire an army of legal scholars to pore over every world of the trial transcript, looking for “reversible errors”: mistakes the judge may have made during the trial that could result in an appeals court overturning your conviction. Judges hate to be reversed on appeal: it makes them look bad and lessens their chances for elevation to a higher court. So, during the trial, the judge will bend over backward to rule in your favor—and might even be eager to declare a mistrial or a summary dismissal to avoid problems with an appellate court down the line. And sometimes, the prosecutors will be relieved: it spares them the humiliation of being shown up by “real” lawyers.

And, finally, even if you’re found guilty and lose your appeals, your superlawyers will keep plugging for you—filing motions for new trials, working their political mojo on the Governor or the President for clemency or executive pardon—as long as your money holds out. You’ll get the best “justice” that money can buy.

Here's a new entry in this series:

AVOIDING TAX EVASION CHARGES

Income tax evasion has put more mobsters away for more years than RICO and drugs combined. It’s easy: the Feds don’t have to prove that you made your money through crime—all they have to do is to show that you’re living beyond your means. Even a weak tax evasion case has a good chance of bringing in a conviction. While some jurors might have some empathy for the defendant, they all think of themselves as “tax drones.” So, if the prosecutor points to the defendant and tells the jurors, “The reason you’re paying high taxes is because guys like him are cheating on theirs…” the jurors are ready to believe him.

Mafia guys are slam-dunk prospects for tax evasion. They’re all greedy, and they regard paying taxes on the same level as being cuckolded. Aniello (Mr. Neil) Dellacroce, the feared and respected Gambino caporegime, went away for five years because he lost $100k in a Puerto Rican casino at a time when he declared income of only $10k on his tax return. He was still in prison when Carlo Gambino was on his deathbed, which probably was why Gambino named Paul Castellano, rather than Mr. Neil, as his heir.

But, if a mob guy is smart and careful (big ifs), he can avoid getting nailed on tax evasion. Here’s now:

Let’s say you’re a captain in a NYC mob family. Your main source of income is an electrical wholesale firm that actually sells electrical supplies. But the supplies are most often stolen from others and sold to mob-connected contractors. It’s also a front for your loansharking, fencing and drug operations, which your subordinates operate for you at careful arms-length. You earn between $3 million and $5 million annually, all of it illegal. You’re smart enough to know that you need to live modestly and inconspicuously. You live in the same Brooklyn home you occupied when you started out. It’s now worth about $550k--modest by NYC standards. You could have paid it off years ago. But, to bolster the fiction that you’re just a workin’ stiff, you’ve taken out second mortgages to pay for your kids’ colleges. You drive a three-year-old Cad, your wife a four-year-old Lexus. You both wear off-the-rack clothes and costume jewelry.

Your accountant tells you that, to maintain that lifestyle and keep the Internal Revenue Service off your back, you need to show and pay taxes on $90k annual household income. So you arrange for the associate who’s the nominal “owner” of your electrical wholesale business to put you and the Mrs. on his payroll—you as a “salesman” at $50k/yr., she as a “bookkeeper” at $40k. You pay your taxes scrupulously.

Now, you aren’t busting your coglioni and putting your life at risk in the mob just to live like a wage-slave cafone. How do you enjoy your money without attracting the IRS?

It seems that the electrical firm (meaning you) owns a $10 million “retreat” in Glen Cove, Long Island—right on the Sound, complete with 60-foot yacht. The firm lists it as a “guest house and entertainment center” for wooing clients, and as a “rest and recreation” facility for employees. To maintain the façade, part of the home’s basement is equipped as a “showroom” with displays of electrical equipment that the firm sells. A smaller “showroom” space is laid out on the boat. You and your wife spend a lot of time there because you’re the firm’s “top salesman.” You meet with your associates at the Glen Cove house and list them as “clients” in your business logbook.

You and your wife also own Armani suits, Givinchy gowns, Bally and Jimmy Choo shoes, Cartier jewelry, Louis Vuitton luggage, etc. But there are no sales receipts in your name. They’re stored at your non-mobbed-up cousin’s home in a modest neighborhood in Queens. Anytime you and the Mrs. go out on the town (often), you and she visit the cousin’s place to get dressed and decked out. The cousin calls a limo for you, which pulls into his garage to avoid surveillance. You and your wife jump inside and hunker down behind the tinted windows. You pay for everything in cash. When you travel to Paris on vacation, you fly Tourist class and reserve a room in a modest pension. But a Family associate in Naples secretly booked you into the Ritz under phony names, using phony Italian passports, and has made reservations for you in all the Michelin 3-star restaurants, where you pay cash. For your jaunts around France, you rent a chauffeured limo, using the phony passport as I.D, when required. It’s all prepaid—in cash.

Now, the NYC police and the FBI know good and well that you’re a capo in a mob family, and have a pretty good idea of how you’re earning your money. But, like all government employees, they don’t want to work any harder than necessary to earn their paychecks. You’ve hidden your criminal activities and your spending well enough so that it won’t be easy for them to gather up enough evidence and witnesses to bring you to trial. With the new priority for tracking down terrorists, law enforcement has a good excuse not to spend a lot of time, money and personnel trying to convict you—especially since there are plenty enough dumb mobsters who are easy pickings compared with you.

So they take the lazy-cops’ out—turn the investigation over to the IRS to see if they can nail you for tax evasion. But IRS investigators don’t want to work any harder than their law enforcement brethren. The IRS clerk who gets your case is looking for a slam-dunk—and there isn’t one in your case because she finds that you’ve filed returns and paid taxes punctiliously every year. She kicks your file back to her supervisor, who hands it to an investigator. He’s got a huge caseload because the Administration has been in a budget-cutting mode and no taxpayers—and their Congressmen—are anxious to see funding restored to the IRS.

About two years after getting your file, the IRS investigator finally picks it up and drives out to look at your Brooklyn home. One glance tells him what your accountant told you: yours is a $90k income home—and you’ve been paying taxes on $90k every year. He heads for the Glen Cove “business retreat” listed as the electrical wholesale firm’s property, rings the doorbell, shows his badge, and asks the caretaker if he can look around the property. You’ve already instructed the caretaker to let him in. The investigator sees the showrooms in the basement and on the boat, and the business cards and sales literature you’ve carefully planted in other spaces. He suspects it’s a front, but he can’t prove it—easily. Of course the IRS could put serious resources into checking out your “employer” in surveilling the Glen Cove mansion, looking at your travels abroad, etc. But that costs time and money—and anyway, since law enforcement wasn’t willing to do it, why should they? So, their conclusion is, “insufficient evidence for prosecution.”

Sooner or later, your own greed is going to trip you up. But until then, as Jackie Brown, the gun dealer in “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” said: “It’s a great life—as long as you don’t weaken.”

DID THE MAFIA BLACKMAIL J. EDGAR HOOVER?

Almost certainly not. But the origin of this durable myth is worth exploring:

According to legend, the omnipotent FBI Director was gay, and Meyer Lansky or some other Mob big shot had a photo of him in full drag (!!) that he used to blackmail Hoover into keeping hands-off organized crime.

Rumors of Hoover being gay surfaced during his lifetime and afterward because he never married, and shared his home with his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson. Since his death, respected, competent authors, who had access to archives and interviewed Hoover associates in the FBI, have published several bios. Naturally they looked for evidence of Hoover being gay—but found none. That’s not to say that Hoover wasn’t gay—it just means they couldn’t prove it. So, if Hoover had been homosexual, he obviously hid it pretty well. And, given his prominence, he’d never have been so careless as to dress up in drag, and be photographed.

So, why did the FBI basically ignore organized crime until the Valachi hearings in 1962 forced them to sit up and pay notice? The most likely explanation is that Hoover, who worked day and night to burnish his and the FBI’s reputation as incorruptible gangbusters and ultra-efficient G-men, carefully chose the targets of FBI investigations. He’d been focusing on bank robberies ever since the heyday of Dillinger et al in the Thirties. And Hoover was obsessed with the Communist Party USA. (The joke was that there were more FBI agents and informants in the CPUSA than real Commies, and if they ever dropped out and stopped paying dues, the Party would collapse.) These were high-visibility, high-glamour activities, and left little time or manpower to infiltrate the Mob. What’s more, unlike Mafiosi, Commies didn’t have the money or influence to bribe or otherwise corrupt FBI agents.

Another alleged source of Hoover’s “connection” to organized crime is that Hoover was an avid horse-player. Hoover often visited racetracks and bet on races. He probably got tips from FBI agents on fixed races, and he probably knew without asking that the tips came from underworld figures whom the agents were working with. But Hoover was too discrete to be a big bettor, much less to bet with bookies. And the fact that his tips came from criminals did not necessarily make a bond between Hoover and the Mafia.

Hoover’s métier was collecting dirt on politicians, celebrities and civil rights and other civic leaders. He could have used this dirt to make himself far more powerful in the political arena than he was. But he was only interested in using it to hold onto his job, which is why President after President kept him on as FBI Director long past the statutory retirement age. His knowledge of Kennedy dalliances, for example, led JFK to reappoint him, and to bypass his nominal boss, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He was the ultimate bureaucrat

MYTH: The Mafia carried out the assassination of President John Kennedy

The circumstances surrounding the death of JFK is arguably the most controversial, debatable, and mysterious crimes of the 20th century. I honestly think the truth is forever lost and that there will be doubts to any conspiracy theory, as well as to the official version as described in The Warren Report. One of the best pieces of evidence that could have helped shed some light, if not perhaps solve the crime, was President Kennedy’s brain. The fatal headshot, as shown in the Zapruder film, blasted a good portion of Kennedy’s upper scalp/head away. But not having JFK’s brain to examine (reports are that it was lost) prevents researchers from determining the direction from which the fatal shot came.

If the Mafia was involved in the assassination, obviously the orders would have been come from the highest leaders at that time: Carlos Marcello, Jimmy Hoffa, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante Jr. Obviously, none of these individuals would have had a hand in the actual shooting. The order would then be given to one or more mobsters who were completely trustworthy, which is an oxymoron IMO. It is one thing for a button to keep quiet about whacking a guy for not paying his weekly vig, but it’s quite another to plan the murder of the leader of the free world. I think it’s completely unrealistic to expect a group (no matter how small in number) to keep such a juicy secret, especially considering that the plan to kill Kennedy was a success. While not generalizing for all mobsters, we have seen plenty of evidence over the years at how much they like to brag or for those who end up being government rats.

Did the mob have motive to kill JFK? Absolutely. Bobby Kennedy, John’s younger brother, was the Attorney General of the United States at the time. Bobby made a lot of enemies in his organized crime, particularly in his pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters controversial president, who was alleged to have mob ties. Hoffa went to prison, in part due to RFK. There were millions of Teamster dollars at stake, in which the Mafia most likely had an investment.

Did the mob have the money and influence to carry out the plan? Yes to money and very doubtful as to the influence. It seems darn near impossible for the Mafia to have altered the parade route to Dealy Plaza at the last minute to take that slow turn. While it has been proven that Jack Ruby had mob ties and knew Lee Harvey Oswald before killing him, Oswald was linked more as a possible spy than being a mobster. More importantly, I'm not convinced that the Mob could have created an elaborate plot to set up Oswald to be the "fall guy." And without using the film JFK as too much of an influence for the argument, I think the scope of what was needed to carry out the assassination (and possible cover-up) was far beyond the Mob’s capabilities. The Mob’s power, while great, was confined to smaller pockets throughout the country. The assassination, if The Warren Report is at all to be believed, had ties in Dallas, New Orleans, and Miami. Granted the mob was spread throughout the country in 1963 much more than it is today.

There are a million different theories regarding JFK’s assassination. While the purpose of this thread is to discuss the Mafia, I feel that it is highly unlikely that they were intricately involved in carrying out John F. Kennedy’s murder.

Absolutely right. We'll never learn the truth. It's too late.


That's a problem for all conspiracy theories: Who did it? Why'd they do it? How'd they get away with it? And, as you point out, how come no one ever blabbed about it? Not impossible, but very unlikely.

"The Mafia did it" conspiracy hinges on the myth that Sam Giancana was approached by JFK's people (maybe his father) and asked to use his labor connections to help JFK carry Illinois. Supposedly he did that. And Judith Campbell, one of Giancana's girlfriends, was a frequent JFK bedmate. But then, RFK turned on Giancana and his fellow mobsters, hence the assassination.

B.S.! Organized crime had no reason to believe it would get favorable treatment from the Kennedy administration. In 1959, during Senate hearings on organized crime influence over unions, JFK, the chairman, and RFK, the chief counsel, grilled Mob figures relentlessly. RFK purposely humiliated Giancana by likening him to “a little girl.” He also made a lifelong enemy of Hoffa. Not surprisingly, the Teamsters Union, and their Mafia backers, supported Richard Nixon in 1960.

What's more, JFK didn't need Giancana's help to carry Illinois in 1960. A far more powerful man, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, had promised JFK that he'd bring in Illinois for him by the tried-and-true method of getting people to vote "early and often." Sure enough, Nixon was leading until late in the evening, when a "surge" of JFK votes mysteriously appeared from Cook County voting places, giving JFK a 5,000-vote margin.

The Ruby/Mafia “connection” doesn’t really connect, either. The fact that Ruby was born in Chicago didn't make him an intimate of Giancana. While he was involved in sketchy business ventures and knew plenty of criminals, all his arrests were related to his Dallas club—assaulting patrons and employees, licensing violations, failure to pay various taxes.

As a club owner, Ruby would have had some contact with Mafia operatives who were involved in supplying his and other strip joints with entertainers. Probably some of them visited his club. But, in his only major contact with a Mob-connected figure, Ruby and his brother turned down an offer to get in on a drug deal. The Dallas police questioned Ruby about the deal after the Mob operative was arrested, and were satisfied with Ruby’s account.

Ruby was far closer to the Dallas police, who had life-and-death control over his all-important liquor and cabaret licenses—he had personal contacts with about 50 Dallas cops, whom he frequently comped at his club. His police connections probably got him into headquarters when Oswald was paraded in front of TV cameras on the night of the assassination, and may explain how he entered the basement of the headquarters building and positioned himself close enough to shoot and kill Oswald. But neither the police nor the Mafia put him up to it.

If the Mob did want to kill a Kennedy, why would they choose JFK, when RFK was their nemesis—and leave RFK, who was notoriously ruthless, to wreak vengeance from his position as Attorney General? And finally, why would they use a certifiable nut-case like Oswald as an assassin, when they had plenty of better killers in their own ranks? And why would they have Oswald killed by another certifiable nut-case like Ruby—and leave him behind to tell about it?

Thanks Turnbull. I was going to talk about the 1960 election, particularly the Daley connection, but I didn't feel as if I had enough personal knowledge of the situation to give it justice. You filled in the gaps perfectly - your insight is invaluable.

One of the so-called conspiracy angles addresses your question of why JFK was killed instead of RFK. As you pointed out, RFK ruffled many more feathers than his brother. But the argument is that by knocking off JFK, the President of the United States, it would get RFK off the mob's back. Kind of akin to the statement by Tom Hagen in The Godfather. "If you get rid of Sollozzo, everyone else will fall into place." Eliminating JFK would reduce, if not eliminate RFK's power, without his brother around. The next successor, LBJ, would most likely appoint his own Attorney General. Or perhaps even in more simple terms, it might have scared Bobby to the point of not wanting to jeopardize his own life since it had been demonstrated that they could get to the president.

Furthermore, if President Kennedy discovered that the mob did kill his brother, then it would have made his focus on organized crime even more than it was. After the Bay of Pigs, JFK promised to splinter the CIA into "a thousand pieces." If the Mafia would have killed JFK's brother, I presume he would have attacked them with the same gusto.

I'm not saying I buy this argument, but I can appreciate the rationale.

The distinguished historian, Michael Beschloss, sheds some light on that:
In his book on LBJ's first year in office, "Taking Charge," which is based on recently revealed Oval Office tapes that LBJ made, he has transcripts of several conversations between Hoover and LBJ, and RFK and LBJ. As soon as LBJ returned form Dallas, Hoover was in the Oval Office, ingratiating himself with the new President and becoming his exclusive source of info on the assassination. In a later conversation, RFK complains to LBJ that he has no ability to influence Hoover--if he ever did (Hoover had the goods on both Kennedy brothers; see my post on Hoover above).
But to the point of a new Attorney General: LBJ treated Bobby with unfailing courtesy, Bobby treated LBJ with undeviating contempt. The reason was political physics: LBJ was paranoid about Bobby using sentiment for the slain JFK to mount a run for either President or Vice President in '64. Bobby knew that, with his brother gone, all of his White House influence was gone. In the end, RFK solved the problem for LBJ by resigning as Attorney General well before the '64 Convention and running for US Senator from NY instead.

The Federal Government's ability to prosecute Mob figures was limited before passage of the RICO Act: they had to find "interstate" components to Mob crimes, which usually fell under the vague rubric of "racketeering." They could subpoena Mob types, but if the Mob types pled the Fifth (attention: Michael Corleone!), they were practically immune from prosecution. The only other prosecution venue was tax evasion. RICO gave them the power to move against the Mob, and success propelled further prosecutions.

I've been meaning to post this for a long time, but was just reminded of it by watching a documentary about Carlo Gambino.

Everyone reports that Gambino died from a heart attack while he watching a New York Yankees baseball game on tv on October 15, 1976.

The truth of the matter is the Yankees didn't play that day. They had won the A.L. playoffs the day before.

It's a good story, but it ain't true.

The Night of Sicilian Vespers

The myth goes something like this.

On the day that Maranzano was killed on Luciano's orders there was a coordinated house cleaning of all the bosses who had old world style ideas all over the country. All the moustache Petes were killed off. The idea being that Luciano could take over everything without any kind of opposition.

Couple of studies I've read about shows that research into the subject reveals that 2 to 4 guys connected in some way to the mob ( lower level) died on that day nationwide.

Been a few years since I've read The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano but if I remember correctly he claims himself that was a bunch of crap.

Bugsy Seigel Invented Las Vegas

Since Turnbull posted the correct story somewhere else I'm gonna use that. Hope you don't mind TB.


Yes, the story of Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo encapsulates all the BS about the Mob--what people like to write about, and what really happened:

Bugsy Siegel didn't "invent Las Vegas." When he took up residence ca. 1940-41, it was a boomtown with seven hotel/casinos, some of them air-conditioned. The Flamingo had been named by its builder, Billy Wilkerson, the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, a degenerate gambler whose debts left him unable to finish the hotel. Siegel bought him out and got his NY pals to invest.

The only thing new about the Flamingo was that it was the first Vegas hotel/casino to be built in a "modern," "eastern" style, not the western "corral" style of the El Rancho Vegas or the the other six hotels. Siegel lost his shirt on the
Flamingo. But after he was assassinated, his successors (Gus Greenbaum, Little Moe Sedway, and especially, Moe Dalitz) made a fortune on the Flamingo's model.


Just to elaborate a bit on this. The opening night wasn't exactly the dismal failure made out in the movies etc. Although most could'nt make it there were some celebs there ( George Raft, Jimmy Durante, bandleader Xavier Cugat, Rose Marie ) and the place was packed, probably more locals than out of towners. The big mistake was that the hotel itself was not finished so there were'nt any rooms for guests. The house lost big that night and the winners went to other casinos for the night and gambled with the Flamingo winnings there. Biggest rule is to keep the gamblers in the house.


_________________________

Yes, it's rumored that they lost all of Siegel's money at the hotels where they bedded down for the night.

Siegel reopened the Flamingo that spring and it began to make money. But by then he'd sold thousands of points in the hotel. He made too many enemies to live.

Yes, the Sicilian Vespers reference in regards to the United States Mafia is the one above that you mention.

However the "original" Night of the Sicilian Vespers actually took place in Sicily sometime around the 13th century. It was a rebellion / uprise against the French troops allowed to occupy Siciliy by a King that had taken over control of Sicily, supposedly with the backing of the Pope. The locals were forced to pay heavy taxes to the King. At the time Palermo was being inhabited by French troops. Legend has it that the French inahbitants, with the backing of the King, made it a tradition to force newly married Sicilian brides to spend the night with them BEFORE being with their new husbands on their wedding night. The French inahbitants of Sicily, backed by the King, were abusing the Sicilian people in many different ways, especially the woman. On one particular night while the sicilian people were attending an evening prayer service of vespers, a group of French officials came by to join in and began to drink. They then began to fondle the breasts of the women and with that the sicilian men decided to finally defend the honor of their woman. A revolt started throughout Palermo, and the sicilian men killed the French inahbitants. Hence the term : Night of The Sicilian Vespers."


There is an Urban Legend in Sicily that on that evening a Sicilian woman went into one of the churches in Palermo and found her daughter being raped by a French soldier. Legend has it that she then ran out into the streets yelling "Ma fia Ma fia" which translates into "My daughter! My daughter! Some believe that this is where the word "Mafia" might have originated from.

Yes, the Sicilian Vespers reference in regards to the United States Mafia is the one above that you mention.

However the "original" Night of the Sicilian Vespers actually took place in Sicily sometime around the 13th century. It was a rebellion / uprise against the French troops allowed to occupy Siciliy by a King that had taken over control of Sicily, supposedly with the backing of the Pope. The locals were forced to pay heavy taxes to the King. At the time Palermo was being inhabited by French troops. Legend has it that the French inahbitants, with the backing of the King, made it a tradition to force newly married Sicilian brides to spend the night with them BEFORE being with their new husbands on their wedding night. The French inahbitants of Sicily, backed by the King, were abusing the Sicilian people in many different ways, especially the woman. On one particular night while the sicilian people were attending an evening prayer service of vespers, a group of French officials came by to join in and began to drink. They then began to fondle the breasts of the women and with that the sicilian men decided to finally defend the honor of their woman. A revolt started throughout Palermo, and the sicilian men killed the French inahbitants. Hence the term : Night of The Sicilian Vespers."


There is an Urban Legend in Sicily that on that evening a Sicilian woman went into one of the churches in Palermo and found her daughter being raped by a French soldier. Legend has it that she then ran out into the streets yelling "Ma fia Ma fia" which translates into "My daughter! My daughter! Some believe that this is where the word "Mafia" might have originated from.
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Remember reading references to the original night but had never seen anything detailed about it. Thanks for the good info!

Ron

You have to "Make your Bones" to be a made member.


Myth.

Consider through the years how many guys have been made and that at it's peak there was supposedly around five thousand members nationwide. That's a whole lotta bodies.

Jerry Angiulo who ran Boston under Ray Patriarca never personally popped anyone. He bought his way in. If I remember correctly his brother, who had to answer to Jerry, was picked up on tape grumbling about it.

Is it better and quicker to show that you're willing to clip someone? I'm sure it is and would probably make it easier to rise up the ladder. I think the biggest quality to get made is to be an earner.

The reality is that a Don makes and breaks his own rules. He can require an associate to whack someone before officially being "made," or not. Since you mentioned Patriarca, Fat Vinny Teresa in his very readable book says that the Boston Mob never officially made anyone--"they just kinda called you to The Office one day and said that was it," or something to that effect.

The Vinny Theresa book that you reference is titled "My Life In The Mafia." An excellent read. One of my favorite mob books. A part of it that has always stuck out in my mind was his telling about the horse racing business, the horse tracks, and how the mob would fix races and control certain jockeys and race tracks!

Lotta good anecdotes and Mob schemes in that book.
DC: Didn't he bad-mouth Sinatra and debunk his Mob connections?

I don't recall exactly what he said about Sinatra, ( read it a very long time ago) but now that you mention it, it does ring a bell.

And you're right on about the mob schemes revealed in that book.

If I am not mistaken, Teresa's book was only like the second tell all mob book ever written by a former mobster since The Valachi Papers. Am I correct?