Got bored last night and was watching some old documentaries and his came on. Couple of questions I had.

1.) Do people really believe he had no money when he died? He had to have a secret stash somewhere.

2.) The claim was always that he never killed anyone. I find it hard to believe he could have survived and risen to prominence in that life without having whacked someone

I don't think most believe he was truly broke.

Someone who could earn like he supposedly could, I can see never having to personally do dirty work. He was 100% Jew also right?

I mean lefty rosenthal (?) deniros character in casino never did dirty work did he? But he was a cash machine and deeply involved for decades...

I don't remember whether Lansky was ever suspected to killing anyone specific, but I think when his and Siegel's gang was hijacking Waxey Gordon's trucks during Prohibition, one of the truckers once reported to Gordon that he recognized Lansky as one of the gunmen. Theoretically, hijackings / robberies don't always go smoothly, sometimes people get killed if the robbed ones resist or the robber "thinks" he was about to reach a weapon. I don't know though, whether it ever happened in cases when Lansky participated, but even if it did in ones when he wasn't at the crime scene, he could still be held technically responsible, along with Siegel, since they ordered the hijackings to be carried out and provided the weapons. But I don't remember anymore whether there were killings in the Lansky and Siegel vs Waxey Gordon conflict, or just robberies without casualties. By the way, wasn't Lansky involved in Salvatore Maranzano's murder? If I remember correctly, the ones who directly carried it out were Jewish, not Italian, so imo it was most likely either Siegel or Lansky who gathered the hit squad and gave the "go ahead" at the request by Luciano and other mafiosi.

Was al malnik really groomed by Meyer lansky and tooked his place as the boss of the Jewish mob or is that bullshit!!!

Check out Little Man by Robert Lacey. Does a good job at explaining how Lansky never made that much money and apparently died broke.

lansky always used to keep his money in other peoples names. his daughter says the money he had in his own account was transferred to his brothers account in the 70s to get the irs off his back. that was about $15 million accordin to her. lansky's skim money was always believed to have been handled by al malnik. he was the top money launderer for those guys and very close to lansky. i think all those people used lansky. when he died all this money went with those guys and his son died a horrible sad death.laceys book is very good but he downplays him a little too much. the truth is somewhere in the middle. by the way his brothers family is to this day filthy rich

Lansky was the mind and Siegel and Luciano was the arms; Lansky wasn't tall but when Luciano tried to shack him he answered that " I won't give my money to you only because you're a guappo".

I don't remmeber when and where but I read that Lansky preferred to stay in the shadow and enjoy his money and was able to hide the money using other people so he was broke on the paper but milionaire in the real life.

Lansky has been around a lot of violence with the Bugs and Meyer Gang.

Yes but there are proofs that he ever pulled the trigger?

That is the definitive Lansky bio.

The author, Robert Lacey, did a thorough job researching Lansky's life. He said Lansky was worth no more than $4 - 6 million at his peak, years before he died. The FBI harassed him constantly from 1971 onwards. He couldn't ply his lucrative gambling rackets with the Bureau shadowing him constantly. Legal fees ate up his savings. He blew his last $50k on an unsuccessful operation to correct a chronic neurological condition in his ne'er-do-well son Buddy. He died almost broke. Lacey says Lansky was never as powerful or rich as he was made out to be--"he was the accountant, not the boss."

As for violence: Lansky was arrested numerous times in his youth, sometimes for violent crimes (in one case, trying to kill a foe in a hospital with a poisoned chicken!). He also did strong-arm as a young man. But, Lacey said Lansky never killed anyone, and never touched drugs. Much as I respect Lacey, it's hard for me to believe that a gangster involved with the Mob for decades never killed anyone or touched drugs, if a profit was to be made.

Lansky had a lot of Money tied up in Cuba...

Lansky lost most of his money in Cuba. He was not broke, but could never recoup from that loss, but he still had hidden shares in a few Las Vegas casinos, before Howard Hughes came along. The FBI hounded him the 1970's which is true, but Robert Kennedy went after him using other resources due to him not trusting the F BI. Lansky was shadowed by many agencies after 1959, so he could not really do much, that is why you can find pictures of Jake driving around to see members in Florida, New York, New Jersey, and California.

After he returned to power in Cuba in 1952, Batista reached out to Lansky to clean up gambling in Havana. Lansky was paid a consulting fee, but he never outright owned a hotel or casino in Cuba. He installed his brother as casino manager at the Nacional, and may have had hidden interests and/or skimmed. Santos Trafficante was the mobster with the largest holdings in pre-Castro Havana.

Lansky invested $5 million of his and other investors' money, plus $6 million from Batista, in the Havana Riviera. It opened in March 1958. Castro seized it the following January.

Sorry for the off-topic, since it's about Lansky here, but, every time I am reminded of this, I ask myself without finding an explanation: why didn't Castro put Trafficante to death when he could? "Communist dictatorship, political persecution, lack of scruples" etc yet, when he could actually kill somebody who deserved it for sure and (I think) with the approval of the most part of the law-abiding world on both sides of the Cold War, he let him go, even though he already had him in custody. What could Castro have possibly gained with this? Trafficante couldn't buy his way out: if he tried that, Castro could just say "I am taking all your money and property anyway, whether you agree or not, what can you possibly offer to me that I can't seize without your consent?". So why let him go? Trafficante didn't even become a Castro supporter or Communist spy in the USA in exchange for freedom; on the contrary, he was part in the (later aborted) plan by the CIA to kill Castro. So, could anyone think of a plausible logical reason why did Castro decide to let Trafficante go?

There's one FBI document which states that in 1971, Sam Giancana allegedly arranged for a meeting in Mexico between him, also the infamous Jewish mobster from the New York area, Meyer Lansky, and Tony Caponigro, high level member of the Philly crime family and also close associate of the Genovese group. Regarding the topics of this alleged meeting, the informant stated that something “big” was going on but did not furnish any particular information on what was the subject. So I can only guess on what was the deal on that meeting, but I can only add that all three individuals, during different time periods, were suspects of being highly involved in the narcotics trade.

That had puzzled me for a while too. But after learning about the early days of Castro's Cuba, it doesn't seem like he immediately made it the isolationist Communist country that it became. He was mainly just against Batista. I think he was even trying to keep the US on his side. So, bad as he was, Trafficante was still a United States citizen with no criminal record being held for no reason. Probably a good move to let him go.

Castro already was being criticised by US for bloodbath against his Cuban foes. Last thing he needed was to whack a US citizen, n, no matter how bad.