By the mid 1950’s Ed Vogel became the real owner of the Apex Amusement Corporation and also secretly owned the Globe Distributors through one of his associates Charles Johnson. Both companies were housed in the same building and the Globe was the supplier to Apex for all kinds of vending machines and so by 1955, as a convenience to Vogel, his associates Johnson and Roger Rudnick formed the Skill Amusement Company to supply the Apex Corporation. As vice president of the Skill company, the Outfit placed none other than Hyman Larner.

Later both Vogel and Larner had another lucrative idea to open another of their own Outfit-controlled association and to gather all of the coin machine operators, manufacturers and distributors under their rule and the idea was gladly approved by the top boss of the Outfit, Paul Ricca. So in December, 1955, the gangsters created the Chicago Independent Amusement Association or the CIAA with Larner at the top. They saw a quick success because in the beginning of 1956 the association has grown steadily and their membership numbered almost 100 companies and distributors, and this was allegedly over one third of the total industry in the city of Chicago. Larner seldom appeared at the association’s offices and conducted most of his business deals through telephone calls.

The association also made arrangements to work together with the Recorded Music Service Association and the jukebox operators and distributors. Again, Vogel placed Sam Greenberg as president of the association and Hyman Larner as its executive secretary and general manager. Larner played it very smart by changing his name into “Thomas Waterfall” and managed to hide his real identity, which was a very good tactic in confusing the government, at least for a while.

The association also had dealings with the Local 134 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a racket union which was headed by long time Outfit associate Tom “Jukebox” Smith. In the end it was Larner who decided that Local 134 should join in and pay tribute. The association also handed out union labels to be placed on every machine but in reality there wasn’t any union contract. Plus, the new operators could not get in the union unless they had a label on their machines from the Electrical Workers Union. Of course, if someone refused a union label box, that same joint would suffer electrical problems from “unknown” origins.

The dues in the association were upped almost 600% and of course no money from the dues ever found its way to the legitimate union members. The thousands of dollars received by the association from $1 tax a month on each machine were given to Larner and then he split the rest with Vogel and the Outfit’s bosses. Local 134 was also like a sponsorship for the association which was obviously a private deal between Vogel, Smith and Larner. So now old time boss Vogel became head of the Apex Amusement Company and pulled the strings from the shadows. Through violence and intimidation, they forced many operators to join their union and association and every operator paid from 1 to 10 dollars per machine, weekly and if someone didn’t pay up, he or she was visited by guys like Jim Rini or Alex Ross.

Rini and Ross were hired by Local 134 as “union inspectors” and were paid $150 a week. Larner’s associates usually entered a joint and said that they cannot have machines from different companies in that same joint. So they gave the owners a card from the CIAA, with the name and number of “Thomas Waterfall” (Larner). These guys made so much terror around Chicago and also spread a lot of fear among coin machine operators. Once Rini poured down so much acid over some slot machines that the acid dripped down on the electric wiring and short circuited the power and blew the electric door of the joint. It was a mess but in the end millions of dollars in coins still poured down over Vogel and Larner.

And just to make things even better, two Outfit members, the Inglesia or English brothers Charles and Sam secretly owned the Lormar Distributing Company, which was mainly involved in the making of jukebox records. So the English brothers and Larner forced all of Chicago’s jukebox operators to buy records from their company. They were also selling counterfeit vinyl and had a monopoly in Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states around the country.

It was a beautiful scheme and during this period there was a constant cash flow into Larner’s pockets. And just like in the movies, again the “dark overlord” Hyman Larner dispatched his minions to further spread his lucrative coin machine empire. But the problem was that those same “minions” started to attract too much heat from the government by getting too often arrested by the cops, a situation which made Larner very angry.

For example, Ross, Rini, Mustari, and another Outfit guy Frank Eldorado, were arrested by Maywood police in a truck containing 3 pinball machines hijacked from Des Plaines businesses. At the station, Ross asked the cops to call the Crossroads Tavern at 159th & Cicero, Oak Forest, and to notify "Red"(Larner) of their arrest. So allegedly Larner gave the bond money to Outfit capo Willie Daddano to bail the hoods out.

Also in June, 1957, Willard Bates the owner of the Rio Vista tavern, who refused to pay tribute to Larner’s association, was instantly visited by Alex Ross who in turn was told to “F*ck off”. So one morning, Bates woke up and prepared for work. As he neared his car, which was parked in front of his home in Brookfield, suddenly his Doberman dog named “Princess” started barking. The dog’s warning caused Bates to draw his gun and when he opened the door of the car, the dog jumped and caused the man who was hiding in the back seat of the car to shoot at the dog. That gave a chance for Bates to shoot the man right between the eyes. Than two other guys rushed from the nearby parked car with their guns blazing at Bates, but his dog rushed them, again giving Bates the opportunity to fire back so the two men retreated and fled with their car. The two men were Jim Rini and Ross and the dead gunman was identified as Frank Mustari.

Larner was allegedly quite furious at Rini and Ross because first they screwed up a simple job, which was to kill Bates, and then they lost one of their own, something which instantly connects them to the murder since the victim was their known associate. But even with that, that gangster mentality took over their thoughts and so four months later, on October 1, 1957, Will Bates was gunned down by several shotgun blasts in front of his house and Larner was never suspected of being involved directly in the murder. As additional info, Frank Mustari's widow, Ruth, later re-married with one infamous Chicago Outfit hitman known as Harry Aleman.

Larner’s biggest problem was the media, which I personally believe was the real enemy of organized crime at the time. Back during the late 1920’s and early 30’s, William McCabe was an ex-County State’s Attorney and later became a part owner of a newspaper called “The Spectator”, which was a weekly newspaper that actively crusaded against gambling and coin machine operations of the Outfit. So McCabe decided to run for committeeman in the Forty-Sixth Precinct but the problem was that shortly after he was kidnapped, stabbed, beaten and shot but miraculously managed to survive. Later McCabe claimed that he was attacked by Outfit henchmen for refusing to withdraw from the elections. He eventually recovered and remained as the main shareholder of the weekly Spectator but gave daily control of the newspaper to his partner, Amelia Molly Zelko who in turn continued the strong crusade against the Outfit’s gambling and coin machine operations.

By the late 1950’s Molly Zelko started supporting the election of candidates to the city counsel who voted to outlaw vending machines, which became a big problem for the Outfit. Miss Molly even started sending reporters and photographers to investigate all gambling houses around the South suburbs, including Cicero. She was even “obsessed” in finding out on who was responsible for the attack of her business partner William McCabe back in 1948. She also hired private investigators which were driving past the local mob bosses’ homes on a regular basis, who were writing down license plate numbers of their cars which were parked in front of their homes. Story goes that Molly was getting close in finding out on who had orchestrated the attack.

Zelko was often warned by her friends and family regarding her dangerous job and all of the enemies she made were by writing about mobsters and crooked politicians. She also received many threatening letters but still she continued with her work. The main mistake was while writing crime stories, Zelko came across a name which was allegedly running the whole vending machine action in Chicago and went by the name of Red Waterfall a.k.a. Hyman Larner.

The evening on August 5, 1957, Molly Zelko was attacked and kidnapped while she was entering her car in front of her home. Her shoes were found kicked off on the sidewalk and her car keys were in their usual place underneath the driver’s seat, which tells us that she was attacked as soon as she entered the car. A woman or neighbor who lived nearby Zelko’s house said that she looked out the window after 12pm the night Zelko disappeared as she was waiting for her husband and saw four men with a black car removing a bundle from the back of the car, she then saw a human arm fall out and realized it was a human body. Story goes that the hit was orchestrated by Vogel, Larner and Francis Curry with the jurisdiction of Italian Outfit capos, William Daddano and Frank LaPorte. Zelko’s body was never found and her murder remains a mystery even today. Later her business partner William McCabe allegedly died of natural causes in August, 1958.

The main suspect in Molly’s disappearance was James Rini because he allegedly confessed to the FBI that he was one of the kidnappers. Even though his “fantastic” confession was viewed with skepticism by Chicago authorities, still Rini had Robert Kennedy and his boys digging up alleged graves all over Southern Cook County farm fields, looking for Molly's grave but they found nothing. The problem was that the feds caught Rini lying by stating that one of the kidnappers was Frank Mustrari, the guy who was killed three months before the vanishing of Zelko. Story goes that Rini made up the story so the authorities would reduce his previous sentence for providing vital information. If you ask me I do believe in Rini’s involvement in the kidnapping and also the murder of Zelko, but the poor guy probably had some type of story which was unbelievable, and during the process he made himself and the FBI a laughing stock in the eyes of the public.

During the 1950s, the Chicago Outfit turned its attention mostly on the West Coast or to be precise, Las Vegas, Nevada. Since gambling was legal in this particular state and since the casinos were legitimate places for a gambling device, both Vogel and Larner “detected” another very lucrative opportunity to expand their slot machine business. At first the income of the slot machine business was on second place since the real sources of income were the table games and roulettes, but it was not long before the slot machines became the significant source of income for their casinos. They reported large income from the vending and slot machines to cover the illegally earned income, or showed less income from the gambling operations that were actually received, in order to avoid paying taxes on that same income and to payoff investors who were not on the corporate rolls. This operation made a lot of cash for the Outfit in general and the Chicago boys became the prime force around Las Vegas.

Business was booming for Hyman Larner and so the “gangster tycoon” decided to open his own oil firm which was called the Salinas Basin Development company with its headquarters in a building at 165 E. Ontario and at the same place he also he had another office for the amusement association. Larner operated the oil firm under the alias “Edward Jarvis” and he used his real name only when he made private oil investments, for example in Texas or Nebraska. He had two partners in those investments, businessman Rue Manken, who was also involved in the amusement association and also another “gangster tycoon” and Cosa Nostra capo Ross Prio.

Larner also had a partner in his real estate empire known as Isadore Blumenfeld, a Jewish gangster and racketeer from Minnesota who was a real genius regarding organized crime in Miami Beach and Havana, Cuba. Besides his apartments in Chicago and Skokie, Larner also bought a $50,000 house in Miami, Florida and also owned six cars, two Cadillacs and three Mercurys and another unidentified car which he rented for $1.000 per day and in the end he also bought two 27-foot yachts. Larner was living high and in fact there were only two guys within the Outfit that lived like this, and they were Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo, the Outfit’s top bosses.


Photo of Larner’s house in Miami, Fla.

There was another darker side of Larner’s personality, which during the late 1950’s started to manifest as being one quite aggressive guy, something which brought him into the higher ups of the Mob. The first reason occurred back during the late 1940’s, when Israel was fighting for independence against the Arabs, Meyer Lansky and the rest of the U.S. Jewish gangsters allegedly held a fundraiser and through the New York’s docks and also through Miami, Florida, they smuggled weapons to Israel to help their Jewish friends in the conflict. In reality, it was an operation in which the mobsters sold most of the weapons and of course made a lot of money, so years later the new order of the Chicago Outfit headed by Sam Giancana used the same tactics and also expanded their smuggling operations in another and different conflict.

During the mid 1950’s the Cuban government started having problems with communist rebels and their leader Fidel Castro. Both sides needed financial backup and of course weapons. At first the U.S. Mob backed President Fulgencio Batista, mostly with the profits from the casinos in Havana, but on the other hand they also backed the rebels, mostly with food and weapons supply. This means that the U.S. Mob made money both ways.

Larner allegedly had more than few corrupted U.S. Army officials in his back pocket, and so the Outfit allegedly started stealing weapons from their army bases and than smuggled everything in Cuba and sold it either to the Cuban government or the Cuban rebels. Many corrupt public officials and secret agencies also saw profits from the operation because at the same time, they started spreading paranoia among all U.S. citizens with the help of the alleged rising communist force in Cuba and that they didn’t need a communist country near the U.S. borders. So they thought that if they helped in the Cuban conflict, the winning group will be on their side. But in reality they wanted the conflict to go on because it meant more profits.

Story goes that the Central Intelligence Association or the C.I.A. already got wind of the situation and approached the U.S. Mob. the main Mob “agents” for the C.I.A. were Santo Trafficante Jr. from Tampa, Florida, Carlos Marcello from Dallas, and Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Richard Scalzetti a.k.a. Cain, and Hyman Larner from the Chicago family. In fact, Roselli was allegedly the first guy who was approached by the C.I.A.

Rumors started to spread out that not all bosses were happy about the CIA-Mob connection, especially the Outfit’s top boss Paul Ricca who in turn represented the old guard and also respected the old rules against the government. In fact, it was Ricca who years earlier brought in these rising members such as Giancana and Roselli, so it was probably uncomfortable for him to be directly connected to these individuals who in turn decided to collaborate with the government. Their tasks and jobs were mainly on the same level as the dirty work which they committed on daily basis, meaning they were not giving any information about their criminal syndicate but instead, they collaborated with the government against certain individuals and other country regimes. So my personal opinion is that even though old man Ricca was right, still in the eyes of the younger generation of members this was a huge opportunity for their criminal careers. In fact, as I already stated, there were also other bosses such as Trafficante and Marcello who were probably backed by some of the New York crime families regarding that same venture.

Cuba, or to be specific, Havana was very important for the U.S. Mob and also for the American business elite in general because every single one of them had invested a large portion of their cash in that same country, for example in hotels, casinos and other various enterprises. But things went really wrong when Castro's guerrillas increased their attacks on Batista’s military outposts, forcing the government to withdraw and by the spring of 1958, the rebels controlled some hospitals, schools, a printing press, slaughterhouse, land-mine factory and a cigar-making factory.

Batista was under increasing pressure and as a result of his military failures, the CIA and the Mob ceased supplying him with weapons because they obviously saw on who was going to win the war. And so Batista was warned and fled into exile with over US$ 300,000,000 on 31, December 1958 and so Castro took over the country and now the Mob, the CIA and America’s business elite, thought that they also had Castro in their own pocket but they thought wrong. Castro turned his back at them and closed every casino and business enterprises, legal or illegal. Most of the American mobsters and businessmen fled Cuba and some were imprisoned by the new Castro government but the biggest problem was that all of the mobsters who invested a big part of their money in Cuba, realized that their investments were lost forever.

So the CIA wanted Castro dead but the Mob thought otherwise. The CIA wanted the Mob to orchestrate the assassination of Castro but the thing was that nobody moved a finger. The gangsters received money from the CIA but every time they tried to kill Castro, they “allegedly” failed or in other words they swindled the CIA and extorted money from the government. The infamous CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro were pure failure because the Mob knew that if they killed Castro, they still won’t get their casinos back because all of the people in Cuba now supported their leader and his ideals. They were still going to have terrorist attacks, which was bad for their business. Maybe the Mob still had faith in Castro but that faith slowly faded away and life went on because they continued to operate their other illegal operations which were on American soil, and also in other countries around the world.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the CIA had engaged with members from the Outfit because of their Havana contacts, and also for their smuggling operations. The Outfit and the CIA recruited Spanish speaking volunteers who were sent to South Florida and Central American CIA training camps specializing in guerrilla warfare/commando tactics. by now guys like Larner and Richard Cain became emissaries between Cuban contacts, secret government officials and their fellow gangsters, which in fact I believe it was a big push for Larner and his criminal career.

During the process Larner also made many connections close to various top government people from all around Central America. He passed a portion of the Outfit’s profits from the coin machine racket, on to government officials in Mexico and also to individuals in the Philippines and Panama. So by the late 1950’s the government was closely listening with the help of wiretaps and so they picked up Larner ordering seven Corvettes to be immediately shipped to Panama as Christmas presents for some local officials. With all of these financial backings and corruption, the Outfit expanded its operations around the world, including Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

The main international operations for the Outfit were headed by Larner, Gus Alex and Les Kruse, in correspondence with Sam Giancana and their mixed crew, meaning a group of members and associates from different crews, was known as the “Combine”. They actively tried to corner the gambling market in those countries such as racing tracks, casinos and the national lotteries. But besides the gambling racket, they also controlled many international car theft rings, in which stolen cars from the U.S. were transported to Central America and even all the way to the Middle East. They even smuggled cigarettes and prostitutes but the most lucrative racket of them all, again, were the vending machines. So the gangsters made a lot of airplane reservations which were often monitored by the FBI and so Larner had an idea smart and started investing in many airplane companies which provided him with “safer” travels, meaning it was easy for him to erase any traces regarding his trips.


Sam Giancana

So this is where the CIA comes in. You see, for the secret agency to infiltrate a spy of its own in a foreign country for example, first they had to train the individual and then to somehow infiltrate inside the foreign government, which in fact was a years of work. Or the other solution was to pay off some guy who already worked for that foreign state but they couldn’t trust that person on a long time period. So since they already had their “own” guys, which were the local gangsters who in turn already had established high level connections in those countries by “donating” big amounts of cash to certain officials. So the CIA wanted to use these so-called international gangsters, for the right price of course, to get info from all of these countries and to create their own influence around the world, even if it meant murder. The agency thought that these gangsters acted like patriotic spies for their government but they thought wrong.

Gangsters like Giancana or Larner hated their government, they never trusted their government and in fact, they also killed people who worked for their own government. This was their main “ingredient” for their outlaw nature and that’s why I believe that most of them never lifted a finger for the agency and just took the money. But I said “most” of the gangsters because I believe that few of them such as Richard Cain and Hyman Larner really worked for the agency as secret agents. You might ask yourself on why some mobsters joined the CIA ventures and others did not, well the answer is simple. Most of these guys such as Larner mainly worked as corruptors and corruptors don’t have limits in their job because they would go all the way to the top. So I believe that the CIA connections were one step further regarding the Outfit’s scale of government corruption.

So besides the Outfit’s pockets, much of the agency’s cash went in the pockets of many foreign government officials, politicians, police enforcement and military officials. Since Larner and the rest of the gang were considered international “gangster spies”, their operations were kept in the dark. If you think that the agency was the only player fooled in this game, I think you’re wrong. I believe that in return for the Outfit’s services, the deal was that the gangsters should’ve received protection against the FBI. The agency provided the gangsters with some counter listening equipment against any listening devices which were planted by the feds, but in reality the gangsters never received the real protection that they really hoped for.

In Chicago, the FBI started to notice all of the illegal tactics within the coin machine business and so Government investigator Arthur Kaplan handled the jukebox and vending machine investigation in and he found out that some underworld figures had established an association in order to keep a monopoly of the coin machine operations in the “Windy City” city. Kaplan also found out that the Chicago Outfit placed a man by the name of “Thomas Red Waterfall” to run the association. Kaplan was very confused because nobody seemed to know who Red Waterfall really was. Waterfall did not live at the address he gave in his application for office and the banks he gave as a credit reference did not exist. He seemed never to have had a picture taken, and only the most meagre description of his physical appearance could be obtained from the operators themselves, who were obviously too afraid to point a finger at the man who was extorting thousands of dollars from them. So Kaplan started to follow old trails such as flight and hotel reservations and money trails from Chicago to Miami Beach to Texas to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Little Rock, Arkansas, to Hollywood, California and to many other places around the country. By tracing insurance applications for a Chris-Craft cruiser and hotel reservations in Texas hotels, Kaplan finally was able to prove that Hyman “Red” Larner was in fact Red Waterfall. This was bad for Larner, the Outfit and soon for the CIA also.

So one thing led to another and Larner was called to testify before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management in 1958. When Robert Kennedy's boys tried to find him and the records which would tell them more of the union business association and its ties to the national juke box ring, Larner disappeared from the face of the earth. At first some people suspected that he was killed by his peers from the Chicago Outfit but they were dead wrong because by now he was much of an important person and so he was hiding in Florida, but was later located and was immediately subpoenaed. On February 26, 1959, 44 years old Hyman Larner took the stand in front of the Senate Labor- Management Committee which was headed by Senator McClellan and Robert Kennedy. The Committee asked Larner on how he truly maintained a fleet of six cars, home in Florida, two 27-foot cabin cruisers and two Chicago apartments on the $8,700 a year income that he reported for tax purposes. He was also asked if whether he hired any hoodlums to throw sulphuric acid on machines of non-members of his Chicago Independent Amusement Association and break up machines to force operators to join up and pay the fee for each machine. Besides giving his real name and address, the rest of the questions remained unanswered by Larner because he took the 5th Amendment on every single one of them.

This last question that the board asked Larner was rather sensitive which was regarding a house in Florida and whether was used for shipping out arms to the Cuban revolution. This meant that the FBI knew or at least suspected about the so-called secret operations and probably placed Larner in a very uncomfortable situation. Lamer again refused to answer the rest of the questions on the grounds of possible self-incrimination and invoked his 5th Amendment rights more than fifty times. Here’s the conversation:

Senator Mundt: I don't see how an answer like that could incriminate him. I think he is taking the Fifth Amendment frivolously.

The Chairman: I may have incriminated the house by the questions I asked, but I don't see how it would incriminate the witness.

Senator Mundt: That is a frivolous use of the Fifth Amendment, unless per chance there are some illegal activities being conducted at the house and I might ask him that. Are there any illegal activities being conducted in that house?

Mr. Larner: I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.

The Chairman: Let that document with the pictures be made exhibit No. 61.

Senator Mundt: Is there an operation operating in the basement of the house, a dope ring or a counterfeiting bloc or a kidnapping bloc, do you know?

Mr. Larner: I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.

Senator Mundt: This wasn't where they were shipping out arms, sending them to either side of the Cuban revolution, is it? There must be something suspicious about it, and you just can't be incriminated by looking at a house. The Fifth Amendment is available to a witness as a legitimate protection against self-incrimination, and if there is something illegal in this house you can take the Fifth Amendment. I don't see how the courts can justify a man taking the Fifth Amendment on a house which is just somebody's home. Do you know of anything illegal being done in that house?

Mr. Larner: I respectfully decline to answer because I honestly believe my answer might tend to incriminate me.

It was suggested by Senator Karl Mundt that Larner’s testimony should be considered for possible contempt action because of his “capricious” use of the 5th Amendment. Senator McClellan agreed but said that he thought little would come of it in view of the recent court decisions. The other witnesses were Larner’s wife Myrtle Larner, Sam Greenberg, Fred Tom Smith, Jim Rini, Alex Ross, Chuck English, Rocco Pranno, Joseph Gagliano and Larner’s boss Edward Vogel. Rini and Ross were handcuffed together when they appeared in front of the committee and all of them took the Fifth. The only witnesses that dared to testify were the coin operators who were terrorized by the Chicago Amusement Association. Two of them were Herman Klebba and Mr. Romaszaievicz from the L&S Amusement Company. Two Chicago gangsters were also wanted for questioning about coin machine rackets but were mysteriously missed. The two gangsters were Sam Giancana and Ralph Capone. Later both were found and refused to testify, invoking the 5th Amendment. After this tremendous attention from the law, that same year the Chicago Independent Amusement Association broke up.


Larner’s wife Myrtle Larner

Larner was getting too much of a public attention and also saw that things were getting too “hot”, not just from the government but also within the Outfit. In the early 1960’s when the FBI already knew that the mob was making deals with the U.S. secret agencies behind closed doors, they placed so much “heat” over the Chicago Outfit which became a big obstacle for their business enterprises and so guys like Giancana, Roselli and Larner, the men with many “dark secrets”, were under constant surveillance. The FBI even invented the famous “Lock-step” program in which the agents followed the mobsters in just few steps behind them. As for Larner, by now he still answered to Vogel and Gus Alex, and plus he spent most of his time in Florida where he constantly oversaw the smuggling shipments to Central America while nobody watched him. He kept Alex’s pockets filled with cash and nobody bothered him, and so he kept any contact that he wanted to, such as CIA station chief William Lohmann in Chicago.

So during this time it was a battle between the FBI and the Chicago Outfit, a battle in which I believe that the Outfit struggled for survival. Larner crew was also changed since he formed new lucrative connections with the leading Italian faction of the Chicago Outfit, such as associates from his own crew a.k.a. the rising Joey Aiuppa group, and also the Willie Daddono crew and in fact, Larner was the main guy who brought all of those rising Italian members within the organization and taught them on how to operate. Few of his underlings were Peter and William Altiere, Anselmo Pacini, Sal and Carmen Bastone, Frank and Albert Meo, Charles Ross, Tony Orlando, Tony De Angelos, Dominic and Tommy Russo, Jack De Lamater, Allan Rothman, Louis Lederer, James Tortoriello and Sam Volpentesto.


Carmine Bastone


Salvatore Bastone

The Bastone brothers often acted as Larner bodyguards wherever he travelled around the world. The Bastone brothers originally came from the North Side of Chicago but later they transferred their operations on the West Side and together with Tony Orlando they controlled the Town and Country Vending Company. Anselmo a.k.a. Sonny Pacini was an old known collector and enforcer for the Vogel brothers in the coin machine racket but by the early 1960’s, he was the main Outfit representative in Ecuador who controlled the slot machine racket in that particular country. The Meo brothers owned the infamous Outfit hangout Meo's Norwood House Restaurant in Norridge and they also fronted the Villa Venice in Wheeling, Illinois. Their father Charles Meo was an old Capone mobster. The Bastone and Meo brothers, together with Hyman Larner and Les Kruse, were the main Chicago Outfit representatives in the Dominican Republic. Kruse also tried to spread some of the Outfit’s gambling operations in England and as for the Bastone and Meo brothers, they obtained South American passports because of their constant travels. Louis Lederer was the main guy who managed few casinos in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas and also far as the Middle East. The “general manager” was still Sam Giancana who oversaw the racket with the help of his prime associate Hyman Larner, who in fact was still Vogel’s and Alex’s representative.

By the end of 1964, the “Combine” prepared for a full attack over the Dominican market and so they stashed huge number of slots and all kinds of vending machines in Florida and waited for the “green light”. The main guy who all waited for to give the go-ahead was Larner himself because he was the main connection between the Outfit and the opposition of the current Dominican regime. The deal was that the new government should’ve taken control and later to allow the Chicago “Combine” to open their gambling and vending machine operations. But an unexpected problem occurred when during the revolution, all of the Outfit members including Albert Meo and Carmen Bastone were evacuated from Santo Domingo regarding the outbreak of hostilities and that’s how the Outfit’s operations in the Dominican Republic were shut down because the new government banned all gambling in April, 1965. This means that Larner and the “Combine” were swindled for the second time by a foreign country and all of their lucrative arrangements failed to materialize.

None of the international gambling operations came out like they should’ve come out but that was for gambling, as for the vending machine business it was a whole new lucrative story. Allen Rothman was the main frontman for Alex and Larner, who back in 1962 also became the President of the Vending Corporation of America in Chicago and so with his help, the “Combine” opened up manufacturing plants and offices all around the Midwest, including Kansas City and Milwaukee and also in Europe, Japan and Australia.

At the same time, the “Combine” from Chicago was in contact with the President of Brazil and his regime regarding the introduction of that country into all types of vending, slot and music machines since the country was a huge market. Besides the President of Brazil, also present were the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the National Police Force. It is not known which members of the “Combine” were present at the meeting but I would choose between Alex, Larner and Allen Rothman since all of them were reported often travelling to Brazil. The problem was the lack of coinage in Brazil as the country more relied on paper currency at the time. And vending machines “feed” on coins right?! So Larner and the “Combine” found a solution and asked for permission from Brazil’s top administration to mint nine million coins in three different denominations to operate the new devices. So the group managed to mint the coins in denominations of 1, 2, and 5, worth approximately 7 cents, 16 cents and 35 cents. It was a fabulous scheme.

Larner and the gang acquired a building in Sao Paolo, Brazil, for storage purposes and also formed two Brazilian vending corporations and opened up jobs. The first corporation was known as the Touristal and the second one as The Valley of Brazil and so these two Chicago Outfit-connected corporations held a protective shield on the market because it was in the same basket with the current regime. But Larner used the same tactic as he previously used in the old Cuban conflict, by also supporting the opposition of the current regime in Brazil and in fact, later it turned out, according to the FBI, that Larner was the main contact with the Brazilian government. In the end, the deal between the Chicago Outfit and Brazil’s top administration profited between 100 and 150 million dollars. Who would’ve known that Brazil’s vending machine history was connected to the Chicago Outfit, and because of that, Rothman, Larner and one very influential guy known as Eddie Ginsburg, were the guys who exported millions of dollars worth of food, drink and cigarette vending machines in Central and South America. Larner and the rest of the “Combine” also had concessions for slot machines in casinos located in other various places such as Argentina and Larner was known for making shipments of $500,000 in just few months.

Back in Chicago, the “Combine” thru Rothman controlled the J&S Amusement Company and the Oasis Vending Company which was merged into the Vending Corporation of America. The Altiere brothers owned the A & W Electric and controlled a vast coin machine operation in Summit, Illinois and were considered as part of the Cicero crew. Also DeAngelos, Russo and DeLamater worked as collectors for Earl Kies and Julius Zimberoff, the general managers at the Apex Amusement Company and Ajax Phonograph, which were controlled by the Vogel brothers. As for James Tortoriello and Sam Volpentesto, they controlled a large lucrative vending machine ring in Kankakee County, with the help of two enforcers Guy Sparta and Alan Zimmerman. Tortorielo was a known hitman for the Outfit, direct under Giancana and Larner. Other prominent operators and enforcers in the coin machine racket for the “Combine” were Paul Payne, Harold Edwards and Armando Pezzopane. With the help of this crew, Vogel and Larner became invincible in the toughest time period when the whole Chicago Outfit was under huge government attack and many of its most lucrative rackets were on the downfall. The vending machines were legal but the violent tactics that gangsters such as Larner used, were not.

That’s why many Italian and non-Italian mobsters decided to join the coin machine “racket” and invested a lot of cash, and so by 1964 Larner became business partner with many infamous individuals such as Jewish gangster Lenny Patrick and together they invested in the Vencoa Music Company and also bought shares in the City Music Company. Larner and Patrick became huge in the bootlegging of music records which brought a lot of money for the organization. Another partner of Larner’s became Rocco Pranno, the boss of the Stone Park and Franklin Park areas and together they expanded the jukebox and vending machine operations as far west as Elgin. And just for the good old days, even Vogel’s and Larner’s former Cicero capo Ralph Capone connected with the “Combine” and placed Chuck Buffano as his frontman at the Universal Vending Corporation. After the deaths of the old Cicero bosses Willie Heeney, Louis Campagna and Claude Maddox, the rest of the guys such as Joseph Corngold, Joey Aiuppa and Robert Ansani were mostly involved in the coin machine racket, obviously because Aiuppa was still the capo of that area, and both Vogel and Larner answered to him.


Joseph Aiuppa

By the mid 1960’s the so-called “King of Slots” Ed Vogel controlled the Apex Cigarette Service Inc. and also the Deluxe Cigarette Service Inc. but the problem was that Larner had too much attention over his head and just wasn’t the right guy to lead the companies so old man Vogel decided to make his business partner Joe Mahoney the general president of the two companies. Again both companies were located at the same spot on 4246 Lincoln Ave., in Chicago, where they also shared a common telephone number. The Chicago Crime Commission also has identified Vogel as having control of both firms.

By now old man Vogel spent most of his time in California and Larner’s new boss was Gus Alex and the reason was the death of the previous boss of the non-Italian faction Murray Humphreys. Alex respected Larner very much and considered him a very valuable person mainly because back during the mid 1960’s Alex was banned from Switzerland for 10 years after Congress complained that his repeated trips were to stash Outfit money on Swiss bank accounts so he was restricted to go out of the country for some time and that’s when Larner came in with his Panama connections and helped Alex during the process.


Gus Alex

but the government already had its eye over the Jewish gangster and Alex being the very paranoid individual that he really was, so instead he had a new solution for his business partner and advised him that he should remain away from the Apex Corp. so he can reduce the government heat and to take control over the Outfit’s “out of country” operations since he already had a vast illegal smuggling network established both in Central and South America. Larner was absolutely brilliant when it came to handling the dirty cash, probably the best the mob had ever seen and he was responsible for moving the cash through South Florida to Panama and investing it around the country. Also two FBI agents, who decided not to be identified at the time (one of them probably being retired agent Francis Marrocco), said that Larner was absolutely the main individual who was responsible for moving the Outfit’s money through South Florida and Panama.

By the late 1960’s the Outfit’s former boss Sam Giancana decided to lay low and fled the country to Mexico in the pursuit of spreading the Outfit’s international operations even further. So Alex had the same offer for Larner who in turn gladly approved it and the main things that made Larner perfect for the job were his international contacts and also probably his old CIA contacts. Alex took over the coin machine racket while old man Vogel remained as one of Alex’s senior advisors. Besides Alex’s support, Aiuppa’s support for Larner was also some type of “security” and insurance from other rival crews at the time, that were headed by a new order under Ricca and Accardo which included Sam Battaglia, Phil Alderisio, Frank Cerone, Fiore Buccieri. So first Larner sold one of his apartments in Chicago and then he fled the country and vanished from the eyes of the FBI. He took his wife and settled in Panama where he bought a big house on a top of a hill outside of Panama City and he also took all of his cash and stashed it into Panama’s national bank.


Larner’s passport photo from 1969

Larner stopped dealing directly with the Outfit’s bosses but with the help of his enforcers and couriers, he stayed in contact with the top echelon and became the main “go to guy” out of the country. In Panama, he was also joined by one of his cousins Marcel Harrick and together in the city of Colon they operated the Juliano International, S.A., a corporation which was only engaged in importing vending and slot machines and also all kinds of gambling equipment from Chicago, of course all exported to Panama by Outfit owned firms. For example, Ross Scheer operated the Bally Manufacturing Firm in Chicago and in just few months the firm sold and shipped more than $500,000 worth of slot machines to Juliano Imports in Panama. Through Juliano Imports, Harrick and Larner also tried to export their coin machines in Guatemala. Larner sent his cousin to Miami, Florida; to purchase an armored car for the President of Guatemala and so Larner’s request was granted by bringing the slot machine business under the auspices of charitable organization known as “Bienestar Social” which was operated by the President’s wife of Guatemala. As additional info, by now Larner from time to time “sneaked in” the U.S. and resided in an apartment under the alias Allan Harrick, a surname which he obviously has taken from his cousin. Also Larner and Harrick together operated a restaurant known as La Pompa Restaurant in the center of Panama City.

In 1970, Giancana and Larner engaged in the operation of gambling rooms on large cruise ships that went from Mexico to the Caribbean which carried many high-rollers. So Larner and Giancana invested a large amount of Outfit cash in four excursion ships that sailed from New York to Florida and into the Caribbean and placed their long time operator and enforcer James Tortoriello in charge of the operation. The feds also highly suspected that in reality these boats were used for smuggling slot machines around the Caribbean countries. There are also unconfirmed suspicions that even weapons, narcotics, illegal immigrants and stolen cars were also smuggled with the help of those same boat excursions. That’s same year, on November 30th the “Combine”, with the help of Louis Lederer, opened up the Ab-Ali Country Club & Casino in the plush Ab-Ali Hotel in Ab- Ali, a suburb of Tehran, Iran. Many of the members of the “Combine” were present at the opening including Giancana. Lederer reportedly was appointed as manager of the casino, in which the “Combine” had invested one million dollars for renovating the hotel which was built years ago by the late father of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, shah of all Iran. Taking over the world, no?!


James Tortoriello

In 1972 Larner was back to Chicago under the alias “Allen Harrick” and as any other millionaire at the time, he rented a luxurious apartment at the Astor House at 1340 North Astor on Chicago’s Near North Side, and for just one night he paid $485 and also another $300 for two parking spaces, and he resided over there for several months. While being in his home city, Larner was seen having meetings on daily basis with the Bastone brothers, Tommy Russo and the Meo brothers.

That same year, the billion dollar Pritzker business clan, with the help of their Hyatt Hotel chain, wanted to buy the Four Queens casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. But the thing was that the Pritzker clan used a very lucrative business technique known as asset management where the manager, member of the Pritzker family, did not directly fund the projects. Since it was too expensive to buy a hotel in Vegas and later it took more than few years to see some profits, so the Pritzker’s usually invested a small amount of their cash and later teamed up with a wealthy backer to fill up the several million-dollar bill which actually bought the hotel. For a very long time, the Pritzker’s family “backer” was the Mob and the main connection was allegedly Hyman Larner. But Larner and the Pritzker clan had a much darker relationship regarding their hidden finances.

It turned out that both the Pritzkers and Larner together with other members of the Mob were few of the largest depositors in the most notorious offshore tax haven known as The Castle Bank of the Bahamas. I previously stated that Larner and the Outfit already used the Bahamian and Cayman Islands banks which have long been valued by those wishing to hide their money because those nations absolutely refused to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement. Legend goes that one part of the Pritzker family’s fortune came from their Mob connections and allegedly this is what reportedly financed the creation of the famous Hyatt Hotels. There was no crime involved, but the financial backing came from organized crime, plain and simple. So the connection between Larner and the Pritzker clan goes back with the formation of the Hyatt Hotel in Lincolnwood, Illinois. Later the hotel became a favorite spot for Larner to party with his foreign guests where he would often buy them expensive jewelry, expensive drinks and high class escorts. So in the early 1970s, after Ben Goffstein's death, the Four Queens Casino became part of the corporate era of Nevada gaming. So now Larner turned to the Outfit’s lawyer and union racketeer Sidney Korshak to acquire a Teamsters Pension Fund loan at just four percent, thus saving the Pritzkers $8 million.


Drawing of the Hyatt Hotels from the 1950’s

As any other “tycoon”, during this period Larner preferred quieter and much more traditional means of exploiting and controlling corruption, and thereby remaining out of the headlines and out of the FBI’s radar. On top of that, Larner’s representative Alex received even higher position within the Outfit, next to Aiuppa and Tony Accardo. On the other hand, guys like Les Kruse and Ralph Pierce were getting old and started having health problems, meaning some of Larner’s old associates were slowly fading away. By the mid 1970’s, Joey Aiuppa became the official boss of the Chicago Outfit, and so he made some changes within the still-existent “Combine” which was still headed by Alex and Larner, but this time Aiuppa preferred for Italian members to be in charge of the operation. Since Larner was mostly out of the country, in 1976 Aiuppa appointed Tommy Russo as the head of the “Combine” who answered, again, to both Aiuppa and Alex. Russo’s headquarters was the Palmetto Restaurant on the northwest corner of 17th Avenue and 22nd Street in Broadview and Russo allegedly used the same companies such as the Vending Corporation of America, Skill Amusement, Apollo Vending, Coney Island Amusement, Flip Amusement, B&T Vending and the Town and Country Vending to launder the Outfit’s dirty cash or on other words, this new crew transformed one of their most lucrative operations as their main “laundry machine” for the Outfit’s illegal income.


Thomas Russo

During the same time period, Larner’s name popped up in some Panamanian newspaper regarding his alleged involvement in a murder but the local authorities never opened a case against the Jewish gangster. The victim was some local Panamanian gangster who was allegedly Larner’s partner in the coin machine business, and was shot several times in a public place.

By the late 1970’s the Chicago Outfit was still considered as the most dangerous Cosa Nostra family around the country, mainly because of the one hundred Outfit-related murders which occurred during that whole decade. But smart gangsters who were out of the country like Larner didn’t care about what was going on back home, but instead they followed the trend, meaning during that same time period the coin machine business was completely changed because there were many new alternations. The new machine, which was marked as The Trade Booster, already replaced the standard coin-operated slot to an electrical slot which was operated via cable usually by the bartender in the joint. So during the late 70’s there was this new lucrative form of a machine and that was the video poker machines and again the main “go-to-guy” was Hyman Larner.

The current overseers of this new gambling racket were still the Bastone brothers, Carmen and Sal. Carmen Bastone went to Spain, where he invested in real estate and also supervised the video poker machine factory that the Outfit already owned and Larner had his own shares in it. All of the manufactured video poker machines were transported to Panama where they all got sold. Larner’s main courier was one small Italian guy only known as “Alberto” who always came to Miami, Florida; by plane carrying the Outfit’s cash from all of the video machines that were sold back in Panama. “Alberto” was a quite strange and calmed looking fella, who always waited for the last person to leave from the plane, while staying in the lavatory where no one checked. In fact, this was a trick so he can see if any government agents were following him or waited for him at the baggage claim. The cash that “Alberto” carried from Panama was divided in two parts, one part was for the guys who produced the poker machines and the second part went in the pockets of Larner’s longtime associate and boss Joey Aiuppa.

And so by the early 1980’s the video poker machines became one of the biggest money sources for the Chicago Outfit and the best thing was that nobody ever knew where all of the big cash came from but truth was that everything came from Panama and parts of South America that had the Outfit’s video poker machines and the guy who still took care of things over there was Larner, who always added an extra amount to the Outfit’s income from the rackets. In 1983, Larner was 70 years old but his senses still did not fade away. He still had high connections in Panama which at the time were represented by Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Larner and Noriega had two things in common and that was both individuals were criminals and second, both worked for the CIA. And that is why I strongly believe that Noriega was on Larner’s personal payroll and I also strongly suspect that Noriega sometimes used Larner’s smuggling routes and contacts through Florida for the purpose of smuggling narcotics, mainly cocaine, into the U.S. As additional info, when I speak about these so-called “smuggling contacts” I usually mean about corrupt individuals who worked in coast guards, military services, police squads, border patrols, airplane pilots and crews or even simple bus drivers. Everyone is looking for the chance to make a quick buck and usually the ordinary citizen is the main link in the chain of organized crime.

During the same time the FBI was conducting an investigation regarding the disappearance of Larner’s close associate and blood relative Marcel Harrick. Story goes that previously Harrick had some fall out with Larner and decided to leave Panama and so Harrick allegedly established himself in Tampa, Florida. The feds knew that Harrick was murdered but they weren’t able to connect Larner to the same case. In fact, this was Larner’s “style” of eliminating his enemies and potential rivals, no body no crime.


Marcel Harrick