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.


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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