The Mafia Encyclopedia (116 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 342
called for Dorsey to get $1 in compensation for selling him Sinatra's contract.
Not that Moretti didn't also chastise the singer at times. When Sinatra's marriage to his first wife, Nancy, was busting up and he was planning to marry Ava Gardner, the mobster wired Sinatra: "I AM VERY MUCH SURPRISED WHAT I HAVE BEEN READING IN THE NEWSPAPERS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DARLING WIFE. REMEMBER YOU HAVE A DECENT WIFE AND CHILDREN. YOU SHOULD BE VERY HAPPY. REGARDS TO ALL. WILLIE MOORE."
As it turned out, Sinatra had little more time in which to offend Moretti. The mafioso was executed by the mob. His advanced syphilis affected his brain, and it was feared he was revealing too much about Mafia operations.
In later years Sinatra was frequently linked with a number of other top mafiosi, especially Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli, the Chicago mob honchos. Sinatra was embarrassed with a news photograph showing him with an arm around Luciano at the time of the infamous Havana gathering. In more recent years another widely published photograph, taken in Sinatra's dressing room at the Westchester, New York, Premier Theater, shows the star grinning widely in the company of such mafiosi as the late Carlo Gambino, hit man-cuminformer Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno, and three others later convicted and sentenced for fraud and skimming the theater's box office.
In 1985, cartoonist Garry Trudeau depicted a tribute to Sinatra by President Ronald Reagan and followed it in the next panel with the Westchester theater photo. Outraged, Sinatra issued a statement through his personal public relations firm: "Garry Trudeau makes his living by his attempts at humor without regard to fairness or decency. I don't know if he has made any effort on behalf of others or done anything to help the less fortunate in this country or elsewhere. I am happy to have the President and the people of the United States judge us by our respective track records."
Over the years Sinatra was as thick with presidents and presidential candidates as with mafiosi. He had close ties with John Kennedy (until barred from the White House by Robert Kennedy after he checked Sinatra's background), Hubert Humphrey (who scheduled him for a series of fund-raising concerts but quietly dropped him from the campaign in 1968 after a
Wall Street Journal
piece listed some of his underworld relationships), Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford and, of course, President Reagan.
Jimmy the Weasel, after he turned informer, was apparently quite upset when the Federal Strike Force didn't go ahead with a case that had what he clearly regarded as Sinatra star quality. According to Fratianno, Sinatra "gofer" Jilly Rizzo approached him and complained about a former Sinatra security guard the singer had fired; he was supposedly supplying the weekly tabloids with material about Sinatra. The word was that the man, Andy "Banjo" Celentano, was about to write a book about Sinatra. The Weasel quoted Rizzo as saying: "We want this guy stopped once and for all," meaning that Celantano should have his legs broken and be put in the hospital. "Let's see if he gets the message." Fratianno accepted the assignment to watch Celentano, but neither he nor other California mafiosi could locate their target. Celentano solved their problem altogether by suffering a fatal heart attack on October 8, 1977.
Clearly, the Weasel saw a delightful show trial in his revelations and was disappointed when the Federal Strike Force showed little interest in the matter. There was no evidence tying in Sinatra, and certainly federal lawyers weren't wild about pursuing Jilly Rizzo. Not when, as one told Fratianno, "you've got a chance to put bosses in prison. Those are one-in-a-lifetime chances. With an informant-type witness, overexposure is a terminal disease." Politely, the government was telling Fratianno that there was no legal case and they were not going to let him grab headlines for scandal purposes.
Unlike with cartoonist Trudeau, Sinatra expressed no outrage when deadly hit man Fratianno recounted the details of the alleged incident in his book
The Last Mafioso
.
See also:
Rat Pack and the Mafia, The
.
Sindona, Michele (19201986): Criminal financier
At one time banker Michele Sindona served as a financial adviser to the Vatican and was hailed by Italian government officials as the "savior of the lira." When it became clear he worked hand in glove with both the Italian and American Mafia, an Italian state prosecutor denounced him as one of "the most dangerous criminal elements in Italian society."
As Sindona's true character was bared, he faced fraud charges in the United States, as well as fraud and later murder conspiracy charges in Italy. He fought back by recruiting his Mafia cohorts to eliminate anyone who threatened him. Sindona recruited hit men to kill a government-appointed liquidator of his bank in Milan. The man was murdered.
A murder plot in the United States proved less successful. Sindona sought a "Zip" hit man to murder Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kenney who was prosecuting a case against him. The hit man, Luigi Ronsisvalle, had previously handled some "rough-up work" for the financier. Sindona wanted him to plant heroin or
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cocaine on Kenney's body to make the murder seem drug related. While he was an accomplished contract killer, Ronsisvalle balked, saying, "You talking about something heavy." Ronsisvalle was not considered a smart man, but he knew the American mobs frowned at killing prosecutors; in fact the mob made it a practice, such as in the case of Dutch Schultz's plot to have prosecutor Tom Dewey assassinated, to whack out anyone daring to upset the status quo in that fashion.
Sindona continued the plot with others but finally backed off when one of the intermediaries arranging the would-be murder carelessly mentioned Sindona's name on a telephone that the banker feared might have been tapped. Sindona was convicted for his American crimes and sentenced to 25 years. U.S. authorities then shipped him to Italy where he was convicted on charges there and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Shortly after his conviction the 65-year-old Sindona drank a fatal cup of poisoned coffee in his prison cell. The coffee in his cup had been laced with cyanide. He keeled over and shouted, "They have poisoned me."
Nevertheless authorities decided Sindona had committed suicide.
Skimming: "Tax-free" gambling profits
The Mafia would like to see gambling legalizedthey are the greatest proponents of such a system. Whereas hundreds or thousands patronize illegal gambling houses, millions a year would visit legitimate operations. The "take" in legal gambling is all the biggereven if everything is run on the level.
The fact that profits are supposed to be reported to the government is of trivial concern to the mob. The reason is "skimming," stripping away profits before figures are given to tax authorities, and even before the money gets to the iron-barred casino counting rooms where tax-agent observers are present. Lou "Rhondy" Rothkopf, for years one of the secret owners of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, once bragged to underworld associates that the casino in its first year of operation declared a profit of $12 million, but the mob had skimmed off an additional $36 million.
There are many ways to skim off huge amounts of money even in the casino's heavily guarded cages where the accountants and bookkeepers labor. It is also possible to do it out on the floor, with "high rollers" getting a run of "luck" and walking away with a bundle before IRS agents can swoop down on them for identification. The virtue of such big payoffs is not just in the skim. It is great advertising for the casino and lures in more customers hopeful of a big win.
The skim, as perfected by Meyer Lansky, is a work of criminal art, and it is virtually untraceable. Moe Dalitz, for years the big man at the Desert Inn, was unsuccessfully charged with income tax evasion in 1968. And a few years later, Lansky and five others who had interests in the Flamingo were accused of skimming off $30 millionvery likely a massive understatementbut none of the charges ever resulted in conviction for Lansky.
According to the best estimates obtained from informers, skimming either runs about triple the reported profits or about 20 percent of the handle (the total amount of money bet). This adds up to a monumental problem for organized crime because all those funds have to be "moved""laundered" or "washed"and stashed some place where they can be used in a way that does not invite federal scrutiny. Again, it was principally Meyer Lansky who showed the mob how to manage skimmed funds, providing one more reason why he was called "the Genius" and why he also ended up at the time of his death with a personal fortune estimated at between $300 and $400 millionall untouchable by the U.S. government.
See also:
Laundering
.
Slot Machines
The importance of slot machines to the growth of organized crime can hardly be exaggerated. With the end of Prohibition, it was the gem in the crime crown of the great bootleg gangs.
While the slot machine or one-armed bandit goes back to the 1880s, when the first such device turned up in the saloons of San Francisco, the real pioneer of slots in Mafia circles was Frank Costello. Costello, with by far the best political connections of any mobster in New York, saturated the city with slots in the early 1930s. In all, he placed about 5,000 around townin lunchrooms, drug stores, speakeasies, candy stores and other locations. In establishments that catered to schoolchildren, Costello had his machines equipped with wooden chairs so that the little kiddies could play such a delightful grown-up game. Even in Depression days, a low figure of $10 a day per machine produced a daily gross of $50,000, or about $18 million a year. Actually, experts believe Costello and his mob took in at least twice that much.
Of course, not all the income was profit. Expenses were heavy. The police and politicians had to be paid off. (According to one expert this meant "half the police force and all of Tammany Hall.") Costello equipped his machines with a special sticker which informed an inquisitive policeman if he was dealing with a legit mob slot. If it did not have the sticker, the officer was expected to sabotage the apparatus. The color of the sticker might change without notice so that any cheating independents using counterfeit stickers
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could be weeded out. Occasionally a misguided policeman would think it his duty to bust a protected machine, a shocking misdeed that inevitably resulted in his transfer to the wilds of Brooklyn or Queens.
During the regime of Mayor Jimmy Walker, the Costello-organized racket worked to perfection. Mafiosi in the Luciano family (Costello a chief lieutenant) were given no pay for their various racket chores but were accorded a given number of slots. Actually all they got were the stickers, giving them the right to set up the slots, which they had to buy and locate without infringing on the territories of others. Informer Joe Valachi testified that during this period permission to run 20 slots produced a weekly take for himself and a partner of $2,500.
Things took a decided turn for the worse for the New York mob when reform mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia came into office, and appointed Lewis J. Valentine, an honest cop, police commissioner. Valentine set about filling the upper ranks of the department with more honest officers than ever before in the city's history. Honesty in both city hall and police headquarters was more than even Costello could endure, and the gang leader was on the defensive when the mayor launched a war against slot machines. Costello pulled wires in the courts to get an injunction restraining La Guardia from interfering with the operation of the machines, but the feisty mayor simply ignored the order and dispatched special squads of flying police around town to smash the machines. Costello was appalled at such rank disobedience of the law, but eventually conceded that the slots would have to be moved to safer territory.
Happily for Costello, he found a helping hand in the form of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, who issued a ''Y'all come on down'' invitation at, of course, an appropriate commission rate $20,000 a month (to be left in a tin box in New Orleans' Roosevelt Hotel). Even with Long's untimely assassination in 1935, Costello did not have too much trouble maintaining his machines in Louisiana or even in anti-Long New Orleans. The appropriate officials were approached by Costello's number one agent, Dandy Phil Kastel, and a suitable business arrangement was achieved. The income from slots to Costello, Kastel and Meyer Lansky, who got a slice of almost all gambling enterprises in the country, came to at least $800,000 a year. This was after business expenses were deducted, including payoffs to political figures and police officials and a gift of 250 machines to the local Mafia chief, Carlos Marcello, to install in the Algiers section of the city, located on the west bank of the Mississippi. Marcello got twothirds of the take and turned back one-third. In return, Marcello made sure no other racketeers gave the slot syndicate any trouble. Costello always understood that one does not look to the police to control members of the underworld.
For a while, the slots racket operated without additional trouble until reform reared its ugly head. Despite the payoffs, the slots were endangered. To solve the problem, the Louisiana Mint Company was formed, and the slots were converted to dispense mint candy. A test case was hurried to the Louisiana Supreme Court for a decision as to whether the candy vending by the machines took away the gambling stain to them. It was long rumored that Costello-Kastel-Lansky ensured a favorable decision by buying four judges. In any event, the slots were found to be legal.
Finally though, in another reform wave in the mid1940s, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling was overturned, and the candy-dispensing machines were held to be gambling devices. The slots were tossed out of New Orleans. The ever-vigilant Costello had, by this time, made arrangements to move the machines just beyond the city line in gambling casinos in Jefferson Parish. Then, with the growth of legitimate casinos in Nevada, the slots were shipped into those establishments, almost all of which were controlled by the mob through various fronts.
Today, slot machines are legal only in Nevada and Atlantic City, New Jersey. The profits are enormous, far greater percentagewise than the dice, blackjack or roulette tables. The sales pitch is generally made, and is said to have originated with Costello, that since the machines have operated without payment of graft, they now pay off at 95 percent. Actually, it is believed that the true payment rate is about 75 percent. The slots remain as they were under Costellogenuine bandits.
Small, Len (18621936): Illinois's "pardoning governor"
Organized crime functions best where it can put the fix in on all three levels of local governmentcity, county, state. Illinois, in the heyday of Al Capone in the 1920s, met mob needs with flying colors. It would probably be impossible to find any other state with corruption more rampant. At the top of the heap was Governor Len Small, who carried his obvious collaboration with organized crime to the blatant limit. There is no known instance of Small ever turning his back on a bundle of currency.
Small was a Kankakee farmer and obedient follower of Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson. Small entered the executive mansion in 1921 and shortly thereafter was indicted for embezzling $600,000 during his previous tenure as state treasurer. The governor promptly announced he had immense faith in the jury system in Illinois, and clearly he knew what he was talking about.

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