Modern day mafia 4
But activities by the Mafia and criminal gangs generally were not coordinated under an organization, and in fact terms such as “organized crime” and “syndicate” would not enter popular use until after Prohibition began. New York’s Tammany Hall political machine sanctioned gambling and brothel rackets by crime groups such the Five Points gang before Prohibition. In cities such as New York and Kansas City before 1920, the Sicilian Mafia, whose members were among the four million people who immigrated from southern Italy to America starting in about 1875, made money through the “Black Hand” racket - sending cryptic letters demanding payments from ethnic Italians with threats of violence or death. Under them were many local gangs of various ethnic groups, such as Irish, Italian, Jewish and Polish, focused on street-level crimes such as extortion, loansharking, drugs, burglary, robbery and contract violence.
Since the 19th century, there was, as sociologists call it, a social hierarchy with big-city “bosses” of political machines financing their control of votes in neighborhoods with payments from criminals running gambling and prostitution rackets and bribing police to look the other way. He was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison in 1931 after his conviction on tax evasion charges.īefore Prohibition started in 1920, members of criminal gangs in large American cities existed on the periphery of society. Capone’s criminal operation at its height in the late 1920s reached an estimated $100 million in revenue (nearly $1.4 billion in 2016) from liquor distribution, speakeasies, beer brewing, gambling, prostitution and other rackets. When Chicago Outfit boss Johnny Torrio quit and turned control over to him after the violent “beer wars” in Chicago in 1925, Capone was only 26 years old. Al Capone, Mob boss in Chicago, is the most infamous gangster and bootlegger of the Prohibition era. Luciano, who appointed Lansky as his chief adviser, convinced the crime bosses to use the Commission to make consensus decisions on rackets, settle disputes and authorize gang slayings. Luciano is credited with practically creating the modern brand of organized crime, led by the Commission, comprised of the bosses of the top five Italian-American crime families in New York. Charles “Lucky” Luciano (second from left) and Meyer Lansky (to Luciano’s left) stand in a police lineup with fellow hoodlums Sylvester Agoglia, left, and John Senna in 1932.
MODERN DAY MAFIA 4 FREE
A jury later judged him not guilty by reason of insanity and he left a free man. Soon after his release, Remus shot and killed his wife in a jealous rage. In 1925, Remus, charged with thousands of alleged violations of the Volstead Act after leading a large bootlegging operation in the Midwest, was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
George Remus, a former Chicago attorney called the “King of the Bootleggers” during Prohibition, stands behind bars in 1927 while being tried for the murder of his wife.
Courtesy of San Francisco Public Library.