Prohibition did not work with the numbers racket — liquor, marijuana.
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Fannie Davis started running a Numbers racket out of her apartment.
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Harry Belafonte's Uncle Lenny ran a numbers racket and was an early example of success for the singer.
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He became rich running the numbers racket in Baltimore before the state created the lottery and decided to run it themselves.
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Meanwhile, Rizzi's wife's uncle Joseph "Sonny" Juliano allegedly raked in millions running a numbers racket and taking illegal sports bets, although he claimed to only make $106 in annual income.
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Thanks in part to his connections to both legendary Italian mafiosi and the Havana underworld, he became a sort of king of the numbers racket in the New York/New Jersey metro area.
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It begins when they encounter a car that has crashed into a rare lamppost in a black part of town, a vehicle driven by an ex-cop who was fired in a crackdown on a numbers racket.
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When he got to the United States and wanted to set up this gambling empire revolving around a numbers racket, or what Latinos called "bolita," he knew if it was properly organized, it could be a goldmine.
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It was one of the worst police corruption scandals in New York City in recent years: a multilayered criminal operation that included brothels in Brooklyn and a numbers racket run out of beauty salons and a deli in Queens.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a Harlem church basement through Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and met W. E. B. Du Bois through Paul Robeson; his uncle Lenny, who ran a numbers racket, introduced him to the elite of Harlem's gangsters.
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It was a sweeping and complex criminal enterprise: brothels in Brooklyn, where 13-minute sexual encounters added up to more than $21 million in profits in a 20-month period, and nail salons in Queens, where managers, runners and agents placed bets in an old-school numbers racket.
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Police predicted what the press called "a fresh outbreak of shootings and violence in Cleveland's multi-million-dollar numbers racket".
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Sparrow McGraun runs a numbers racket but likes Wally better than these foreigners, so he saves the newlyweds. A grateful Wally gives this scoop to every paper except the Globe.
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With the end of Prohibition, Dutch Schultz needed to find new sources of income. His answer came with Otto "Abbadabba" Berman and the Harlem numbers racket. The numbers racket, the forerunner of "Pick 3" lotteries, required players to choose three numbers, which were then derived from the last number before the decimal in the handle (total amount bet) taken daily at Belmont Park. Berman was a middle-aged accountant and math whiz who helped Schultz fix this racket.
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Ben Rinaldo was associate producer. The film about organized crime features an up and coming youngster ruthlessly taking control of the numbers racket from the ailing former boss. The film is discussed in the book Making a Promised Land.
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The Cubans' owner, an entrepreneur named Alejandro Pompez, had a side business in the numbers racket. This eventually got him into legal trouble, and he had to abandon the team. The days of Dyckman Oval came to an end. The stands were demolished sometime during the off-season of 1937–1938.
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Dewey moved ahead vigorously. He recruited a staff of over 60 assistants, investigators, process servers, stenographers, and clerks. New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia assigned a picked squad of 63 police officers to Dewey's office. Dewey's targets were organized racketeering: the large-scale criminal enterprises, especially extortion, the "numbers racket" and prostitution.
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Fafi or fa-fi (pronounced fah-fee), also known as mo-china, is a form of betting played mainly by black South African women and men, particularly those living in South African Townships, and is believed to have originated with South Africa's Chinese community. The game is similar to a numbers racket.
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Márquez was identified in The New York Times as allegedly running a $25 million a year numbers racket. Márquez received attention in the late 1970s, when a New York State Supreme Court justice, Andrew Tyler, was convicted of perjury for allegedly lying about a meeting with Márquez in 1975. The conviction was overturned in 1978.
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Malcolm travels to Harlem with Sophia. At a bar, he meets "West Indian" Archie, a gangster who runs a local numbers game. The two become friends and start co- operating an illegal numbers racket. One night at a club, Malcolm claims to have bet on a winning number; Archie disputes this, denying him a large sum of money.
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In 1947, Márquez looked upon people who were prosperous, well dressed and involved in numbers activities as his role models. He began his career in the Harlem numbers racket as a pickup boy. As a pick up boy, he would go around Harlem, gathering the betting slips from the runners. The runners are those who solicited the wagers from the betting customers.
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When Jimmie tells Mrs. Saunders about the riot, she rushes to the superintendent's office to dispel the rumor Naomi started. Because of this, Naomi is soon sent to a convent. About 12 years later, Jimmie has earned $6,700 as a Pullman porter when he is approached by Ontrue Cowper, who tries to interest him in investing in the numbers racket.
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In 1932 he decided that he could take control and brought in Dutch Schultz as enforcer only to lose control to Schultz. With the murder of Schultz in 1935, Davis took over his numbers racket. On July 14, 1937 a grand jury indicted Davis for racketeering. In exchange for his cooperation, Davis was sentenced to one year in prison and was disbarred.
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Frank "Blinky" Palermo (1905–1996) was an organized crime figure who surreptitiously owned prize-fighters and fixed fights; he was best known for fixing the Jake LaMotta–Billy Fox fight in 1947. An associate of the Philadelphia crime family, Palermo also ran Philadelphia's biggest numbers racket. Palermo's partner was Mafioso Frankie Carbo, a soldier in New York's Lucchese family who had been a gunman with Murder, Inc.
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Another of his underbosses was Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo who was involved in the numbers racket in Boston, and was being shaken down by rival mobsters because he was not a "made" member. He solved this problem by paying Patriarca $50,000 and agreeing to pay him $100,000 a year to become a made member of the family. Angiulo was based in Boston and gained complete control of gambling in the city.
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Salerno served as consigliere, underboss, and acting boss of the Genovese family. By the 1960s, Salerno controlled the largest numbers racket operation in New York, grossing up to $50 million per year. Salerno kept his headquarters at the Palma Boys Social Club in East Harlem and continued to work in these areas. The FBI accused him of heading a bookie and loan shark network that grossed $1 million annually.
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As Prohibition has recently been repealed, Bumpy is concerned that Dutch will begin infringing on his numbers racket. Judy and Charlie, having lost Checkers and the rest of the group, continue to explore Harlem on their own. Charlie is particularly taken with the neighborhood and vows to reject his dull upbringing by buying a brownstone at 138th and Seventh. Everyone reconvenes at Small's Paradise for one final celebration.
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The loan fund for these operations came from the proceeds of the numbers racket and was distributed by the top bosses to the lower echelon loan sharks at the rate of 1% or 2% a week. The 1952 B-flick Loan Shark, starring George Raft, offers a glimpse of mob payday lending. The waterfront in Brooklyn was another site of extensive underworld payday advance operations around mid-century.
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This was later expanded to include a possible "numbers racket" through some religious programming and stock market reports that subversively transmitted information tied to illegal numbers games, following the testimony of several WJMO employees at one of the initial license review hearings. A similar investigation into on-air programs covertly broadcasting gambling information had already occurred at WOOK/Washington, D.C. The FCC's review of WJMO and WLYT coincided with their reviews of WOOK over the aforementioned numbers racket and WFAN-TV/Washington, D.C. over charges of deceptive advertising, as well as three television stations also owned by United: WMET-TV/Baltimore, WMUR-TV/Manchester and KECC-TV/El Centro, California, over allegations that Richard Eaton engaged in bribery with ABC-TV employees so as to gain favorable terms for WMUR and KECC's ABC network affiliations. Not connected to these series of hearings, United's WFAB/Miami would also find itself under FCC investigation starting in 1973 over allegations of fraudulent billing practices.
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Salerno was born and raised in East Harlem, New York. In his youth, he became involved in gambling, numbers, loansharking and protection rackets for the Luciano family, which later came to be known as the Genovese family. Salerno was a member of the 116th Street Crew, headed by Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola. Salerno climbed the family ranks by controlling a possible million-dollar-a- year numbers racket operation in Harlem and a major loansharking operation.
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Johnson's top enforcer and powerful Fourth Ward boss was former Ritz-Carlton Hotel bellhop Jimmy Boyd. Johnson met Boyd around the time that he and Charlie Luciano were forming the Big Seven. When they met, Boyd and Johnson took an instant liking to each other and Johnson began grooming him to become the boss of his organization. By the late 1920s, Boyd was running every speakeasy, illegal casino, numbers racket, and brothel in the city.
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After learning that Kines has been posing as a college student for twenty years, Velda suspects that he may have been running Kalecki's numbers racket at school, using his identity as a student as a cover. Mike goes to search Kines's room at the fraternity house and discovers Kalecki inside burning Kines's papers. Kalecki shoots at Mike and is killed when Mike fires back. Mike grabs Kalecki's gun just as the police arrive to arrest him.
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Robert Deane Pharr (1916–1989 or 1992) was an African-American novelist. Pharr attended Saint Paul's Normal and Industrial School, Lincoln University, Virginia Union University and Fisk University, but spent most of his career working as a waiter. He described his goal when he started writing as to be a "black Sinclair Lewis". He is best known for his debut novel The Book of Numbers (1969), about the numbers racket, which was adapted into a 1973 film of the same name.
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In 1936, in the waning years of the Great Depression. Johnny Hooker, a grifter in Joliet, Illinois, cons $11,000 in cash in a pigeon drop from an unsuspecting victim with the aid of his partners Luther Coleman and Joe Erie. Buoyed by the windfall, Luther announces his retirement and advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago to teach him "the big con". Unfortunately, their victim was a numbers racket courier for vicious crime boss Doyle Lonnegan.
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Langston Hughes's Little Ham: A Harlem Jazzical Is set in the heyday of the 1930s Harlem Renaissance. The story follows Hamlet Hitchcock Jones, known as Little Ham, as he prevents a downtown mob from taking over the Harlem numbers racket. Hughes's Little Ham: A Harlem Jazzical Arranger Luther Henderson was nominated for 2003 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Orchestrations. One of Owens' plays, "The Gang on the Roof" was supported by a grant from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays.
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The wholesale abandonment of housing was so pronounced that between 1976 and 1978 alone, central Harlem lost almost a third of its total population, and east Harlem lost about 27%. The neighborhood no longer had a functioning economy; stores were shuttered and by estimates published in 1971, 60% of the area's economic life depended on the cash flow from the illegal "Numbers game" alone."The Black Mafia Moves Into the Numbers Racket", Fred J. Cook, New York Times, April 4, 1971.
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" The street's Theatrical Grill served as the "headquarters" for notorious mobster Shondor Birns, but also hosted visiting celebrities such as Judy Garland and Dean Martin. Mobster Danny Greene and boxing promoter Don King were also regulars on the Short Vincent. The north side of the street was considered the "respectable" side, while the south side was a center for the numbers racket and was "studded with girlie shows." The pavement between the two sides "was referred to as the Gaza Strip.
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Dutch Schultz (born Arthur Simon Flegenheimer; August 6, 1902October 24, 1935) was an American mobster. Based in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, he made his fortune in organized crime-related activities, including bootlegging and the numbers racket. Weakened by two tax evasion trials led by prosecutor Thomas Dewey, Schultz's rackets were also threatened by fellow mobster Lucky Luciano. In an attempt to avert his conviction, Schultz asked the Commission for permission to kill Dewey, which they refused.
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Asby's house is ransacked before Shaft, Kelly, and Asby's sister Arna can investigate. When the perpetrator runs out, Kelly blocks Shaft from chasing him while pretending to help. Suspicious, Shaft tells Arna that he wants to inspect Asby and Kelly’s partnership papers, warning Kelly he intends to protect Arna. Bollin reveals to Shaft that Asby and Kelly were running a numbers racket with the insurance company and funeral parlor as profitable fronts but because they agreed to keep the scam clean, he looked the other way.
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Murder by the Numbers (1993) depicted Ness's investigation of the numbers racket in Cleveland. All of these novels, while fictionalized, were closely based on actual cases investigated by Ness and the Cleveland Police. Collins also wrote a one-man stage play, Eliot Ness - An Untouchable Life, which was nominated for an Edgar award. In 2018, Collins collaborated with historian A. Brad Schwartz on a nonfiction dual biography of Ness and Capone entitled Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago.
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The Bulletins understated brand of journalism won Pulitzer Prizes in 1964 and 1965. James V. Magee, Albert V. Gaudiosi and Frederick Meyer won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting for their expose of numbers racket operations with police collusion in South Philadelphia, which resulted in arrests and a cleanup of the police department. J.A. Livingston won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his reports on the growth of economic independence among Russia's Eastern European satellites and his analysis of their desire for a resumption of trade with the West.
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Eventually, the courts barred Hamid from his picketing, forcing him to focus his energies on his mosque, the Universal Holy Temple of Tranquility, where he dubbed himself a bishop, causing his nickname to change from the Black Hitler to the Black Mufti. He married Stephanie St. Clair, who ran Harlem's numbers racket. After she shot him, he divorced her and married candle shop owner and fortune-teller Dorothy Matthews, who styled herself Madame Fu Futtam, and claimed to be Asian. By 1938, Hamid had his own private airplane and a white secretary.
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Giosuè Gallucci (; December 10, 1864 – May 21, 1915), also known as Luccariello, was a crime boss of Italian Harlem in New York City affiliated with the Camorra. He dominated the area from 1910–1915 and was also known as the undisputed "King of Little Italy" and "The Mayor of Little Italy", partly due to his political connections. He held strict control over the policy game (numbers racket), employing Neapolitan and Sicilian street gangs as his enforcers. Born in Naples, Italy, Gallucci became one of the most powerful Italians politically in the city.
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He owned many tenements in the area and controlled the coal and ice business, cobbler shops, the olive oil business and the lottery in the Italian neighbourhoods. He was one of the biggest moneylenders and held strict control over the policy game (numbers racket), employing Neapolitan and Sicilian street gangs as his enforcers.Nelli, The Business of Crime, pp. 129-31 Gallucci ran what was supposed to be the New York office of the Royal Italian Lottery, which in fact was a front for his own policy game selling thousands of tickets every month throughout Harlem.
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He goes upstairs to see Mary, who knew Jack when he worked as a guard at her father's estate. As Mike resists Mary's attempts to seduce him, he questions her about the party and learns that Charlotte drove her, Myrna and Esther home that night after Jack and Myrna had an argument. Later at his office, ex-boxer Killer Thompson reveals to Mike and Velda (Margaret Sheridan) that Kalecki, his former manager, runs a numbers racket. Mike seeks more information about the racket but his questions earn him only a severe beating by some thugs.
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John Garfield and Beatrice Pearson in Force of Evil The drama tells of a lawyer, Joe Morse (Garfield), working for a powerful gangster, Tucker, who wishes to consolidate and control the numbers racket in New York. This means assuming control of the many smaller numbers rackets, one of which is run by Morse's older brother Leo Morse (Thomas Gomez). The brothers are both tainted by the underworld and neither are free from corruption; the terse, melodramatic thriller incorporates realist location photography, almost poetic dialogue and frequent biblical allusions (Cain and Abel, Judas's betrayal, stigmata).
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This was during the post Knapp Commission era in which the NYPD was the focus of a scandal arising from pervasive corruption and the crackdown on the numbers racket was sidelined due to a moratorium on numbers gambling resulting from concerns that systemic corruption of the NYPD would continue to flourish. Protection payoffs to the police were no longer necessary. Two years after his release from prison, in 1977, Márquez was briefly kidnapped, and was freed after payment of $8,100 in jewelry as ransom by his wife. He was found in the trunk of his car in Flushing, Queens.
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Charles Gargotta, also known as "Mad Dog", (1900–1950) was a Kansas City, Missouri gangster who became a top enforcer for the Kansas City crime family. Born in Kansas City, Gargotta joined the criminal organization of boss John Lazia as a young man. Gargotta and his close associate, Charles Binaggio built a gambling ring that grossed as much as $34,500,000 a year on dice and card games, numbers racket, and bookmaking. Gargotta was arrested more than 40 times over a 30-year period for murder, illegal gambling, liquor law violations, carrying a concealed weapon, robbery, auto theft, extortion, attempted burglary, and vagrancy.
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214-215) That same month, Dewey, his staff, and New York City police made a series of dramatic raids that led to the arrest of 65 of New York's leading operators in various rackets, including the bakery racket, numbers racket, and restaurant racket.(Smith, pp. 215-216) The New York Times ran an editorial praising Dewey for breaking up the "shadow government" of New York's racketeers, and the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote "If you don't think Dewey is Public Hero No. 1, listen to the applause he gets every time he is shown in a newsreel."(Smith, p.
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Although Dexter begins to fulfill his dream, he also starts forgetting where he came from and begins destroying his important relationships. He alienates those close to him with tabloid-style exposé stories, such as a local barber's illegal numbers racket and a restaurant's unhealthy cooking style. Dexter loses his fiancée, Toynelle (Arrindell Anderson), after a night on the town results in him spending the night with ditzy weather forecaster Missy Carnes (Julia Campbell). Dexter also betrays his best friend Baker Moon (Nathaniel 'Afrika' Hall) by revealing a local criminal's plan to commit grand theft auto, a plan Baker secretly confided to Dexter.
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In 1947, Manchester went to work as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. There he met journalist H. L. Mencken, who became his friend and mentor, and also became the subject of Manchester's master's thesis and first book, Disturber of the Peace. The biography, published in 1951, profiles Mencken, the self-described "conservative anarchist" who made his mark as a writer, editor, and political pundit in the 1920s. In 1953, Manchester published his novel The City of Anger, set in Baltimore and dealing with inner city life and the numbers racket, subjects Manchester had learned about as a big city reporter.
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Early in 1966, the FCC renewed WOOK's license but assessed a $7,500 fine for various technical violations. However, United's troubles deepened when, on August 31, a competing application was filed for the 1340 frequency by Washington Community Broadcasting. In 1969, the Federal Communications Commission designated Washington Community's challenges alongside WOOK's and WFAN-TV's license renewals for hearing. For WOOK radio, the FCC's questions revolved around the broadcast of false advertisements; the group also charged that WOOK was used in a numbers racket using fake Bible citations read over the air by ministers who bought air time on the station.
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However, in need of more money, Zwillman was eventually forced to quit, later selling fruits and vegetables in his neighborhood with a rented horse and wagon. Zwillman was unable to compete with the cheaper Prince Street pushcarts, however, so he moved to the more upper-class neighborhood of Clinton Hill, where he began selling lottery tickets to local housewives. He observed that much more money was made selling lottery tickets than produce, so he concentrated on selling lottery tickets through local merchants. By 1920, Zwillman controlled the bulk of the numbers racket with the help of hired muscle.
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Despite promising Nellie that he will not fight and risk injuring his hands, Nick fights several gang members who insulted her, and is saved from serious injury only when George, who has just been released from jail that day, joins the fight to help him. As a result, George is sent back to prison and Nick gets a jail sentence despite Judge Sullivan's drunken attempt to defend him in court. Nick is released when Nellie's new friend Louis Ramponi pays his fine. Nellie has an affair with Ramponi even though she learns he is married and operating an illegal numbers racket.
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By 1938 he had increased his earnings to $10,000 per day and Roe was pulling down nice cuts from the profits. They soon caught the attention of Al Capone and his syndicate, and they set out to take over the numbers racket in Chicago. The Jones-Roe wheels were netting over $25 million annually, by 1946 and the mob, seeking to move in on the Jones brothers and Roe, kidnapped Ed Jones and held him for a ransom that included $100,000 and a promise to relinquish his policy business. Ted Roe paid the $100,000 ransom but after Jones was released, he decided not to give up his share of the business.
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Shaft believes that Kelly instead killed Asby to gain control of the businesses and the numbers racket, as well as to retain the $250,000 to pay Mascola. As they are talking, two of Mascola's hitmen arrive to murder Shaft but he outwits them and, after killing the assassins, takes Arna to hide at his apartment. Kelly offers Harlem racketeer Bumpy Jones a partnership in the Queens numbers game if he will help him break with Mascola. Knowing that the action will cause a major turf war, Bumpy agrees but demands a 60-40 split. Shaft goes to Mascola’s nightclub, which fronts for his gambling operations in the back rooms.
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He particularly looked up to his father's relative Salvatore "Sam" Catalanotte, a leading figure in Detroit's growing Italian underworld. Giacalone was charged with his first criminal offense at the age of 18, the first of multiple run-ins with the law. By the time he was in his 30s, he was working as a pickup man in the local numbers racket, run by Peter Licavoli, and as collector of delinquent gambling debts for Joe Zerilli. Both of these men were highly respected in local crime organizations and they helped protect Giacalone from the law. Between 1950 and 1952 he was arrested multiple times for various gambling offenses, but avoided prosecution.
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Following the end of the Castellammarese War gang war in New York, Coppola became a high-ranking member of Charles "Lucky" Luciano's family. In 1936, following the conviction of Luciano on prostitution charges and later underboss Vito Genovese's fleeing the country on a murder charge, Coppola was left in charge of the Luciano crime family criminal operations including a monopoly on New York's artichoke supply and Harlem's numbers racket, worth over $1,000,000 a year. He controlled Mason Tenders Locals 47 and 13 of the Laborers Union. Local 13 secretary-treasurer George Cervone was murdered in 1961 during a bitter struggle for control of the local.
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Allen Bardeman (Robert Douglas) is a prominent, married lawyer who collects money from the numbers racket for the syndicate. His legal secretary, Angela Walsh (Vera Miles), is also his mistress, and he provides her with a house of her own, where Sam Henry (Robert Bailey) - a corrupt New York City administrator who acts as a "bag man" for the syndicate - makes a weekly visit to pick up money from Bardeman. Bardemans lavish lifestyle and tax problems have placed him deeply in debt. Angela urges him to solve his money problems by staging a robbery of the syndicates money, using a man he knows will play the role of armed robber for him.
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However, the term "racket" has expanded in definition over time and may now be used less strictly to refer to any continuous or repeated illegal organized crime operation, including those that do not necessarily involve fraudulent practices or extortion. For example, "racket" may refer to the "numbers racket" or the "drug racket", neither of which generally or necessarily involve extortion, coercion, fraud, or deception with regard to the intended clientele. Racketeering is most often associated with organized crime, and the term was coined by the Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.David Witwer, "'The Most Racketeer-Ridden Union in America': The Problem of Corruption in the Teamsters Union During the 1930s", in Corrupt Histories, Emmanuel Kreike and William Chester Jordan, eds.
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According to Francis Ianni, "By 1925 there were thirty black policy banks in Harlem, several of them large enough to collect bets in an area of twenty city blocks and across three or four avenues."Francis A.J. Ianni, Black Mafia, 1974 By the early 1950s, the total money at play amounted to billions of dollars, and the police force had been thoroughly corrupted by bribes from numbers bosses."Inside Story of Numbers Racket", Amsterdam News, August 21, 1954 These bosses became financial powerhouses, providing capital for loans for those who could not qualify for them from traditional financial institutions, and investing in legitimate businesses and real estate. One of the powerful early numbers bosses was a woman, Madame Stephanie St. Clair, who fought gun battles with mobster Dutch Schultz over control of the lucrative trade.
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WOOK was a radio station that operated on 1340 kHz in Washington, D.C. Owned by Richard Eaton's United Broadcasting, the station was known for its programming for the African American community in the Washington metropolitan area; prior to that, in the 1940s, it was an independent station owned for several years by the Washington Post. WOOK, which spawned an FM station (WFAN) and a TV station (WOOK-TV channel 14, later WFAN-TV), had its license revoked by the Federal Communications Commission in 1975 for an illegal numbers racket. In 1976, with the station's fate nearly sealed, WOOK became Spanish- language WFAN, in a format swap that allowed the Black-formatted WOOK intellectual unit to stay alive. WFAN ceased operating on April 22, 1978; on August 15, WYCB began broadcasting on its frequency.
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The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the Italian lottery, or the daily number, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. For many years the "number" has been the last three digits of "the handle", the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in racing journals and major newspapers in New York. Gamblers place bets with a bookmaker ("bookie") at a tavern, bar, barber shop, social club, or any other semi-private place that acts as an illegal betting parlor. Runners carry the money and betting slips between the betting parlors and the headquarters, called a numbers bank.
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In the 19th and early 20th centuries, African-American organized crime emerged following the large-scale migration of African Americans to major cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and later the West Coast. In many of these newly established communities and neighborhoods, criminal activities such as illegal gambling (such as the numbers racket), speakeasies and bootlegging were seen in the post-World War I and Prohibition eras. Although the majority of these businesses were operated by African Americans, it is unclear to the extent these operations were run independently of the larger criminal organizations of the time. Colloquially, black West Indian American criminal organizations may occasionally be included under the label of "African-American organized crime", but they are usually classified as culturally and ethnically separate criminal entities (and in fact often feud with established African-American crime groups).
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Born Harry Stromberg, Rosen emerged as a prominent racketeer in southwest Philadelphia and, as head of the 69th Street Gang, became involved in prostitution, extortion, labor racketeering and later in narcotics with Arnold Rothstein during the mid-1920s.Crime Magazine Succeeding Max "Boo Hoo" Hoff as the city's chief bootlegger during Prohibition, he was a member of the "Big Seven" aligned with the Philadelphia faction along with Waxey Gordon and Irving Blitz, later attending the Atlantic City Conference.American Mafia During the 1930s, he and Meyer Lansky worked on expanding drug trafficking operations in Mexico as an alternative to older routes such as Japan now closed with United States entry into World War II. By 1939, a lucrative heroin network had been established from drug traffickers based in Mexico City to major cities across the United States including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles as well as Havana, Cuba. He and his lieutenant, driver and bodyguard William "Willie" Weisberg, were named as dominant racketeers involved in the numbers racket under testimony from police superintendent George F. Richardson during the Kefauver Committee in 1951.Onewal.
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