Word: bolita
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Cities, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, may have more difficulty combatting the numbers game ?or bolita or the policy racket?because its networks of runners are big employers in the ghettos and amount to major community industries. Notes Max Renner, a New York investigation commission special agent: "Even when the numbers in Harlem was operated by white mobsters, 90% of the take stayed there." Thus powerful politicians from poor urban constituencies have traditionally opposed serious attempts to drive the numbers out of business...
...peppers, avocados, rice and black beans. Spanish-language newspapers and magazines abound on the newsstands, and the air is pungent with the aroma of steaming black coffee. The sight of Cuban women in hip-hugging skirts and slacks is savored by Latin loungers on every streetcorner. Tickets for the bolita, an illegal lottery, are discreetly sold under the counter. The scene might well be Havana's Prado. But it is actually downtown Miami...
...wife $36,000 in payoff money from gamblers. Over on the west coast, Tampa's Sheriff Hugh Culbreath was apparently in business with the top underworld boss, "Big Red" Italiano, let his brother run a book right in his office. An accountant for the racketeers in the Cuban bolita (a version of numbers in which small numbered balls are shaken up in a burlap bag) told the committee that one weekly expense item meant money for the sheriff, scornfully designated in the books as "Cabeza de melon" or "Melon-head...
...office, George told the committee, he was a collector for a group of deputies and received $800 weekly to be split up. He said that $300 of the money came from the S & G Syndicate, $300 from the swank Sunny Isles Casino and $200 from the operation of bolita, the Cuban numbers game. Occasional raids were made on these establishments, but only after the management had been tipped off first. In the period, George estimated he took in about $50,000 and kept...
Daily Double. In South Miami, Fla., Julian Carballo was arrested for possessing bolita lottery tickets which he had brought to the city council meeting to show fellow council members that the gambling laws were not enforced...