Word: cosa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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General affluence and increasing public interest in sports such as football and basketball hike the stakes and make the potential for corrupting athletes great. Even if he does not succeed in fixing a game, the Cosa Nostra agent finds information about a team's morale or physical condition priceless in helping him to set odds. On just such an information hunt, a scout for Chicago Handicapper Burton Wolcoff wangled his way into the clubhouse of the Los Angeles Dodgers a few years back. Learning that Sandy Koufax, who was scheduled to pitch that day, was having even more arm trouble...
...Cosa Nostra's most profitable gambling operations was at one of the few places in the U.S. where most kinds of gambling are legal: Las Vegas. The Mob's technique there, known as "skimming," was as simple as larceny and as easy as shaking the money tree: a part of the cash profits from six LCN-controlled casinos was simply diverted before the figures were placed in the ledger books. How much cash was spirited away in this manner, eluding both state and federal taxes, no one can say precisely. After the Government became aware of mob influence and forced...
Many of the Cosa Nostra's legitimate business fronts were acquired when the owner could not pay his debt. Some public officials were acquired in the same manner. Over his head in various business deals, James Marcus, the former Water Commissioner of New York City, took a loan at 104% annual interest. When he was unable to pay, the gangsters found him a willing victim for other schemes, including graft on city projects. In the case of Marcus, as with many other public officials, the loan was almost certainly a come-on for what the Mob really wanted: a good...
...NARCOTICS TRAFFIC, chiefly in heroin, is less lucrative than gambling, but still profitable enough, bringing in more than $350 million in revenue and $25 million in profits. Because of the risks involved in peddling drugs directly, Cosa Nostra once again contracts the retail trade to its sharecroppers, saving for itself the less dangerous and infinitely more profitable role of importer and wholesaler. The sums involved are substantial. By the time opium from Turkey, the chief supplier for the U.S., is processed into heroin and shipped to New York, it is worth about $225,000 per kilogram. The price to society...
...BUSINESS INFILTRATION is the organization's fastest-growing source of revenue. Its interests extend to an estimated 5,000 business concerns. Indeed, Cosa Nostra's penetration of the above-ground world of finance and commerce is probably the greatest threat that it poses to the nation today. A business can be acquired in any number of ways, from foreclosure on a usurious loan to outright purchase. LCN, after all, has more venture capital than any other nongovernmental organization in the world. New York's Carlo Gambino and his adopted family own large chunks of real estate in the New York...