Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...death last fall of New York Don Carlo Gambino, who as capo di tutti capi had brought a measure of peace to the nation's Mafia families through guile, diplomacy and strong-arm discipline. His elaborate funeral marked the end of an era, for he was the last of the graybeard Godfathers who dominated the Mafia in the 1950s and 1960s. The others are either in their graves or living in expensive Sunbelt retirement homes in Florida, Arizona and Palm Springs, Calif...
Successful Mafia men have several gambits for laundering enough cash to live exceedingly well by most Americans' standards, if not like the jet-set multimillionaires that their net worth would enable them to be. Some pass money to very cooperative bankers, who lend it back. Others own legal businesses with large cash flows?bars, pizza parlors, restaurants, jukebox companies or vending-machine firms. No matter how poorly the business may do, its books show huge profits because the mobster is pumping in the rackets money, thereby converting it into cash that can be spent openly. Other Mafiosi have no-show...
...Mafioso cultivates the image of a solid, churchgoing, charity-supporting citizen (see box). On the job, he keeps up a flashy front by wining and dining associates at expensive restaurants and resorts. Nearly every important Mob figure sports a well-kept mistress at gangster affairs. The dichotomy of Mafia life was nowhere seen better than at a flashy Manhattan restaurant where mobsters used to entertain their wives and children on Sunday afternoons and return in the evening with their girl friends...
...clan is the "money mover," who specializes in finding ways of putting Mob money to work. Loan-sharking is a favorite because of its quick and huge returns. California officials estimate that Chicago mobsters have invested $50 million in Palm Springs bars, restaurants, hotels and real estate. As the Mafia defector said: "Money layin' around in your pocket don't do nothin' but get wrinkles...
...Concentrating more money and manpower on fighting the Mob. According to a study by G. Robert Blakey, director of the Cornell Institute on Organized Crime, all levels of government employ only 400 lawyers who specialize in organized crime. Says he: "The Mafia now has more lawyers than we have...