Word: raceways
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Newsday (circ. 190,151) won the prize for its campaign exposing corruption and graft at New York's trotting tracks (TIME, Oct. 19). Four years ago, Newsday Managing Editor Alan Hathway, an alumnus of the New York tabloid News, started hammering at the Roosevelt Raceway, about half a mile from Newsday's plant, charged that Long Island's Building Trades Boss (A.F.L.) William De Koning was shaking down builders and track employees for close to $1,000,000 a year. Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed a special commission to clean up the raceways, and last month Labor...
Sprague's Daughter. J. Russel Sprague, G.O.P. boss of Nassau County and longtime Dewey lieutenant, resigned from the Republican National Committee last fall when he was identified as an owner of stock in Yonkers Raceway. Last week Sprague testified that he still owns a large block of Yonkers stock and has netted $64,000 from holdings in Roosevelt Raceway in his own Nassau County. Race-Track Counsel George Morton Levy added that in 1946 Levy had bought $2,500 worth of Roosevelt stock for Sprague's daughter; this was listed in Levy's name "so that people...
...Yonkers stock. Mrs. Jeanne Weiss, daughter of the late Democratic Leader Irving Steingut, paid $250 for Yonkers stock later valued at $45,000. James J. Dunnigan, son of a onetime Democratic state senator who co-authored the New York pari-mutuel gambling law, bought control of the Buffalo Raceway on a loan, put his father on the payroll for a seven-year total of $182,816. James himself, and other members of his family, did even better, clearing $511,000 within a ten-year period...
...names of friends and relatives, taken 3% to 15% of the premium in commissions, v. the ¼% to 1% charged by reputable firms. Some shady companies were found to be offering sizable kickbacks for business brought to them by union leaders. In New York, the late (gunshot wounds) Yonkers Raceway Labor Boss Thomas F. Lewis (TiME, Oct. 5) and his associates picked up $275,000 in excess commissions and fees from the welfare fund of his small (about 5,000 members) union. In Minneapolis, a teamsters' union-fund trustee borrowed money from the fund to open...
When investigations of New York's brisk harness-racing industry developed evidence of payroll extortion and management payoffs to labor bosses and gambling racketeers, Sprague's name often popped up. He had owned a big slice of the Nassau Trotting Association, which operated Roosevelt Raceway. In 1946 he sold the stock for a tidy profit. Later, he bought 4,000 shares of stock (then worth $20 a share) in Westchester County's Yonkers Raceway, paying for them on the installment plan, mostly out of their own dividends...