Word: racketeer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hearing room in Washington reeked with the ugly smell of shakedown, of labor hoodlums sweating behind the Fifth Amendment, of sordid fear, as testimony on the Chicago restaurant protection racket went into its second week. To the members of the Senate's labor-management investigating committee, it was quite clear that they had caught the scent of one of the dirtier trails in labor history...
...Revolution 40 years ago, 100,000 Muscovites marched on the ten-story U.S. embassy building in Tchaikovsky Street, smashed its front windows in a barrage of stones, bricks and green ink. Far to the east in Peking, half a million men and women marched through the night making a racket for no Americans to hear...
...real estate has been one of the happiest hunting grounds of all for the Great American Confidence Man. Last week in Washington members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations sat spellbound as witnesses unfolded a vivid account of the latest and biggest real-estate con game: the "advance fee" racket. From its birthplace in Chicago more than five years ago, the racket has expanded to all 48 states until some 70 firms now bilk unwary U.S. property owners of an estimated $25 million-$50 million a year...
...Labor Racket. Accardo, arrogant in cafe society suit and dark sunglasses, refused last week to tell the U.S. Senate labor-management investigating committee anything about his high standard of living, or how he keeps it. Testifying under subpoena, he set the style for six other professional gangsters who uniformly claimed that to talk at all would be to risk selfincrimination. Accardo let a total of 172 questions pass without answer. Samples: Where were you born? Do you operate your affairs to get control of unions? Do you have any scruples against killing? Do you have any respect for your government...
...would have made the first twelve Dukes of Bedford shudder. His present Grace has turned the place into a sort of Disneyland-with a degree of success that has made him both the target and the envy of all those engaged in what his duchess calls "the stately-homes racket...