The Mafia Encyclopedia (76 page)

Read The Mafia Encyclopedia Online

Authors: Carl Sifakis

Tags: #True Crime, #Organized Crime, #test

BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
6.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Page 216
and that he had sold a lot of stock at huge profits just before the market crash.
Lingle had been a valued asset to the
Chicago Tribune
because he had friends on both sides of the law. He was able to get stories from the Capones, from Bugs Moran's North Siders and from the police. Indeed, he was considered so close to Russell that he became known as "Chicago's unofficial chief of police."
On the day of his murder, Lingle informed his editor he was going to try to contact Bugs Moran about a gang war story. He didn't try very hard, instead heading down Randolph to catch a train to Washington Park racetrack. With a racing form under his arm, Lingle was puffing a cigar as he headed through the pedestrian street tunnel. A snappily dressed young man worked his way through the crowd behind Lingle. Without a word the young man leveled a revolver to the reporter's head and squeezed the trigger. Lingle pitched forward dead, his cigar still in his mouth, the racing form still under his arm.
Lingle became an instant national folk hero. Rewards for collaring his murderer totaling $55,725 were posted by Chicago newspapers and other civic groups. Harry Chandler of the
Los Angeles Times
, president of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, eulogized Lingle as a "first line soldier."
Unfortunately, Lingle's image could not hold up to even the most cursory investigation. Lingle's role as a master fixer was soon evident, and it also developed he had secret partnerships with some of the local brothel keepers who cut him in on their business to silence him. There was considerable evidence he had doublecrossed Capone in various illegal deals and was shaking down a number of Capone's followers. Lingle had also promised favors to many political leaders, apparently for hefty payoffs, and then failed to come through for them.
When the facts about him started surfacing,
Tribune
publisher Colonel Robert McCormick alternated between shock and anger as competitor newspapers crucified the late star reporter. In a counterattack, he editorialized, "There are weak men on other newspapers." He set out to prove it by running a 10-part series by a St. Louis reporter, Harry T. Brundige, that named some other errant scribes. One was Julius Rosenheim, a legman for the
Chicago Daily News
, who had been shot to death by gangsters a few months earlier. He had blackmailed bootleggers, brothel keepers and gamblers by threatening to write stories about them in his paper.
There were many others; some worked with Capone, others with the North Side Gang and still others immunely operated their own rackets.
McCormick didn't give up hope of removing some of the taint to his man Lingle; he assigned reporters to dig through probate court records to prove that Lingle had, indeed, inherited much of his wealth. Sadly, it turned out that Lingle did not get $50,000 or $160,000 from his father's estate, but a piddling $500.
Four months later the
Tribune
could report, no doubt with considerable relief, that the police had charged one Leo V. Brothers with the murder. Brothers, alias Leo Bader and "Buster," an accomplished arsonist, bomber, robber and murderer, was imported, the story went, from St. Louis to handle the Lingle hit. Brothers was convicted on the basis of eyewitness identification and drew a 14-year sentence, which was denounced by most newspapers as a ludicrously light punishment and indicative of powerful forces working in Brothers's behalf. Brothers, penniless, had managed to enlist a high-pressure, high-priced defense team of five legal experts, a fact that spurred considerable speculation that Brothers had been recruited to "take the fall" and so defuse public concern about the case. When Brothers heard his sentence, he smirked, ''I can do that standing on my head."
As it turned out, he only had to stand on his head for eight years, whereupon he faded away. Until his death in 1951, Brothers remained silent about who had covered the bill for his legal defense. And to his grave he took the secret of who killed Jake Lingle, the "world's richest reporter."
See also:
Brothers, Leo Vincent
.
Little Joe: Mafia execution signature
Four bullets in the head, each in two straight rows, or two deucesin dice game parlance, this is called "Little Joe." In the Mafia world of murders, this is the execution method for welshers, loan shark debtors, and others who have failed to deliver. (When a loan shark victim is so dispatched, the mob enforcers make sure that all other debtors to the mob know the meaning of Little Joe. The system works more effectively than methods devised by collection agencies.)
Perhaps the best-known Little Joe victims were Charley Binaggio and his number-one aide and muscleman Charley Gargotta. In the late 1940s Binaggio was the political and crime boss of Kansas City, Missouri, having effectively wrested power from Jim Pendergast, the rather ineffective nephew and successor of the deceased and infamous political boss, Tom Pendergast.
A man of limitless ambition, Binaggio looked to achieve complete power in the state by getting his own man into the governorship. That required money and Binaggio got $200,000 from "mobsters in the east," meaning primarily the Chicago Outfit. For that sum Binaggio promised he would see to it that both Kansas City and St. Louis were thrown "wide open" to syndicate operations, especially gambling.
Page 217
After the election, won by his candidate Forrest Smith, Binaggio found he couldn't deliver on his promises. He begged for more time. The crime families agreed to a short extension, but warned him either to keep his promises or repay their investments. Binaggio could do neither and in April 1950 both he and Gargotta were found murdered in Binaggio's offices at the First Democratic Club. Both men had been shot four times in the head, in two neat rows of two bullet holes each. Little Joe.
LoanSharking
Aside from gambling, loansharking is believed to be the prime source of steady income to the Mafia. Its popularity with the underworld lies in its simplicityno heavy equipment is needed to operate, merely money, brass knuckles, an ice pick, a knife or gun. And its practice is widespread. The New York State Commission of Investigation established that "one hundred twenty-one of the high echelon members of the five recognized criminal syndicates operating in great New York were engaged in loansharking."
Also called shylocking or six-for-five, the loan shark racket can generally produce a profit of up to 20 percent
per week
and sometimes even higher. Under six-for-five, for every $5 a borrower gets he must return $6 the end of the week. Magnanimously, the loan shark will allow his victim merely to pay back $1 and keep the $5 loan in force another week.
Loansharking is especially lucrative with compulsive gamblers. Sometimes the gamblers score big and pay back the loan the same day or overnight. (It is customary to allow such debtors off the hook for a mere five-and-one-half for five for overnight use.) But most face paying at the weekly rate. In one New York investigation, it was found that the syndicate was netting 3,000 percent interest. In Dallas, a less expensive mob shylock let lenders off for a mere 585 percent annual rate. A man borrowed $20 to pay a doctor and was charged interest of $2.25 weekly. After nine years he had paid back $1,053 and still had the $20 debt to take care of. These represent loansharking rates in the ghettos. In the corporate white-collar world, syndicate loan sharks can be a bit more competitive, offering businessmen and the like, hard up for large amounts of cash, loans at a mere 5 percent per week interest.
Crime-family loansharking operates on three levels. At the top is the family boss, who generally finances the operations himself, making money available to his capos (lieutenants) for about 1 percent weekly interest. The boss's net comes to 52 percent a year, not bad considering it is loaned risk-free. As far as the boss is concerned, his capos have accepted full responsibility for his money. If they fail to keep up his interest payments or fail to return the entire capital if required, they know they will be "hit in the head."
The capos, as the second echelon, relend the money to lower-rank members of the mob at anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 percent a week. These soldiers then make their money by collecting interest at 5 percent or more a week, depending on what the traffic will bear.
As collateral, the borrower puts up no security at allother than his body and those of his family. Loan sharks typically employ "leg breakers" to see that the "vigorish," or interest, is paid on time. The idea that debtors who fail to make their payments always end up dead is an exaggeration. A corpse cannot repay a loan, whereas a debtor with a few broken limbs can. Occasionally, though, it is good business to kill off a welsher as an example, and generally the victim owes very little.
Sometimes limb-breaking is unnecessary. In a well-documented case of a corporate executive with considerable assets, the mob thought better of using violence to get its money back and then some. The businessman fell behind on vigorish payments of $1,425 weekly to the First National Service and Discount Corporation, 475 Fifth Avenue, New York, a Mafia front. Underworld conferences were held between the backers of First National, the Genovese family, and Santo Trafficante, the Florida crime leader. It was decided that the mob would place its own man in charge of the businessman's plant to aid in recovering the debt. Before long the firm's assets were drained off so that the full loan and considerably more went into Mafia coffers and the company then was tossed into bankruptcy.
In the 1960s the New York State Commission of Investigation heard testimony that Nicholas "Jiggs" Forlano was the biggest loan shark in the city. Forlano was referred to generally as a "shylock's shylock"a mass wholesaler with a reputation for moving money efficiently and quickly. Forlano was technically a member of the Profaci family but had become so big that he serviced several crime family bosses, who in turn gave him money at the rate of 1 percent a week. Together with his partner, Charles "Ruby" Stein, he was identified by the commission as holding "key positions in the intricate network of criminal usury operations in the New York area."
Forlano gained a reputation of being a tough not to be trifled with. For a time he employed the violence-happy Gallo brothers as his collectors, but he could also handle matters himself. Once he stormed into the offices of another leading loan shark, Julio Gazia, who was in hock to Stein for $150,000. The fact that Gazia was related by marriage to Vito, and his brother Michael, Genovese meant nothing to Jiggs, who announced very menacingly that Ruby Stein wanted his money. Gazia,
Page 218
whose debtors lived in mortal fear of his wrath, was equally as frightened of Forlano and subsequently went into hiding, seeking the protection of Michael Genovese. Eventually, Genovese worked out a settlement that got Forlano and Stein their money.
Forlano's forte was intimidation, a style well demonstrated in an incident related by former Chief Inspector Albert A. Seedman of the New York police. The object of Forlano's terror tactics was Sidney Slater whom Forlano and two other Profaci mobsters came across at the Copacabana. Slater's lady friend left the table on request and the foursome engaged in not unfriendly discussion for a short time.
Suddenly Forlano asked, "What are you doing in a fancy place like this anyway?" Before Slater could answer, Forlano took a swing at him. Something flashed on Forlano's fist. Slater though it was a ring on his finger, but it turned out to be a steel hook, the kind used by newspaper delivery men to cut the cord around newspaper bundles. It sliced Slater just under his eye.
Slater jammed his napkin to his bleeding eye as a waiter approached and explained it was 4 A.M., closing time, and would they like a last drink.
"No thanks," Jiggs Forlano said, and he and his companions left while Slater sat there, the napkin now deep crimson.
In this particular case the intimidation style backfired, and Slater instantly turned police informant. Among Forlano's loan shark victims that hardly ever happened. They followed the underworld rule of paying the vigorish and keeping their lips buttoned tight.
Loansharking thrives today because it is accepted by too many forces in societythe criminals, many police, businessmen who have exhausted their ability to get loans from more traditional and reputable sources. It has also been established that organized crime loan sharks have even been able to subvert portions of the banking community. Through the payment of bribes to bank officers and employees the mobsters have gotten hold of bank funds for shylock purposes, often by getting loans with patently weak collateral. One bank in New York's garment center actually was used as a base of operations by loan sharks.
It takes a certain moral blindness to regard loansharking as a minor crime, as indeed many police do, considering bribes from such sources to be "clean graft" compared to narcotics money or payoffs to square homicides.
The pressure exerted by loan sharks is seldom restricted to beatings or leg breakingsand it can be far more demeaning. In Chicago, for instance, the syndicate leaves business cards at certain employment agencies, which are handed out to applicants who don't get jobs. The loan sharks are eager to lend such men money. It is not a high-risk operation; the mobsters know with the right pressure, anyone can be made to sweat until money comes out through their pores. Jam an ice pick next to a victim's eyes and threaten not to miss the next time. Most will repayeven if they have to steal the money from their mothers or put their wives or daughters on the street to turn tricks.
Victimizing the wives of debtors is a Mafia custom, despite the alleged rules about not molesting womankind. A particularly effective collection method is the threat and even the carrying out of the threat to bite off a wife's or daughter's nipples unless the debtor squares his payments.
See also:
Loan Shark Scams
.
Loan Shark Scams.
The average mob loan shark usually gets his funds from within his own crime family, where the family boss lets out money at 1 percent per week to his capos, who in turn lend it to the street loan sharks at 1.5 to 2.5 percent. Clearly, if the loan shark can produce his own sources of money, he can cut his costs for funds in half. There is little doubt that doctors, dentists and countless other professionals maintain safe deposit boxes jammed with $100 bills, all secreted away from the prying eyes of the Internal Revenue Service. Many of these professional people lend their money to organized crime figures for use in loansharking rackets. For this the doctor or dentist is paid 1 percent per week for the use of the money, while the loan shark puts it on the street for anywhere from 5 to 20 percent a week. Still, it is a good deal for the tax dodger. Instead of having hidden money produce nothing, it gets put to work at 52 percent a yearfar more than the professional person could hope to achieve if the money were invested openly.
It is common for organized crime figures to insist they are upright citizens and to point to the hosts of professional people, upstanding doctors, dentists and the like they proudly number among their friends. Friends indeed.
Unfortunately, too many so-called respectables have learned that dealing with organized crime is not all sweetness. There are many more of these respectables eager to rent out more money than even the loan sharks need. Thus ripoffs have become common. A professional or business person with a money hoard will approach a loan shark and in due course he will be offered a chance to "invest" his funds. He might start off advancing $25,000 or so. When each week he gets back $250, his appetite is whetted, and he will double, triple, quadruple his investment, depending on his greed quotient. Meanwhile the mobsters are simply returning

Other books

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez
The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry
Trouble in the Tarot by Kari Lee Townsend
Rio's Fire by Lynn Hagen
His Good Girl by Dinah McLeod
Eliza's Child by Maggie Hope
Vice by Rosanna Leo