Decades after prosecutors’ crackdown devastated New York’s Mafia ranks, the An NBA coach, a player and nearly three dozen others. gambling scandal Mob’s persistence and ability to adapt to changing times and technology is emphasized.
Four of New York’s five organized crime families allegedly involved The complex rigging of high-stakes poker games One investigator said it was “reminiscent of a Hollywood movie.”
The gang is accused of pocketing some of the $7 million swindled from unsuspecting victims who were lured to poker tables at seaside amusement parks for the rich and famous in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and Long Island.
Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner said the indictment is a reminder: cosa nostra “It’s still very true” that like any organization under attack, “the mob has adjusted.”
Brooklyn case shows Mafia less visible but still alive
The mob has been greatly reduced since then John Gotti Sr. The Gambino family was once one of the most powerful and feared criminal organizations in the United States
At the time, a dapper Gotti, who had earned the nickname “Teflon Boss” from the New York tabloids after a series of acquittals, was smiling and waving to the courthouse audience.
The Mafia and its violent mystique are a cultural phenomenon, featured in films such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas,” which paid homage to a brazen $6 million heist at JFK Airport, and later in the TV hit “The Sopranos.”
In the 1980s, federal prosecutors, including the future mayor of New York Rudy Giulianiexploiting racketeering laws punishable by life imprisonment and exploiting the erosion of the Mafia’s code of silence to launch a crackdown.
Dozens of “successful people” were jailed, and the mob structures built around social clubs were largely dismantled. Gotti, who was eventually convicted, died of cancer in 2002 while serving a life sentence.
“I’m old enough to remember Giuliani’s claims that organized crime was dead,” said David Shapiro, a former FBI agent and assistant U.S. attorney who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Shapiro said that while “structures have changed, leadership has changed, governance methods have changed, they still exist because people are still being ripped off. It’s just not as centralized, as open, as organized.”
Occasionally there are reminders of the Mafia’s existence. Six years ago, Francisco “Frankie Boy” Cali, the famous eldest son of the Gambino family shot in front of his Staten Island home. But the mob’s relative lack of visibility doesn’t mean they’ve disappeared.
Jerry Capeci is a gang expert who writes gang news network The online column said the Mafia remains a force in the gambling world.
“They’re not out there like they used to be, they’re not killing people anymore. But they’re still there,” he said.
Mafia familiar with corrupt poker game
In the Brooklyn indictment, prosecutors said the Mafia played a major role in high-end poker games, with gang members posing as regular players at the tables to provide debt-collection leverage.
Victims, including one who lost $1.8 million, were drawn to these games, often Texas Hold’em, which seemed unique in that former professional athletes also played at the tables.
But federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said the former athletes and all other players were hatching a ruse to use technology to manipulate the results.
The technology consists of corrupted automatic shuffling machines that can read the cards and predict which player has the best hand. Some players involved in the scheme wear special contacts or glasses that allow them to read marked cards. These advantages are further enhanced by hidden cameras and lights in the poker chip trays and an X-ray table that reads face-down cards.
Monitoring results are received by an off-site operator, who forwards the information to a “quarterback” or “driver” at the table, who signals other cheating players what to do with their hands by tapping their chin, arm or black chip.
Prosecutors said in a court filing that corrupt players “sometimes try to coordinate how to deliberately lose money to keep victims at the table longer or to avoid being suspected of cheating.”
According to court documents, a text message sent by “Big Mikey” to another person involved in the scheme read: “Guys, please give him 40 minutes to win a 40k hand and if it doesn’t appeal, he will leave.”
After the game, mobs collect debts
Prosecutors say it was after the game that the Mafia flexed its muscles to collect gambling debts that were not claimed by the game itself.
Sometimes victims send money they are owed to shell companies that launder the money. Other times, mobsters relied on more traditional criminal tactics — robberies, extortion and assaults, including punching and kicking one victim in the face — to force card players to pay.
Ron Kuby, an attorney who represents alleged gangsters, said the complexity of the alleged fraud may surprise some.
“The old image of them as simple and crude is no longer true,” he said.
He predicted the case would result in plea bargains and relatively light prison sentences, while also reminding the public of the role gangs continue to play in the gambling world.
“As any Mafia historian will tell you, gambling has always been the mainstay of organized crime revenue,” he said. “It’s always been there.”