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Ranks decimated after crackdown by prosecutors decades later new york mafiaindictment of one nba A betting scandal involving a coach, a player and nearly three dozen others highlighted the crowd’s tenacity and adaptability to changing times and technology.
Four of New York’s five organized crime families allegedly participated in the sophisticated rigging of high-stakes poker games, which one investigator said was “reminiscent of an event”. Hollywood Movies.”
The mobsters are accused of taking home some of the $7 million they looted from unsuspecting victims who flocked to poker tables in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and other locations. long IslandA seaside playground for the rich and famous.
Former federal prosecutor Michelle Epner said the indictments provide a reminder that La Cosa Nostra is “still very real” and that like any organization that has been attacked, “the mob has adjusted.”
Brooklyn case shows mafia is less visible but still alive
The mob has declined significantly since the days when John Gotti Sr. ran the Gambino family, once one of the most powerful and dangerous crime organizations in America.
At the time, the charming Gotti smiled and waved to the courtroom audience and won the nickname “The Teflon Don” from New York tabloid newspapers after his consecutive acquittals.
The Mafia and its violent mystique was a cultural phenomenon, depicted in films such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas,” which paid homage to the brazen $6 million robbery at Kennedy International Airport, and later in the television hit “The Sopranos.”
In the 1980s, federal prosecutors, including future New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, launched a crackdown that used racketeering statutes that carried life sentences and took advantage of dismantling the Mafia’s code of silence.
Dozens of “made men” went to jail, and the mob structure built around social clubs was largely destroyed. Gotti, who was ultimately convicted, died of cancer in 2002 while serving a life sentence.
“I’m old enough to remember Giuliani’s claim that organized crime is gone,” said David Shapiro, a former FBI agent and assistant prosecutor who now lectures at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
While “the structure has changed, the leadership has changed, the methods of governance have changed, they still exist because there are still people to be plundered. It’s not as centralized, as open, as organized,” Shapiro said.
There are occasional reminders that the mafia continues to loom large. Six years earlier, the reputed boss of the Gambino family, Francesco “Frankie Boy” Cali, was shot and killed in front of his Staten Island home. But the crowd’s relative lack of visibility doesn’t mean it’s gone.
Jerry Capeci, a mob expert who writes the GanglandNews.com web column, said the Mafia remains a force in the gambling world.
“They’re not as out there as they used to be, and they’ve stopped killing people. But they’re still around,” he said.
The Mafia was in an area familiar with corrupt poker games.
In the Brooklyn prosecution, the Mafia played a major role in high-end poker games, with mobsters posing as ordinary players at the tables and providing leverage to collect debts, prosecutors said.
The victims, including a man who lost $1.8 million, were attracted to the games, usually Texas Hold ‘Em, which seemed special because former professional athletes also played at the tables.
But federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say ex-athletes and all other players were using the technology to fudge the results.
The technology involved corrupting automated shuffling machines that read cards and predicted which player had the best hand. Some players involved in the scheme wore special contact lenses or glasses that could read marked cards. These benefits were enhanced by cameras and lighting fixtures hidden in the poker chip trays, as well as an X-ray table that read the cards placed face down.
The results of the monitoring were received by an off-site operator, who transmitted information to the “quarterback” or “driver” at the table, who signaled to other cheating players what to do by tapping their chin, their arm or the black chips with their hands.
Sometimes, prosecutors said in a court document, corrupt players “tried to coordinate in a way that deliberately caused the victim to lose on occasion, in order to keep them at the table longer, or to avoid suspicion of fraud.”
According to court papers, a text message sent from “Big Mickey” to another person involved in the scheme read: “Guys, please let him win the 40k race in 40 minutes, if he doesn’t get a charm he’s gone.”
The crowd collected the debt after the games
Prosecutors said that after the Games the Mafia flexed its power to collect gambling debts that were not sought at the Games.
Sometimes, victims handed over their dues to fake companies who carried out debt laundering. At other times, the mob would resort to more traditional crime tactics – robbery, extortion and assault, including punching a victim in the face – to force card players to pay up.
The sophistication of the alleged fraud may be a surprise to some people, said Ron Kuby, an attorney representing the alleged mobsters.
“This old image of them as unsophisticated but cruel people is no longer true,” he said.
He predicted that the case would result in a plea bargain and a relatively short prison sentence, a reminder of the mob’s continuing role in the gambling world.
He said, “As any Mafia historian will tell you, gambling has always been a mainstay of organized crime revenue.” “It’s always there.”