Meyer Lansky

Early life

Maier Suchowljansky was born on July 4, 1902, in Grodno, Russian Empire (now Belarus), to a Polish-Jewish family. When asked his native country, Lansky always responded "Poland". In 1911, Lansky emigrated to the United States through the port of Odessa with his mother and brother Jacob, and joined his father (who had immigrated in 1909) living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York.

Lansky met Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel when they were children. They became lifelong friends, as well as partners in the bootlegging trade, and together managed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, with its reputation as one of the most violent Prohibition gangs. Lansky was also close friends with Charles "Lucky" Luciano; the two met as teenagers when Luciano attempted to extort Lansky for protection money on his walk home from school. Luciano respected the younger boy's defiant responses to his threats, and the two formed a lasting partnership. They later associated with veteran gangster Arnold Rothstein until his murder in 1928.

Career

Gambling operations, 1929–1945

Luciano had a vision to form a national crime syndicate in which the Italian, Jewish, and Irish gangs could pool their resources and turn organized crime into a lucrative business for all—an organization he founded after a conference in Atlantic City organized by himself, Lansky, Johnny Torrio, and Frank Costello, in May 1929. Also, as early as 1932, Lansky shifted money from illegal activities in New Orleans to Swiss offshore accounts. The Swiss secrecy law from 1934 sanctioned the money laundering by "banks whose officials knew very well they were working for criminals". By 1936, Lansky had established gambling operations in Florida and Cuba. These gambling operations were founded upon two innovations:

• Lansky and his connections had the technical expertise to manage them effectively based upon Lansky's knowledge of the mathematical odds of most popular wagering games.
• Mob connections and bribed law enforcement were used to ensure their establishments' legal and physical security from other crime figures and law enforcement.

There was also an absolute rule of integrity concerning the games and wagers made within their establishments. Lansky's "carpet joints" in Florida and elsewhere were never "clip joints", where gamblers were unsure whether the games were rigged. Lansky ensured that the staff administering the games were of high integrity.

Opposing Nazi activity in America 1938-1941

With the election of Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the influence and membership of the Nazi party grew. Soon after, the influence of the Nazi party spread to America, mostly among German immigrants, who formed the organization Friends of New Germany (FONG). In 1936, FONG was succeeded by the German American Bund, with increased Nazi activity including rallies, marches and demonstrations. At the request of the New York Judge and former Congressman Nathan Perlman, Lansky and his gang stepped outside their usual criminal activities to break up rallies held by the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. He recalled a particular rally in Yorkville, a German neighborhood in Manhattan, that he and 14 associates disrupted, on April 20, 1938:

When Judge Perlman offered to pay Lansky for his services, he declined: "I am a Jew, and I feel for the Jews in Europe who are suffering. They are my brothers".

World War II involvement, 1941–1945

During World War II, Lansky was instrumental in helping the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)'s Operation Underworld, in which the government recruited criminals to watch out for German infiltrators and submarine-borne saboteurs. Lansky helped arrange a deal with the government via a high-ranking United States Navy official that secured Luciano's release from prison; in exchange, the Mafia provided security for the warships being built along the docks in New York Harbor. German submarines were sinking Allied ships in great numbers along the eastern seaboard and the Caribbean coast, and there was great fear of attack or sabotage by Nazi sympathizers. Lansky connected the ONI with Luciano, who reportedly instructed Joseph Lanza to prevent sabotage on the New York waterfront.

Flamingo Hotel, 1946–1947

In 1946, Lansky convinced the Italian-American Mafia to put Siegel in charge of Las Vegas, and became a major investor in Siegel's Flamingo Hotel. To protect himself from the type of prosecution that sent Al Capone to prison for tax evasion and prostitution, Lansky transferred his growing casino empire's illegal earnings to a Swiss bank account, where anonymity was assured by the 1934 Swiss Banking Act. Lansky eventually bought an offshore bank in Switzerland, which he used to launder money through a network of shell and holding companies.

In 1946, Lansky attended a secret meeting in Havana to discuss Siegel's management of the Flamingo Hotel, which was running far behind schedule and costing Siegel's Mafia investors a great deal of money. The other bosses wanted to kill Siegel, but Lansky begged them to give his friend a second chance.

Despite this reprieve, Siegel continued to lose money on the Flamingo. A second meeting was then called. By the time the meeting occurred, the casino had turned a small profit. With Luciano's support, Lansky convinced the other investors to give Siegel more time. When the hotel started losing money again, the other investors decided that Siegel was finished. It is widely believed that Lansky was compelled to give the final okay on eliminating Siegel due to his long relationship with him and his stature in the organization.

On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot and killed in Beverly Hills, California. Twenty minutes later, Lansky's associates, including Gus Greenbaum and Moe Sedway, walked into the Flamingo and took control of it. According to the FBI, Lansky retained a substantial financial interest in the Flamingo for the next 20 years. Lansky said in several interviews later in his life that if it had been up to him, "Ben Siegel would be alive today".

Siegel's death marked a power transfer in Vegas from New York's Five Families to the Chicago Outfit. Although his role was considerably more restrained than in previous years, Lansky is believed to have both advised and aided Chicago boss Tony Accardo in initially establishing his hold.

Cuba, 1946–1959

Lansky was part of a group of mobsters who came to Havana in the 1940s and 50s that involved themselves in the casino and hotel industry on the island of Cuba. He established himself as the most powerful mobster in the country.

As early as 1937 he controlled the casino at the Hotel Nacional. Batista and Lansky formed a renowned friendship and business relationship that lasted a decade. During a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York in the late 1940s, it was mutually agreed that, in exchange for kickbacks, Batista would offer Lansky and the Mafia control of the country's casinos and racetracks. Batista would open Havana to large-scale gambling, and his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over , which would include a casino license. Lansky would put himself at the center of Cuba's gambling operations. He immediately called on his associates to hold a summit in Havana.

The Havana Conference was held on December 22, 1946, at the Hotel Nacional. This was the first full-scale meeting of American underworld leaders since the Chicago meeting in 1932. Present were such figures as Joe Adonis, Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, Frank Costello, Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, Vito Genovese, Moe Dalitz, Thomas Luchese, from New York; Santo Trafficante Jr. from Tampa; Carlos Marcello from the New Orleans crime family; and Stefano Magaddino, Bonanno's cousin from Buffalo. From Chicago there were Accardo and the Fischetti brothers, "Trigger-Happy" Charlie and Rocco Fischetti; and, representing the Jewish interest, Lansky, Dalitz and "Dandy" Phil Kastel from Florida.

In 1952, Lansky offered then-President of Cuba Carlos Prío Socarrás a bribe of to step down so Batista could return to power. Once Batista retook control of the government in a military coup in March 1952, he quickly put gambling back on track. Batista offered Lansky an annual salary of to serve as an unofficial gambling minister. By 1955, he had changed the gambling laws again, granting a gaming license to anyone who invested in a hotel or in a new nightclub. Unlike the procedure for acquiring gaming licenses in Vegas, this provision exempted venture capitalists from background checks. As long as they made the required investment, they were given public matching funds for construction, a ten-year tax exemption and duty-free importation of equipment and furnishings. The government would get for the license, plus a percentage of the profits from each casino. Cuba's 10,000 slot machines, even the ones that dispensed small prizes for children at country fairs, were to be the province of Roberto Fernandez y Miranda, the brother of Batista's wife, Marta Fernandez Miranda de Batista.

A Cuban army general and government sports director, Fernandez was also given the parking meters in Havana as an extra bonus. Import duties were waived on materials for hotel construction, and Cuban contractors with the right "in" made windfalls by importing much more than was needed and selling the surplus to others for hefty profits. It was rumored that besides the to get a license, sometimes more was required under the table. Periodic payoffs were requested and received by corrupt politicians.

In 1955 Batista altered the gambling laws so that any club or hotel worth an amount equal to or in excess of $1 million was permitted to host a casino. Following this there was a surge of investment in the hotel and club industry of Havana. He also ran the Montmartre Club and along with his associates gained interests in the Sevilla Biltmore, the Internacional, the Commodore, and the Havana Hilton.

Cuban Revolution and flight to Bahamas (1959 and the 1960s)

The 1959 Cuban Revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro changed the climate for mob investment in Cuba. On New Year's Eve 1958, while Batista was preparing to flee to the Dominican Republic before settling permanently in Francoist Spain, where he died in exile in 1973, Lansky was celebrating the US$3 million he made in the first year of operations at his 440-room, US$8 million palace, the Habana Riviera. Many of the casinos, including several of Lansky's, were looted and destroyed that night. Lansky fled on January 7 to the Bahamas. In Nassau the Bay Street Boys were ruling. On January 8, 1959, Castro and his revolutionaries took control of Havana, setting up a command post in the Hilton. The new Cuban president, Manuel Urrutia Lleó, took steps to close the casinos. In October 1960, Castro nationalized all the island's hotel-casinos and outlawed gambling.

A number of mafiosi were arrested and imprisoned by the new Cuban government but Lansky avoided arrest as he had already fled the country by then, leaving behind $17 million in cash. Although his brother Jake Lansky was imprisoned in Triscornia. In 1975 American mercenary Frank Sturgis testified under oath that he was approached by an associate of Lansky with an offer of $1 million to assassinate Castro. Sturgis said that he was willing to accept the offer but that he did not receive "the go-ahead from his contacts in the American embassy".

In August 1960 Lansky struck a deal in Miami with the former Prime Minister of Cuba Tony Varona. Varona would form a government-in-exile bankrolled by Lansky who would also help with the publicity side of things. Lansky promised millions of dollars in support in return for a re-opening of the hotels and casinos in a post-Castro Cuba. However the deal fell through.

Attempted emigration and trial (1970–72)

In 1970, Lansky fled to Herzliya Pituah, Israel, to escape federal tax evasion charges in the United States. He was a strong sympathizer with Israel. At the time Israeli law did not permit the extradition of Israeli citizens, and under the Law of Return, any Jew could legally settle in Israel and naturalize. The Israeli government reserved the right to exclude Jews with a criminal past from settling in the country. Two years after his arrival, Lansky was deported back to the U.S. The federal government brought Lansky to trial with the testimony of loan shark Vincent "Fat Vinnie" Teresa. Lansky was acquitted in 1973.

Personal life and death

In 1929 Lansky married Anna Citron, with whom he had three children, before divorcing in 1946. In 1948 he married Thelma Schwartz.

Lansky retired in Miami and spent his last 10 years quietly at his home in Miami Beach, Florida. He died of lung cancer on January 15, 1983, aged 80.

Equity

At the time of his death in 1983, Lansky held few assets in his own name and left no substantial estate. While U.S. law-enforcement agencies long suspected that he retained access to undisclosed wealth, no verified cache of hidden assets was ever identified, and publicly released records do not establish a specific amount.

Lansky’s biographer Robert Lacey describes the final decades of his life as financially constrained, noting his difficulty paying medical expenses for his disabled son and the absence of evidence supporting claims that he controlled large, recoverable fortunes late in life. Lacey concludes that Lansky’s wealth and influence were frequently exaggerated and that much of his reputation reflected law-enforcement suspicion and organized-crime mythology rather than documented financial control. Family accounts cited by later journalists similarly describe Lansky as leaving a modest amount of liquid assets at his death, though such accounts are not independently corroborated.

Journalists and investigators who followed Lansky have argued that his influence was exercised less through personal ownership of assets than through long-standing personal and business relationships, including informal partnerships and trusted intermediaries. However, the extent to which such arrangements translated into retained personal wealth remains uncertain, and no comprehensive financial reconstruction has demonstrated that Lansky successfully concealed large sums beyond the reach of taxation or prosecution.

In popular culture

In film

• The character Hyman Roth, portrayed by Lee Strasberg in the film The Godfather Part II (1974), is based on Lansky. In fact, shortly after the premiere, Lansky phoned Strasberg and congratulated him on a good performance (Strasberg was nominated for an Oscar for his role), but added, "You could've made me more sympathetic." Roth's statement to Corleone that "We're bigger than U.S. Steel" was similar to something Lansky told his wife while watching a news story on the Mafia. The character Johnny Ola, Roth's right-hand man, was inspired by Lansky's associate Vincent Alo. The character Moe Greene, a friend of Roth, is modeled on Bugsy Siegel. The film reflects that Lansky was denied the Right of Return to Israel and returned to the US to face criminal charges, but invented details regarding Roth's attempts to bribe Latin American dictators for entry to their countries, as well as Roth's ultimate fate.
• In Nicholas Roeg's 1983 film Eureka, based on the story of Sir Harry Oakes, Joe Pesci plays Mayakofsky, a Lansky stand-in looking to expand his gambling empire to The Bahamas.
• Maximilian "Max" Bercovicz, the gangster played by James Woods in Sergio Leone's 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, was inspired by Lansky.
• In the 1990 Sydney Pollack film Havana, Mark Rydell plays Lansky.
• In the 1991 film Bugsy, a biopic of Siegel, Lansky is a major character, and played by Ben Kingsley, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.
• In the 1991 film Mobsters, he is played by Patrick Dempsey.
• In the 2002 film Undisputed, the character Mendy Ripstein reveals that he worked for Lansky.
• In the 2005 film The Lost City, which presents a fictionalized account of Lansky's involvement in Cuba, Lansky is portrayed by Dustin Hoffman.
• In the 2015 film Legend, Lansky is referred to many times and sends associate Angelo Bruno, played by Chazz Palminteri, to London.
• in the 2018 film Speed Kills, Lansky is played by James Remar.
• In the 2021 film Lansky, based on Lansky's life, Harvey Keitel portrays the aging gangster, while John Magaro portrays him during his younger years.

In television

• In the 1981 NBC miniseries The Gangster Chronicles, the character Michael Lasker, played by Brian Benben, is based on Lansky. Because Lansky was still living at the time, the producers derived the "Michael Lasker" name to avoid legal complications.
• In the 1986-1988 TV series Crime Story, a fictional account with composite characters about the Mafia's expansion from Chicago into Las Vegas and American politics, the character Manny Weisbord, played by Joseph Wiseman, is based on Lansky.
• In the 1993 revival of The Untouchables, Chicago actor Marc Grapey played Lansky in two episodes.
• In the 1999 made-for-TV movie Lansky, Richard Dreyfuss stars as Lansky, Eric Roberts as Siegel, and Anthony LaPaglia as Luciano.
• In the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010–2014), Lansky is played by Anatol Yusef.
• In the 2013 TNT series Mob City, Lansky is played by Patrick Fischler. (Jeff Braine plays a younger Lansky in a flashback sequence.)
• In the 2015 AMC series The Making of the Mob: New York, Lansky is played by Ian Bell.

In literature

• In the 2010 book of photographs New York City Gangland, Lansky is seen "loitering" on Little Italy's famed "Whiskey Curb" with Siegel, Alo, and waterfront racketeer Eddie McGrath.
• In the 1996 novel The Plan, by Stephen J. Cannell, Lansky and Alo are involved in putting an anti-Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act presidential candidate into office.
• In Lansky, the 2009 one-act play by Joseph Bologna, Lansky is portrayed by Mike Burstyn.
• In the book Havana by Stephen Hunter, Lansky and Fidel Castro are both main characters.
• In the 2009 novel If The Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr, the hero, Bernie Gunther, meets Lansky in Havana.
• In the 2009 novel Ride of the Valkyries by Stuart Slade, Lansky runs Cuba as the head of the Mafia.
• In the 2011 memoir of cocaine cowboy Jon Roberts, American Desperado, Roberts recounts several encounters such as his uncle Joe Riccobono's relationship with Lansky and the eventual asking for Lansky's personal permission to kill his stepson Richard Schwartz on October 12, 1977, in Miami in a revenge plot.
• Lansky is a supporting character in The Raiders, Harold Robbins's 1995 follow-up to The Carpetbaggers.
• In the 2015 novel World Gone By, by Dennis Lehane, Lansky is a supporting character and friend to fictional gangster Joe Coughlin. He is mentioned but not seen in the previous novel in the series, Live by Night.
• The 2016 book of photographs Organized Crime in Miami includes previously unpublished photos of Lansky and his second wife on their 1949 honeymoon, as well as photographs from Lansky's 80th birthday with his brother Jake, and longtime partners Alo and Harry "Nig Rosen" Stromberg.
• The 2019 comic book Meyer fictionalizes "one last caper" by the aged Lansky, involving a violent chase of a lost cocaine shipment. It is set in 1982 Miami and Florida Keys.

In music

• Wu-Tang Clan affiliated rapper Myalansky derived his stage name from Lansky.
• Jewish-Israeli musician Sagol 59 released the song "The Ballad Of Meyer Lansky" on his 2011 album Another Passenger. The song chronicles Lansky's life, including his time in Israel.
• Jay-Z refers to Lansky in the song “Party Life”.

References

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