In 1902 Meyer Lansky was born Meyer Suchowljansky in Grodno, a small city in a region that has been – at different times – in Russia, Poland, and Germany. The mostly Jewish community was confronted by pogroms conducted by Czarist Russia. Meyer’s father fled to the United States in 1909. When Meyer was about ten years old, he came to the United States with the rest of his family. They all settled in a low-rent neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. From these humble beginnings in the tenements, Meyer Lansky rose to become the “godfather” of a national crime syndicate, a principal in an organization called “Murder, Incorporated”, and the person recognized as the financial director of Mob activity in the Western Hemisphere.
Much of the financial activity conducted by Lansky concerned money used for the establishment of casinos – both legal and illegal – and also money taken out of the profits of these casinos. Meyer and his brother, Jake, who became involved in many of Meyer’s activities, learned about crime on the streets of Brooklyn. Lansky was also an excellent student with a mind finely tuned for mathematical skills. He took a liking to the gambling rackets he observed on his neighborhood streets, because the games and scams conducted by various sharps and gangsters had a certain mathematical quality at their core. He also learned about the psychology of gambling and how the activity could prey upon the gullibility of players. Lansky also learned that street life had its violent side. While still a teenager, he intervened to stop another boy he had never met from shooting a fellow craps player. The aggressive boy was Benjamin Siegel. There on the streets, in the middle of what could have been a violent episode that could have ended what became a violent career anyway, Lansky and Siegel (later to be known as “Bugsy”) became very close friends. They became partners in crime until the end – that is, to Siegel’s end. Lansky was able to control Siegel’s temper as no one else could, and he was also able to direct Siegel’s penchant for violence. The two shared a similar background on the streets. When Prohibition began in 1921, they were prepared to be business partners.
Together Lansky and Siegel operated bootlegging activities. Bootlegging also brought Lansky into contact with Charlie “Lucky” Luciano. As their imbibing customers also craved gambling, their businesses were expanded. Liquor, betting, and wagering went together. With regard to gambling, Lansky was different from other mobsters running gambling joints. The others had proclivities to cheat customers, but Lansky knew the nature of the games. You did not have to cheat to make money. The odds favored the house, and all the operator needed was to have a certain volume of activity and to make sure that players were not cheating the house. Lansky could handle the numbers of customers he needed, and the numbers involved in determining the odds of each game. His mind was a calculator that allowed him to play it straight with the customers – and with his partners. But his operations also had rivals, and he cooperated with Luciano, Siegel, and others in consolidating control over their business enterprises by using violence.
When Prohibition ended on 5 December 1933, gambling became the major business interest for Lansky and many of his associates. Lansky became involved with gambling facilities in Saratoga Springs, New York; New York City; New Orleans; Omaha; and Miami. He also formed alliances with operations in Arkansas and Texas. In 1938, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista begged Lansky to come to the island and establish some honesty in their gambling casinos. The dealers were cheating the customers, and they were also robbing the dictator blind. He wanted his share. Lansky agreed to give him $3 million plus 50 percent of the profits the casino made. True to his word, Lansky cleaned up the operations. Later he took his skills for running an “honest” game for illicit operators to Haiti, the Bahamas, and London’s Colony Club.
Perhaps Meyer Lansky’s greatest legacy in gaming was found in Las Vegas. There he established the Mob’s reputation for running honest games – albeit on behalf of mobsters. Lansky became a silent partner in the El Cortez in 1945. Soon his syndicate sold the property for a profit (they demonstrated it could make a profit), and they reinvested the money in the construction of the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in the Las Vegas Strip, six miles from the established casino area in downtown Las Vegas on Fremont Street. Bugsy Siegel was given the primary responsibilities for finishing the project. Siegel completed the job on time but not on budget. When the Flamingo opened in December 1946, it began to lose money. Lansky and his partners felt that Siegel had siphoned off much of the construction overruns as well as the operating revenues and put them into his own pockets – or into Swiss bank accounts. In June 1947 Siegel was murdered (by person or persons unknown) in the Beverly Hills apartment of his girlfriend. Soon afterwards the Flamingo was returning good profits under the operating hands of other Lansky associates.
Lansky’s presence in Las Vegas persisted through the 1960s, as he was a silent partner in many gambling houses. It was said that he developed and perfected the art of skimming in order to get his share of the profits into his own pockets. A typical skimming device was to give large amounts of credit to players on gambling junkets. The players would then repay their loans to Lansky’s associates, and not the casino, which would write them off as “bad debts”. It was alleged that Meyer Lansky skimmed $36 million from the Flamingo over an eight-year period. He was also alleged to have taken portions of the profits from the Sands, Fremont, Horseshoe, Desert Inn, and Stardust through similar skimming scams. Lansky also availed himself of large sums of money by taking a finder’s fee when the Flamingo Casino Hotel was sold to Kirk Kerkorian in 1968.
In 1970 Lansky started an abortive campaign to legalize casinos in Miami Beach, where he had a residence. The year was not a good one for Lansky, as he was charged with tax evasion in federal court. He escaped prosecution by fleeing to Israel. There he sought citizenship under the Law of Return, which offered asylum to any person with a Jewish mother. As a result of considerable international as well as domestic pressure, he was denied Israeli citizenship and was exiled from Israel in November 1972. Back in the United States, he had to face tax charges and skimming charges, as well as contempt of court charges for fleeing prosecution. He dodged these charges at first because the court recognized he was in ailing health. Then in 1974, after he had undergone heart surgery, his case was brought before federal judge Roger Foley in Las Vegas. Foley dismissed all charges. The U.S. Justice Department appealed the judge’s action but could not get it overturned.
Lansky was free and in the United States. But he was old and in ill health, and his family was in considerable turmoil. Although some sources suggested that he was a wealthy man – with resources between $100 and $300 million—he was not. His resources were depleted as he lived out his last years alone and with very few assets. He was estranged from his daughter, and one handicapped son died in abject poverty. Perhaps the longest reign of an American “godfather” ended with little notice when he died in 1983.
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