Thread by @FalunJimmy

today I'm gonna talk about Cleveland organized crime, because I'm going to post more about transnational crime, and it helps to understand the US mafia, and I also wanna post about Hoffa in the future; this topic is a good setup for both.

so, like a lot of people, I'm fascinated by the mafia, and while I'm no expert, I've read a lot about it.

for one thing, I think that a good understanding of the mafia teaches you a lot about how this country really works

also, another thing I feel pretty strongly about (or maybe it's just the mistake I made) is that people rush in and try to understand the five families in NYC, or maybe Chicago, and get a distorted picture of how things work.

with enough time, that'll work, but I think it's a lot easier to look at a much less complicated situation to understand the mafia, like Cleveland.

NYC had way too much going on; it's like trying to learn applied before theoretical physics

so, everything always has precedents, but most people point to Prohibition as the rise of modern organized crime in the US, which makes sense, as there was a sudden potential for massive profits

it's been argued that there were really 3 phases to Prohibition:
1. consumption of alcohol in stock
2. manufacture of homemade booze
3. rumrunning/importing

organized crime began to be more heavily involved by phase 2 and then ran phase 3

I don't like to reveal much about myself, but I'll break that rule for a second: I used to be a little psychopath who thought Prohibition was a good thing, despite, you know, it being obvious to everyone that it isn't. I had to read several books to convince myself otherwise

the country got through phase 1 pretty quickly, and then phase 2 began: the manufacture of homemade booze

and the thing about alcohol is that it isn't very hard to make, as you might know. all it really takes is grain or fruit and time

apart from a few of the former brewers/distillers secretly continuing, and the moonshiners, most of the country had to get by with "rotgut" or "hooch", and this was especially the case before phase 3, the rumrunning/importing of quality alcohol

most alcohols are based on grains, and the starches have to turn into sugar before they turn into alcohol. but if sugars are introduced earlier, then the whole process goes significantly quicker.

traditionally, hillbillies would use honey in their moonshine

the thing is, honey is relatively expensive, and so is cane sugar. beet sugar is pretty cheap but kind of complicated to process, so what's left?

well, the US is like, the world's top producer of corn, by like, a giant margin.

so corn sugars were the perfect solution to this problem: they're cheaper than cane sugar and actually slightly easier to ferment into alcohol

I knew about corn syrup, but before that, corn sugars were used to make alcohol. roughly six pounds of corn sugar would make one gallon of whiskey

(technically more of a rum, but they called it whiskey)

so the Cleveland Mafia figured out that they could corner the market on wholesale corn sugar dealing and sell to the home brewers and small tills.

the upside was that it was entirely legal - there was nothing illegal about selling corn sugar

the Cleveland Mafia consisted of an informal group of Sicilian immigrants, run by Big Joe Lonardo

they were based in the Woodland neighborhood on Cleveland's east side, where most of the Italian immigrants lived at the time

the Cleveland mafia was informed by a so-called "circulation war" back in 1914, when different newspapers recruited thugs to battle for control of ideal street corners to hawk newspapers

they'd brawl with lead pipes, and it escalated to guns.

"as organized crime researcher Hank Messick put it, “Had someone set out deliberately to provide an army of strong-arm goons for use in Prohibition, it could not have been better planned.""

several of the leaders of these goon squads ended up heading the different organized crime factions, which is to say, two different clusters of Italian crime families, and the Jewish racketeers

Morris "Mushy" Wexler was famous for running the successful downtown Theatrical Restaurant and Lounge, which was a hotspot for other organized crime figures. he also ran a national bookie network and owned one of the largest horse stables in Lexington

Wexler was tied in with something nominally called the Cleveland Syndicate, a group of Jewish racketeers ran by Moe Dalitz and backed nationally by Meyer Lansky

the Cleveland Syndicate was associated with the Purple Gang, mainly based out of Detroit. their initial thing was shaking down Jewish laundry businesses for protection against unions, but they really took off during Prohibition

they ran a thing called the "Little Jewish Navy", which would shuttle Canadian alcohol into the US. obviously, this was more of a phase 3 thing, the rumrunning/importing

the alcohol coming mainly from Bronfman companies, of course

another major figure was Moe Dalitz, who was a senior member of the Purple Gang in Detroit. he opened a chain of laundries and other businesses, and moved to Cleveland to run the Cleveland Syndicate

in comparing and contrasting the two criminal groups, one book writes:
"The Italian and Sicilian gangs often fought for sole control of a city’s rackets and in the usually violent process attracted much attention and publicity."

"The Cleveland Syndicate was satisfied with working quietly behind the scenes and headlines and consequently accumulated great wealth with minimal turmoil. Dalitz and his associates also realized the need for cooperation with the Mafia."

so although the Italians were well-placed with their wholesale corn sugar business, the Jewish racketeers were better positioned to profit from Prohibition over the long run. at least in Cleveland, anyway

back to Joe Lonardo and the Italians, Cleveland has always been a fairly important nexus of mafia power outside New York, even as Lonardo accidentally picked the wrong side in the Castellammarese War

as I said before, it wasn't illegal to sell corn sugar. Lonardo's motto was: “Let the other fellow make the bootleg, we’ll sell him the sugar"

it was, however, illegal to murder other corn sugar wholesalers, which he definitely did

his gang would intimidate or kill all other corn sugar wholesalers, unsanctioned rumrunners, till operators who didn't buy from them, hijacked other shipments of alcohol, and tipped the cops to any competition to get raided

eventually, two of the Italian families/factions fought over control of the corn sugar company, and the high level of violence brought public scrutiny, and then the cops finally managed to figure out that the gangsters were the ones in charge of the corn sugar

would it surprise you that the Italians didn't diversify their crimes or their financial holdings?

it didn't help when Eliot Ness transferred over to be Cleveland's Safety Director, declaring a war against the Lonardo/Porrello crime family

Ness was hot shit after his stint in Chicago taking down Al Capone, although he focused mainly on cleaning up the dirty Cleveland Police Department

I'm not gonna go into the details of the Lonardo/Porrello family infighting, a). because it's not that interesting, and b). I actually think that endless Game of Thrones type intrigues, while pretty cool, aren't very helpful when it comes to understanding the mafia

it reminds me of how we're sometimes taught history as a facile narrative of various famous leaders and wars; I don't think that stuff is unimportant, but you'll get more out of it by looking at the underlying economic engine driving the organization.

another interesting thing is that a lot of people know about Apalachin, the mafia summit in 1957 that got raided, providing arguably indisputable proof that a nationwide crime syndicate existed, right? it, along with the Kennedys, forced Hoover to acknowledge the mob

well, Cleveland had its own mafia summit back in 1927; it even got raided too, which is why we know about it. "Among the more notable in the group were Joe Profaci, Joe Magliocco, Vincent Mangano, Pasquale Lolordo, Joseph Giunta and John Mirabella", and that's just who got caught

so the heads of the Colombo and Gambino crime families, Capone's rep, and a famous hitman, as well as a number of less-important goons, were all scooped up at the same time back in 1927, a good 30 years before Apalachin.

A+ policework, FBI

also, I should clarify, Cleveland PD did the raid, I meant the FBI couldn't figure out that the mafia existed for 30 years.

then again, it's not like Hoover didn't know ;)

anyway, what freaked the Cleveland PD out wasn't necessarily the evidence of a national crime syndicate (everyone already knew that), but that every single mafioso got immediate cash bail paid by the Unione Siciliane, a Sicilian "mutual-aid society"

just like the Colombo crime family's "Italian-American Civil Rights League", except 40 years before. there really isn't anything new under the sun

so between the Lonardo-Porrello family infighting and high-profile murders and that raid, both of these things started to squeeze Cleveland from phase 2 into phase 3 of prohibition

“Business in sugar is not all it’s cracked up to be. You know, I guess everybody else knows, it is all within the law to sell sugar even if some of the boys do make drinking stuff out of it. But few are selling sugar. I may be all wrong, but..."

“but there seems to be a great flow of whiskey from Canada. Yeah, and Pennsylvania must be doing a lot of business in the finished product too. All I know is that we are not selling much sugar here.”

around the the corn sugar Italians were diminishing in importance, Frank Milano was rising, running what was called the Mayfield Road mob, because that's where Little Italy was.

Milano and his org worked closely with the Cleveland Syndicate in distributing the imported booze. he also became an important backroom political kingmaker.

in many ways, there really wasn't a difference between the Italian and Jewish crime organizations

another mafia summit took place in 1929 in Atlantic City, which Nucky Johnson hosted.

along with Al Capone and other mafia statesmen, both Cleveland Syndicate and mafia members were in attendance.

"With the end of Prohibition in sight, it was decided to begin wide-scale purchasing of breweries and distilleries so as to maintain control after liquor became legal."

makes you think, huh? they didn't just stop running those companies

a number of mafiosi retired to Florida, like Al Polizzi, who ran the Cleveland mafia (1935-1945)

"he took about $400,000 in past profits and invested in the home and hotel construction business. He became successful in real estate, developing much of the city of Coral Gables"

"The most successful Cleveland racketeer was undoubtedly Moe Dalitz. His life was a study in contrasts. After buying into the Desert Inn, he settled in Las Vegas and on orders from Meyer Lansky, took over the Stardust Hotel and Casino"

"Later he began a rise to respectable legitimacy, developing the downtown Sundance Hotel and Casino, Sunrise Hospital, Las Vegas Country Club and Boulevard Mall"

"he was subpoenaed before the famous Kefauver congressional hearings on organized crime. Unlike most witnesses, who refused to testify based on their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, Dalitz talked freely."

"Senator Kefauver asked him about the source of capital for his many legitimate enterprises.

“Now, to get your investments started off, you did get a pretty good little nest egg out of rumrunning, didn’t you?”

“Well,” Dalitz replied, “I didn’t inherit any money, Senator.”

seriously though, Wikipedia sucks ass, because if you look at Moe Dalitz' page, there's very little that's incriminating, and

if you look through the Purple Gang's page, you don't see Dalitz' name at all, except for one citation from a book called "Mr. Mob: The Life and Crimes of Moe Dalitz"

total whitewash

the later Cleveland mafia got pretty brutal:

"The Cleveland gangsters of the Seventies had served their apprenticeships in more peaceful times when such extreme violence was relatively minimal. They weren’t used to getting their hands dirty"

"So, before the battles to come were over, Cleveland would be dubbed “Bomb City, U.S.A.”"

later, there was a pretty wild situation with Danny Greene, an Irish longshoreman, FBI snitch, and mobs boss that basically pulled a Whitey Bulger on Cleveland, but that's too long to get into today

studying organized crime is tough, because its the intersection of various liars:

1. criminals lie
2. FBI/cops lie
3. politicians lie
4. businesses/banks/establishment figures profiting from OC have to lie

that's another reason why an inordinate amount of "mafia history" is just recounting various stupid power struggles.

it's not that organized crime "runs" the country more than, like, an executive of US Steel does. but they're not studied seriously, either

and least of all, it's not well-understood where their money has been banked, laundered, and reinvested. and who they own. that's what interests me most

anyway, today was mainly just a prelude for what I really wanna dive into: Hoffa, coming soon in an upcoming thread

and down the road, more transnational organized crime, hopefully

god bless

oh yeah, and a lot of this was drawn on prior books I read, plus the Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia, written by a Porrello. I don't recommend it unless you really wanna know about the early Cleveland mob specifically.