1947-1950 Starting in 1947, Wiley “Buck” H. Cadell used his governmental position to build a statewide system of protection for illegal gambling operations in California, the first such concerted effort of this kind in the state. At the time Cadell worked as a gambling investigator, and previously an undercover agent, for California Attorney General Frederick…
1928-1972 Samuel “Sam” F. Termini (1903-1972) was known as a small-time racketeer who worked at and operated gambling enterprises mostly for others. Here are 10 interesting tidbits about him and his life: Gambling History 1) Termini was associated with Kansas City Mobster Charles Binaggio. Born and raised in Missouri, Termini had worked for Binaggio before…
1934 A man named Hans Brucksmer played about $15 worth of nickels (about $300 today) in a slot machine at a place of business in Seattle, Washington and got only four coins back. He lifted the machine and took it to the local police station. There, holding the device under one arm, he filled out…
1943-1944 Had it not been for a shifty plan Tony “Joe Batters” Accardo and/or his attorney, George Bieber, dreamed up, the Mobster might’ve gone to prison at age 37, in 1944, for illegal gambling. Cigar Store as Front A high-ranking Outfit member, Accardo had been operating a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at…
1949-1950 During the Prohibition years in California, 1919 to 1934, San Mateo County was a hotbed for illegal vices — gambling, prostitution and drinking. Even a Mobster, Hillsborough-based Sam Termini, said the county was the state’s most corrupt one in 1930. This was under the watch of James J. McGrath, the sheriff for 24 years…
1903 “Accommodation for Johnny Ox,” a gambling-related headline in the Nevada State Journal, March 17, 1903, puzzled us. Curious (read: obsessive), we set out to decipher it. The brief news item relayed two gambling saloons in Reno — the Louvre and the Oberon — planned to build an upper level onto their one-story building in which…
In addition to Alphonse (“Al”/”Scarface”) Capone, a handful of men separately involved in illegal gambling in the States wound up confined in the United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island for another crime. The maximum security, federal prison opened in 1934 on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles from the coast of San Francisco, California. The facility housed 1,576…
1965-1969: In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos. The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27, 1966).…
1920s-1960s Joseph “Doc” Stacher (né Gdale Oistaczer)* was a New Jersey-based Mobster who made his foray into organized crime with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky’s Bugs and Meyer Mob in Manhattan, N.Y. and then with Abner “Longie” Zwillman’s Third Ward Gang in Newark, N.J. Eventually, he teamed up with local Mobsters, including Zwillman and…
1907-1958 Wertheimer was their name. Three of these four Michigan-born brothers became full-fledged, successful gambling operators in the first half of the 1900s, their reach spanning five states: Michigan, Ohio, Florida, California and Nevada. “As gamblers, Al, Mert and Lou became almost as well-known Detroiters as the automobile pioneers. However, the only thing the Wertheimers…