Surviving the Mob - Dennis Griffin [27]
Eventually, white organized criminals in New York took an interest in the business. The Genovese crime family got involved first and the other families followed.
Under the Gambino rules, winners were paid 500-1. So a 50¢ bet returned $250. Since the true odds of hitting were closer to 1,000-1, the numbers gave the operators a healthy edge (they kept about half of whatever was bet).
The daily number was (and still is) derived from the total handle at a specified local racetrack. “If a person bet with a Gambino store,” Andrew says, “there were two daily numbers in play: the New York number and the Brooklyn number. The New York number came from the results of the third, fifth, and seventh races at the designated track. The Brooklyn number resulted from the last three digits of the total mutuel handle at whichever track was being used.”
There were other ways of doing it. Some unaffiliated numbers operators in Westchester County used the “1-in-the-middle” method when computing their payoffs. Under that system, if the winning set of numbers had a 1 in the middle, the winners were paid at a rate of only 300-1 rather than the normal 500.
As in any free market, the public eventually decides what they’ll “pay” for anything, and the Gambinos reasoned that they made plenty by paying out extra. As a result, their game thrived and by the time Andrew became active, the numbers racket was a big part of the family’s gambling income. Nick Corozzo operated several games in his territory.
The pay structure for the Gambino stores worked as follows. The store’s boss—called the “controller”—received 600-1 on winning bets. This assured that he’d make a profit even on customer wins. In addition, the crew boss paid the controller 35% of the business’ take. From that, the controller kept 10% and paid the runner—the guy who took the bets and collected and paid out the money—the balance, which equaled 25% of the total take. The boss kept all the rest, minus 3%-4% for the cost of paperwork.
“One well-known numbers store in New York City did around three hundred thousand in business every week. He passed all his action off to the two biggest numbers runners in the city for ten percent, then collected thirty grand or so a week while the runners did all the work,” Andrew recalls.
When New York City started its own lottery, it paid the merchants selling the tickets only 6%. That was 4% less than organized crime paid its store operators. And if the legal lottery was getting too much action on a particular number, it shut down that number. The illegal competition didn’t do that. Hence, the numbers rackets were able to continue operating even after the lottery was created.
As Andrew likes to point out, state and local governments frequently open businesses with which organized crime has had financial success. Horse betting produced a lot of money and New York opened Off-Track-Betting parlors. Numbers games took in tons of money and state lotteries came into being.
LAS VEGAS
It’s well-known that organized crime has a long history in Las Vegas. Over the years, many families made money on their Sin City ventures. For the Chicago Outfit and its partners in Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Cleveland, and for the New York families, Las Vegas served as a cash cow for decades.
The New York families had their hands deep in the Vegas pie. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Genovese family, for example, had interests in Caesars Palace, the Sands, and the Tropicana. They sent their guys out to Vegas to work as dealers and cashiers and to serve as “connections” for visiting mobsters and their associates.
For as long as they had their people in place, the New Yorkers also participated in the “skim.” The purloined cash was transported across the country by a legendary female courier. For obvious reasons, her identity, the details of her visits to Vegas,