Joseph “Doc” Stacher (born Gdale Oistaczer, 1902-1977) was a “a genial, shrewd, witty gent” who could be “homicidally tough,” wrote “Voice of Broadway” columnist Jack O’Brian (Monroe News-Star, March 17, 1977). Closely aligned with fellow Jewish Mobsters, Meyer Lansky and Abner “Longie” Zwillman, this immigrant had “galvanic” power and extreme wealth.

Here are some facts about Stacher that provide insight into the man and his life in organized crime.

1) Stacher was involved in various gambling businesses in North and South America, from slot machine distribution and bookmaking to casino ownership and management.

2) Throughout the years Stacher owned various pieces of real estate and commercial enterprises. His many assets included two homes, one in Beverly Hills, California and the other in Orange, New Jersey; nightclubs in California; hotel-casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada and New York (oftentimes, as a silent partner); and assorted other businesses. He even owned a hidden stake in Columbia Pictures. With Zwillman, Stacher owned Runyon Sales Co., which manufactured and distributed automatic coin-operated machines.

“[Stacher] was worth many millions (some experts’ estimates say he still can put his canny hands on upwards of $100 million at any given, or taken, moment,” wrote O’Brian (Monroe News-Star, 1971).

3) Between ages 22 and 26, while an active member of the Bugs and Meyer Mob during the 1920s, Stacher racked up a slew of arrests and charges:

1924, November 26:     breaking, entering and larceny
1926, April 21:               assault and battery
1926, August 18:           assault and battery
1927, June 7:                atrocious assault and battery
1927, July 11:                atrocious assault and battery
1927, August 15:           robbery
1927, December 4:       interfering with an officer guarding a still for federal authorities
1927, December 9:       atrocious assault and battery
1928, May 29:               an “open charge,” which later was dismissed

4) At Lansky’s request, Stacher organized a 1931 meeting, at the Franconia Hotel, of all of the top New York-area Jewish mobsters. They decided, at the conference, to join forces with the U.S.-based Italian Mafia. Charles “Lucky” Luciano, representing the Italian Mafioso, agreed, and the National Crime Syndicate was formed.

5) Stacher first got in tax trouble in 1952, when the Internal Revenue Bureau (IRB) claimed he owed $340,000 (about $3.6 million today) in unpaid taxes for the nine years between 1933 and 1941. After the IRB issued liens against him, Stacher paid the amount in full.

6) In the same year, a federal grand jury in New York indicted Stacher on charges of illegal gambling and conspiracy in connection with the Arrowhead Inn (which he’d owned with Lansky during the 1920s). After successfully fighting extradition from Nevada for a year, Stacher eventually returned to The Empire State in 1953 and pleaded guilty to 20 charges. He was fined $10,000 ($104,000 today) and given a one-year suspended jail sentence.

7) The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) revoked Stacher’s citizenship in 1956 and sought to deport him. This was because he hadn’t not disclosed his criminal record on his citizenship application 26 years earlier. The INS could not return Stacher to his homeland (what now is Poland), however, because federal law forbade deportations to Communist countries.

8) Stacher pleaded guilty, in 1964, to two counts of evading payment of federal taxes. He was fined $10,000 and given the choice of going to prison or leaving the country. He opted for the latter and sought refuge in Israel. Its Law of Return, passed in 1950, granted every Jew the right to immigrate there and become an Israeli citizen.

9) A rabbi/member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, defrauded Stacher. Worried that Israel would refuse him citizenship, Stacher asked friend Frank Sinatra to seek help from this politician who owed the crooner a favor. Also, Stacher donated to the same man $100,000 ($897,000 today) to be used for charitable purposes. The rabbi/Knesset member, though, used the money to build the Central Hotel in Jerusalem.

“Outraged at being ripped off, Stacher sued in a court case that drew headlines and laughs throughout the country,” reported Mafia Stories. “Israelis were amused that such a giant figure in American crime could be so taken by a meek-looking rabbi.”

Eventually, Stacher recouped the money.

10) Stacher passed away in a Munich, West Germany, hotel room on February 28, 1977, reportedly from a heart attack, and his body was transported back to Israel. There, only eight people, all men, attended his funeral. He was buried secretly and the name on his grave was changed to conceal his interment site.

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Calvin Kovens

1924-1995

A Miami, Florida businessman and convicted felon, involved with at least one Nevada casino in the 1960s, later got special consideration from President Richard M. Nixon.

Gambling History

Calvin Kovens bought The Sierra Tahoe hotel-casino in 1966, defying Nevada gambling authorities’ order that he not become involved with the resort. He acquired the property with a James “Jimmy” Riddle Hoffa-approved loan from the Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas Pension Fund of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Having debuted in 1964, The Sierra Tahoe comprised a set of buildings, one on Lake Tahoe’s shore, the other across the street, in Incline Village. After several iterations, the property became the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa and Casino.

Kovens made an undesirable gambler, in the eyes of the Nevada Gaming Commissioners, as he was Mafia connected, was twice convicted of crimes and was due to serve prison time pending appeal. Though he couldn’t get a Silver State gambling license as a result, he remained the landlord of The Sierra Tahoe for three years. (During that time, he renamed the hotel Lake Tahoe Hotel, and lessor of the casino Arthur “Art” L. Wood renamed the gambling house Incline Village Casino.)

In 1968, the Nevada Gaming Control Board suspected Kovens had a hidden interest in the Carousel Casino in Las Vegas. He denied it, and the agents couldn’t prove it.

Criminal Background

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Kovens served in the U.S. Army during World War II and moved to Miami in the early 1950s. Later in the decade, he launched two commercial real estate businesses: Ruedd Inc., a development company, and Cal Kovens Construction Corp., a building firm.

In 1962, he was fined $12,000 ($103,000) and placed on probation for loan fraud. He’d used Federal Housing Administration financing earmarked for a Miami shopping center for other purposes.

Subsequently, he became an expediter for the Teamsters pension fund. In 1964, he, as well as Hoffa and six others, was found guilty of mail fraud (five counts) and wire fraud (one count). The group had been providing false or inflated information to obtain loans as well as requiring and pocketing kickbacks. Kovens was sentenced to three years in federal prison and a $5,000 ($42,000 today) fine. (Hoffa got five years and a $10,000 fine).

Tit For Tat?

After remaining free for seven years, Kovens began his three-year stint at the minimum security Federal Prison Camp, Elgin in Florida. After his first parole request was denied in June 1971, he allegedly came down with a fever and “symptoms of heart difficulty,” for which he was hospitalized (Sunday Gazette-Mail, June 16, 1974).

Consequently, in December, the parole board, in a unanimous vote, granted Kovens the early release date of May 1, 1972 due to his supposed medical condition. By then, he would’ve served 15 months.

Three days later, Nixon ordered Hoffa be released from the U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg in Pennsylvania.

About a week later, former Senator George A. Smathers (D-Fla.) intimated to Charles “Chuck” W. Colson, White House office of public liaison director, in a phone conversation that Kovens should be freed., Smathers relayed to Colson the following dialogue he’d had with Charles “Bebe” G. Rebozzo, a close Nixon friend (The Breaking of a President, 1975):

Smathers: “Bebe, It looks to me that this would be a pretty good thing to do. [Kovens is] the most popular Jew in Dade County, South Florida. … This I know would at least give the president, and those who are going to help in this area, a very strong basis for going to the Jewish community and saying: For God’s sake, the one guy that went to bat for him was the president.”

Rebozzo: “I think [Nixon] ought to do it.”

Smathers: “I agree. There’s no negatives on this; it’s all pluses. … I’m sure the president can do it, and I’m sure, actually, [parole board] Chairman George Reed would probably approve of it.”

Colson sent to White House Counsel John Dean a transcript of this phone call with Smathers with the note: “The attached is much too hot for me to handle. … Obviously, [Smathers] makes a very good point, and I would assume if there is anything we can do properly, we should. On the other hand, in view of the personalities involved here, I would think this has to be handled with extreme care.”

Kovens got paroled eight days later, on Jan. 6, 1972. He’d served 11 months of his 36-month sentence. He was 47.

“The past and present chairmen of the parole board in Washington denied contact or behind-the-scenes pressure in the release of Kovens,” reported The Daily Review (April 9, 1974).

Shortly thereafter, Kovens delivered $30,000 ($187,000 today) in cash, reportedly a campaign contribution, to John Mitchell, Nixon’s campaign manager.

Referring to this secret donation and financier Robert L. Vesco’s $200,000 cash payment, columnist Andrew Tully wrote, “If you think these cash transactions have a Mafia flavor, you said it, I didn’t” (Albuquerque Journal, Oct. 9, 1973).

A new law required that Nixon disclose all campaign monies he’d received and from whom, however, he left Kovens’ $30,000 off of the list.

End Of Life

The ex-convict lived another 23 years as a free man, until February 1995, when he passed away, not from cardiovascular disease but from complications related to myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow disease that may evolve into cancer. He was 70.

In his obituary he was lauded for his philanthropy, including having raised $20 million for Miami’s Mount Sinai Medical Center and $5 million for Florida International University. Among numerous other honors, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce named Kovens Man of the Year in 1990, and the Florida International University and Tel Aviv University awarded him honorary doctorates.

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A young Lansky

Meyer Lansky, né Maier Suchowljansky (1902-1983), just may be the U.S. icon of 20th century gambling, illegal and legal.

After being instrumental in creating the National Crime Syndicate, an amalgam of Italian-American Mafia and Jewish-American Mobsters, he worked his way up to its top position of chairman. His role, self-chosen, was facilitating the development, overseeing the finances and managing the skimming distributions of the syndicate’s many casinos around the world. He did so with only an eighth grade education.

Nicknamed “The Genius” and “The Mob’s Accountant,” Lansky was a visionary, planner, strategist, problem solver and long game player, as described in his biographies.

As for his personal life, briefly, he emigrated at age 9 with his family from Grodno, Poland (now in Belarus) to the States and lived in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in New York. In adulthood, he was married twice and had three children. Lansky admired French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (another man of short stature and determination), most appreciated the poem “Desiderata” and loved the color blue (his wardrobe staple).

Here are 10 interesting tidbits about Meyer Lansky, the businessman:

One of Lansky’s illegal gambling operations was here

1) Lansky’s primary career goals after the National Crime Syndicate formation were to develop a foundation for future operations, become indispensable to the conglomerate’s Mobster members by making them money through gambling and in doing so, keep a low profile and stay mysterious. Once accomplished, which was the case by the 1950s, he pursued further expanding his gambling empire globally.

“Wealth was not the objective, for of that he had more than enough, nor were the trappings of power,” author Hank Messick wrote about Lansky. “It was the exercise of power that Lansky enjoyed; to study others, to profit by their mistakes was his technique.”

2) The gambling enterprises under Lansky’s purview included ones he owned solely, some he co-owned in partnerships and others in which he held points, or from which he received a percentage of the skim.

He was involved with gambling clubs and dog race tracks in the U.S. states of Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, New York, Nevada, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama along with Cuba, England, the Bahamas, Haiti and Lebanon.  In his later years, he was working on developing casinos in Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, Bogota, Hawaii, and the French Riviera.

Due to his auto repair and modification skills, Lansky was called the master of the Model T

3) Along with gambling, Lansky was involved in numerous businesses during his lifetime. They included the tool and die, auto repair and modification, murder for hire, bootlegging, narcotics and coin-operated machines businesses.

“No matter where you went, the Mob had its finger in the pie,” a Mobster wrote about the National Crime Syndicate’s growing portfolio of enterprises, “and usually it was Meyer Lansky’s finger,” as recounted by the authors of The Money and The Power.

Author Albert Fried wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America that Lansky “more than anyone else grasped the emergent possibilities of gangster-capitalism.”

4) Lansky schemed and facilitated the prison release (a pardon by New York Governor Tom Dewey in this case) for Mafia head, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, in 1946 by helping create and fostering a means by which Luciano could contribute meaningfully to the World War II effort. The opportunity was through Operation Underworld, in which Mobsters (under imprisoned Luciano’s direction with Lansky as the go-between) controlled and prevented mayhem at New York’s ports.

5) Lansky secretly turned against and even orchestrated the fall of some fellow National Crime Syndicate members when it suited his purpose, often to eliminate potential competition. It’s well known that he approved the murder of his childhood friend and fellow gangster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Seigel, but Lansky also greenlighted hits on Abner “Longie” Zwillman, another longtime friend and associate, as well as Luciano loyalist, New York Mafioso Joe Adonis (born Giuseppe Antonio Doto).

Lansky

In another example, Lansky betrayed longtime associate, Louis Lepke (né Buchalter). Four months before Lepke was indicted by a federal grand jury for narcotics smuggling, he went into hiding. Wanting Lepke captured and convicted, Lansky brought about his surrender, through a mediary of course, on the false promise of getting the deal of not being prosecuted by New York state. (Lepke later was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in prison, after which he was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 30 years to life.)

6) Lansky allegedly blackmailed J. Edgar Hoover in the 1930s with incriminating sex photos he somehow had obtained of the FBI director and his top deputy Clyde Tolson.

“The pictures were said to hold at bay this most formidable of potential adversaries,” wrote authors Sally Denton and Roger Morris.

7) Despite 60 years in the underworld, having committed various crimes and having been arrested many times, Lansky beat six murder charges and only spent 3 months, 16 days behind bars, between May and July 1953.

Alo

8) Lansky’s best friend, confidant and ally was Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, a high-ranking capo in New York’s Genovese crime family.

“Alo and Lansky hit it off from the start,” John William Tuohy wrote. “Both were small men, 5’3″, and only a year apart in their ages. They were both basically shy men who had crawled out of the almost unbelievable poverty of the New York slums. They were book loving, low profile, chain smokers without much to say to those they didn’t know. Over the years, Alo had grown to represent Lansky’s muscle, a perpetual reminder to the outside world that the reasonable and business-like Lansky was protected by the Mafia.”

9) Lansky purchased a resort in the Florida Keys in 1951 for U.S. Mobsters to go, hide and recreate during the Kefauver Committee’s hearings. The Plantation Key Yacht Harbor was located ideally, close enough to yet far enough away from the mainland.

10) Lansky moved to Israel in 1970 to spend the rest of his years there, but the country rejected and expelled him. Instead, he returned to and resumed life in Miami Beach, Florida, where he eventually passed away in his sleep at age 80 on January 15, 1983 from lung cancer. His net worth at the time was said to have been $57,000 versus its peak in the late 1960s of $300 million.

“I wouldn’t have lived my life any other way,” Lansky told the authors of Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob in 1978. “It was in my blood, my character. Environment certainly had something to do with it, but basically my own personality determined my fate. … I have nothing on my conscience. I would not change anything.”

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