Accardo

1935-1965

Tony Accardo, né Antonino Leonardo Accardo (1906-1992), is credited with reviving and expanding the Chicago Outfit’s gambling business in the 1940s after the organization’s head Paul “The Waiter” Ricca named him underboss. Accardo himself had his hand in various gaming enterprises before and after, too.

Accardo is the great-grandfather of the National Football League’s Bosa brothers:* Nick, defensive end for the 49ers and Joey, outside linebacker for the Chargers.

Individual Participation

As early as 1940, Accardo and some Outfit partners owned and operated the prosperous Owl Club, an illegal casino-nightclub in Calumet City, Illinois, on the corner of Douglas and Plummer avenues.

The Mobster-gambler also ran book, oftentimes under the name Joe Batters, a nickname Al “Scarface” Capone had bestowed upon him for his prowess in thrashing people with a baseball bat. In the early 1940s, for example, Accardo conducted a bookmaking enterprise out of the Ogden building at 192 N. Clark St. in Chicago’s Loop.

Not only was Accardo an operator of games of chance; he also was a player and thus, a gambler in both senses of the word. Reportedly, he was one of the best patrons of his own joint, the Owl Club. Even when he older and less mobile, he kept up the activity, placing bets via the telephone.

Group Activities

While underboss, Accardo shifted the Outfit out of labor racketeering and into other areas of organized crime, including gambling. He pushed the syndicate into three specific areas: slot machines, wire service and casinos.

Slots: The Chicago Mob broadened its footprint by placing slots in various establishments beyond the main street gambling house. These included gas stations, restaurants and bars and the group’s favorite targeted outlet, social clubs and fraternal organizations. The Catholic War Vets, the American Legion Posts, the CIO Steel Workers Club, the Polish Democratic Club, and the Italian American Republican Club, are just some of the many local ones.

After successfully flooding its territory in and around Chicago with slots, the Outfit expanded geographically. It hit the neighboring cities first, then nearby states and eventually Nevada.

“Accardo made sure that all the legal Las Vegas casinos used his slot machines,” wrote John William Tuohy in the article “Accardo.”

Wire Service: During the mid-1940s the Outfit took over the Continental Press Service, the wire service that distributed race results throughout the U.S. It did so by killing the operator, James Ragen, after he’d refused to partner with the Chicago Mob.

Once under its control, Continental “became so big and lucrative that an investigating Senate committee later called it the ‘life blood’ of the syndicate,'” reported the Chicago Tribune (Nov. 18, 1984).

Casinos: Three, during the 1950s, the Outfit pursued gambling in a bigger scale. It moved into owning stakes in and skimming millions from casinos. It stuck primarily to legal gambling jurisdictions, first Havana, Cuba, while that lasted, and then Nevada. For instance, by 1961, Chicago owned controlling interests in the Riviera, Stardust, Fremont and Desert Inn, in Vegas.

Despite having a major hand in the Outfit’s gambling (and other lines of business), Accardo always denied being one of the organization’s members never mind a boss. Instead, he claimed he merely was a beer salesman for a Chicago brewery.

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* How Accardo and the Bosa Brothers Are Related

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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 Lansky, in various gambling businesses inside and outside of the United States. We briefly describe some of them.

United States — New Jersey

The East European immigrant, Zwillman and New York Mobster Frank “The Prime Minister” Costello were partners with New Yorker Frank Erickson in a hugely successful bookmaking operation during the 1930s and 1940s, thanks to Erickson’s mathematical acumen. At one point, the large enterprise boasted as many as 600 locations and 3,000 unofficial staff members throughout the U.S.

Also with Costello and Zwillman, Stacher ran “many New Jersey gambling emporia, from ‘sawdust joints,’ meaning undecorated betting factories, to ‘carpet joints,’ whose decor was swank, food exquisite, ambiance muted and clientele selectively rich,” wrote “Voice of Broadway” columnist Jack O’Brian (Monroe-News Star, March 17, 1977).

In 1938, Stacher and fronts, Barney “Sugie” Sugerman and Abe Green, founded Runyon Sales Co. The Newark-based company manufactured and distributed automatic coin-operated machines, including slot machines, pinball machines and jukeboxes.

United States — New York

Stacher ran the Arrowhead Inn, an illegal Saratoga Springs carpet joint, which he and lifelong friend Lansky owned and at times had additional owners, including Joe Adonis, associated with the Genovese crime family, and Jersey Mobster James “Piggy” Lynch. The lake house closed in 1949.

United States — Nevada

Stacher entered Nevada’s gambling industry in 1950, when he purchased, likely at Lansky’s urging, Jack Sullivan’s one-third interest in the then-popular Bank Club, “one of Reno’s oldest and best known gambling casinos in Reno,” (Nevada State Journal, June, 30, 1950). Local Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay co-owned it.

After making the move versus before, as required by Silver State law, Stacher sought a gambling license from the state and the city. He boasted that if he ran into trouble getting those, he simply would pay what he needed to, up to $250,000 ($2.7 million today). to make it happen. Regardless, the Nevada Tax Commission denied him the requisite license, and, thus, he had to forfeit his Bank Club stake.

Stacher and Lansky also focused on Las Vegas. There, along with Costello, the two provided the capital for construction of the Sands Hotel and Casino, which debuted in 1952. Behind the scenes, Stacher ran the gambling there while someone else, Texas gambler Jake Freedman for one, was the front. Also on behalf of Lansky, Stacher allegedly was involved, too, with the casino at the Fremont, which opened in 1956.

“Doc Harris virtually ran Las Vegas with more access to its gambling cash than Howard Hughes has now,” O’Brian wrote in 1971 (Monroe-News Star).

Caribbean — Cuba, Haiti, The Bahamas

During the 1940s when gambling was legal in Cuba, Stacher ran various casinos there for Lansky. Part of his duties included getting payola to then President Fulgencio Batista. Stacher also allegedly had a hand in ensuring the success of Lansky’s casinos in Haiti and the Bahamas.

“Ultimately, he would become one of Lansky’s most valuable aides in the control of international casino gambling,” wrote Hank Messick in the biography Lansky.

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* Stacher also went by these names: Joseph Rosen, Morris Rose, Morris Rosen, Doc Rosen, Joe J. Stein, J.P. Harris, Doc Harris, Doc Weiner, George Kent and Harry Goldman.

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While being plied with endless, free whisky highballs,* Hamilton Buck played roulette for hours at the Texas gambling-saloon** in Goldfield, Nevada. Then, in 1908, the northwestern mining town was nearing the end of its heyday (1904-1908) that had made it the state’s largest metropolis.

With Charles Green, a brother of one of the establishment’s proprietors comprising J.E. Burke & Co., operating the wheel, Buck had varied luck for a while. Ultimately, though, he found himself $1,000 (more than $26,000 today) in the hole.

He gave Green a $500 certificate of deposit (COD) he’d gotten from the local John S. Cook & Co. bank, and Green exchanged it for gold coins. With those, Buck continued to gamble at roulette. At first he won about $700 to $800 but eventually lost most or all of the $500. An intoxicated Buck left the establishment.

The next morning, he instructed the bank to cancel payment on the COD because Burke & Co. weren’t entitled to it legally. In response, Burke & Co. sued Buck and won; Cook & Co. had to make good on the COD. Dissatisfied with the outcome, Buck appealed, and J.E. Burke & Co. vs. Hamilton Buck went to the state’s high court.

James G. Sweeney

Significant Ruling

In January 1909, the Nevada Supreme Court reversed the Esmeralda County district court’s ruling and mandated that the saloon reimburse Buck the $500. The basis for the decision, Justice James G. Sweeney wrote in the opinion, was the Statute of 9 Anne, part of the revised English common law that became the basis of Nevada law upon statehood in 1864.

Based on the belief that gambling was against the public’s interest, the statute read: “… all notes, bills, bonds … given … by any person or persons whatsoever, where the hole or any part of the consideration … shall be for any money or other valuable thing whatsoever, won by gaming, … shall be utterly void, frustrate, and of none effect, to all intents and purposes, whatsoever, etc.“

Sweeney clarified that money won at a public gaming table is not recoverable by action in Nevada. He also noted that the statute stands regardless of whether gambling is considered by state law to be legal or illegal. (Later that year, the Nevada Legislature abolished gambling.)

Burke v. Buck was one of the earliest Silver State cases challenging the statute.

The Flip Side, Player v. Casino

In July 1958, the Nevada Supreme Court weighed in on the reverse, whether players may sue gambling clubs for alleged unpaid winnings. This came about through the lawsuit of Jack Weisbrod against the Fremont in Las Vegas. He claimed the casino refused to pay him the $12,500 ($111,000 today) he believed he’d won from playing keno.

The district judge rejected Weisbrod’s suit, and the high court jurists affirmed the ruling. They wrote that “if money won at gambling is not recoverable through resort to the courts, it is not because of who has won it but because of the nature of the transaction itself.”

They noted, too, that players have recourse through the state’s gambling regulators who will intervene on their behalf, if warranted.

A Long Stretch

Statute of 9 Anne endured in Nevada for 119 years despite several legal tests of it and attempts to have it reversed.

Casino owners in the state again lobbied for the latter in 1982 because of their “staggering money losses,” about $117 million ($311 billion today) that year for instance, and because their Atlantic City, New Jersey competitors could collect on markers, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported (Dec. 17, 1982).

When the legislature was in session the following year, it passed Senate Bill 335 allowing gambling establishments to pursue in the courts the monies owed to them.

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* A whisky highball at the Texas consisted of Scotch whisky and mineral water.

** The Texas burned down in 1914.

Photo from freeimages.com: “Money Series 6” by mokra

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