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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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.

Sources

Alvin J. Paris

1946-1947

Alvin J. Paris ingratiated himself with two New York Giants football players by inviting them to parties at his apartment and taking them to nightclubs. He bet on a Giants game and gave them the payout, $500 each ($5,300 today). Then he made his move.

He promised them incentives to intentionally lose their upcoming playoff game against the Chicago Bears for the 1946 National Football League (NFL) Championship — $2,500 ($33,300 today) in cash, the winnings of a $1,000 ($13,300) wager on the Bears and a $15,000 ($200,000) job with the novelties shop Paris ran.

Allegedly, Frank “Frankie” J. Filchock, quarterback and halfback, refused whereas Merle Hapes, fullback, indicated he might go along with it.

Merle Hapes

The Story Gets Out

Before the Dec. 15 gridiron showdown, the NFL learned about the possible fix. The scandal went public a few hours before kickoff.

The media purported that a “big-time syndicate … said to control the betting of millions of dollars on sports events in all major cities,” was behind this scheme (United Press/Nevada State Journal, Dec. 17, 1946).

NFL Commissioner Bert Bell immediately suspended the two Giants, for a duration to be determined later. However, he allowed Filchock to play in the championship game, as the opening quarterback, reportedly because he’d denied having been approached by anyone about throwing it. The thousands of fans present booed the eight-year pro player when he was announced.

Frank Filchock

Hapes, on the other hand, admitted a gambler had tried to bribe him and, thus, was benched.

Gamblers predicted the Bears would prevail by 10 points. During play, the Giants scored two touchdowns, but Filchock’s six intercepted passes led the Bears to a 24-14 victory. As for bets placed on either team to win, the game was a push, so there weren’t any winners or losers.

In The Crosshairs

Two days later, the local grand jury returned indictments against these four allegedly involved men:

• Alvin Paris, 28, for bribery and bookmaking. Described as a playboy, Paris was the front for the New Jersey-based bookmaking enterprise of racketeer Eddie Ginsberg, his stepfather.· 

• Jerome Zarowitz, 32, for bribery and conspiracy. Zarowitz worked for Ginsberg as his handicapper, right hand man and sometimes bookie, and owned an estimated 20 percent interest in the business. Zarowitz had two previous arrests, for bookmaking, but no convictions. He was married, had one child and a clean U.S. Army military record. (Zarowitz, an alleged partner of the New York Genovese and Boston Patriarca Crime Families, later would become the casino manager of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.)

• David Krakower aka Dan Kramer, Peter Krakauer, Abe Goldstein, 44, for bribery and conspiracy. Krakower, who owned a 12.5 percent interest in Ginsberg’s book operation, was a gangster who’d served time for various charges, possession of a revolver, burglary, arson, and passing and selling counterfeit Federal Reserve bank notes.

• Harvey Stemmer, 36, for bribery and conspiracy. Stemmer, also with a 12.5 percent stake in Ginsberg’s business, was a racketeer with a family and a criminal record. When indicted, he was serving prison time for attempted bribery of Brooklyn College basketball players two years earlier.

While cases against the quartet were being pursued, the NFL “sought to restore public confidence in the integrity of the ‘pro’ game,” the United Press reported (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 17, 1946).

“We are ready to take steps to combat and kill this evil thing,” Commissioner Bell said.

One Down, Three To Go

Paris, still in jail because he couldn’t raise his $28,000 ($327,000 today) bail, was the first to stand trial. There, the prosecutor introduced Paris’ full previous confession and had both Hapes and Filchock testify. Filchock admitted Paris had broached a fix with him, too.

The defense didn’t call any witnesses.

After 65 minutes of deliberating, the jurors, sequestered throughout the proceedings, found Paris guilty.

Case Against The “Conspirators”

The joint trial of Zarowitz and Stemmer, who’d pleaded innocent, and Krakower, who’d pleaded guilty, took place in March. Prosecutor George Monaghan accused the trio of “counseling and commanding” Paris in the attempted bribery of Filchock and Hapes, the Associated Press reported (Reno Evening Gazette, March 5, 1947).

As the state’s key witness, Paris testified to all of his related interactions with the defendants. (After his time on the stand, Paris received death threats.)

Patrolman Joseph Jove spoke to the contents of conversations he overheard through the 10-day wiretap on Paris’ phone leading up to the championship game. Jove’s testimony tied Stemmer, Krakower and Zarowitz to Paris’ bribing of the Giants footballers.

In his closing argument, Monaghan said, “A fine sport is now contaminated by lice and rodents. It is a good opportunity for this jury to delouse the sport and get rid of the lice that infest it” (Nevada State Journal, March 9, 1947).

The Final Fallout

The jurors found all three defendants guilty, and the judge gave them prison sentences. Krakower and Stemmer’s was five to 10 years. Zarowitz’s was up to three years. Subsequently, Paris was given a one year jail term, given his cooperation with the state.

Krakower and Stemmer appealed the ruling. However, in 1949 the Supreme Court of New York affirmed the lower court’s decision. 

As for the two Giants players, Filchock’s NFL suspension was for three years, between 1947 and 1950. Hapes’ was for life, which would earn the No. 3 spot in 2015 on WhatCulture.com’s list of the “10 Most Severe NFL Suspensions Ever.”

“They barred me for telling the truth,” Hapes told the press (Nevada State Journal, April 27, 1947). “Maybe I should have lied to them. I never did a thing wrong. I just made a stupid mistake by associating with Paris Alvin, gambler.”

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Which NFL teams do you predict will compete in this bizarre season’s (2020) conference championships?

Sources

Late 1970s, 2000s

Fay and Jessica were young, capuchin monkeys living on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) campus, where two professors in the department of psychology intended to teach them how to gamble, in the late 1970s. (The female primates were named after actresses Fay Wray and Jessica Lange, who’d starred in the successive King Kong movies.)

Through their work with Fay and Jessica, Dr. Terry J. Knapp, now a UNLV emeritus professor of psychology, and the late Dr. Charles Rasmussen, a physiological psychologist, endeavored to learn more about gambling behavior, including the circumstances under which the monkeys would gamble and what the gambling would lead to.

They based their study on renowned psychologist B.F. Skinner’s view on gambling. He purported that the variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, or the intermittent unpredictable nature of wins in the case of gambling, motivates people to persist in the activity for long stretches with little or no payoff.

Knapp and Rasmussen chose monkeys for the research because it seemed more feasible to carry out than on people gambling in a casino.

The Methodological Plan

First, the professors would teach Faye and Jessica to press a bar in their cage for a nickel. Then they’d teach them the nickel has value, that they could spend it, for an apple piece or a look in the mirror. Then the researchers would introduce gambling; they’d teach them that instead of using the nickel for the rewards they knew, they could put it in a gambling machine and either lose the nickel or gain more nickels. 

“Just to demonstrate gambling behavior will be a step that hasn’t been demonstrated before,” Rasmussen said (Las Vegas Sun, Oct. 2, 1977).

The Unexpected Outcome

Knapp and Rasmussen successfully got Jessica and Faye on a token economy, in which they earned nickels for bar pressing and could spend them in several ways, although it took some doing. (A big challenge initially was getting the monkeys to not immediately toss away the nickels after realizing they weren’t edible.)

The study was at the point where gambling would be introduced when Faye and Jessica died unexpectedly, about six months apart, due to indeterminate causes. Their demise curtailed the research before any conclusions could be drawn.

“[It was] a sad ending for us as we became very attached to them,” Knapp said in a written interview. “We never followed up with other monkeys as new federal lab requirements made it nearly impossible except for [at] primate research centers.”

Monkeys And Money

Decades later, in the 2000s at Yale University, behavioral economist Keith Chen taught seven tufted capuchin monkeys to use money to see how they would behave with it.

They demonstrated an ability to economize, to respond to cost fluctuations and to gamble. Interestingly, when presented with two choices of chance with the same odds, but one presented as a potential loss and the other as a possible win, the research subjects preferred to gamble on the latter.

“Capuchins’ choice both is very sensitive to changes in prices, budgets, and expected payoffs and, to a lesser degree, displays both reference dependence and loss aversion,” Chen concluded (Journal of Political Economy, 2006).  Reference dependence is the concept that people evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point and then classify gains and losses. Loss aversion is the theory that people prefer avoiding losses to getting equivalent gains.

Overall, the subjects of Chen’s research demonstrated behavior like that of their human counterparts.

“When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex,” wrote reporters Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (The New York Times, June 5, 2005).

Photo from freeimages.com: by Scott Liddell

Sources

Entrance to Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino

Today

Bally Manufacturing Corp., at one time decades ago, was heavily involved in the gambling industry. It owned six hotel-casinos in the U.S. It was a major producer of state lottery games and developer of slot and video poker machines.

After its peak, the corporation divested all of its various but its hotel-casino (some still use the Bally name), and changed its name in 1994 to Bally Entertainment Corp. to reflect its single focus.

However, in 1996, Bally sold its casino properties to Hilton Hotels Corp., which, since, sold them, too.

Here’s the current status of former Bally-owned hotel-casinos: 

Louisiana:
Bally’s New Orleans: now closed

Mississippi:
Bally’s Casino Tunica: now 1st Jackpot Casino Tunica, owned by Gaming & Leisure Properties

Nevada:
Bally’s Las Vegas: now Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, owned by Eldorado Resorts
Paris Las Vegas: owned by Eldorado Resorts
Bally’s Reno: now Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, owned by the Meruelo Group

New Jersey:
Bally’s Park Place: now Bally’s Atlantic City Hotel & Casino, owned by VICI Properties

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Pedro Szekely

Bally Bell, 1938, Bally Manufacturing Co.’s first slot machine

1963-1970s

With assorted help from Mobsters starting in 1963, a small Chicago, Illinois-based pinball game maker, which had begun as Lion Manufacturing Co. in the 1920s, grew into the world’s largest slot machine developer, Bally Manufacturing Corp., by the 1970s.

And those underworld relationships later would damage its image and jeopardize some of its existing operations overseas and expansion plans for Nevada and New Jersey.

“Bally Manufacturing is one of the National Crime Syndicate’s more visible operations,” Pacific News Service reporters wrote in a May 24, 1974 article (The Capital Times).

Mafioso Investors

Lion/Bally Founder Raymond Moloney, Sr. died in 1957, after which his sons, Ray, Jr., and Don took control of the business as president and director of sales, respectively. By 1962, the company was foundering. To help, Sales Manager William T. O’Donnell contacted Abe Green, reported front man for Gerardo “Jerry” Catena, then underboss of the Vito Genovese crime family in New York. Catena’s company, Runyon Sales, was involved in pinball distribution in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut and was Lion/Bally’s largest distributor.

Catena

Together, the following group bought Bally for $1.2 million ($10 million today), incorporated it and ousted the Moloneys:

• Jerry Catena (originally held an 8.3% interest, later 12.5%)
• Abe Green
• Barnet Sugarman (another Catena front man and Runyon Sales partner)
• Sam Klein (a Catena associate)
• Irving Kaye (a Catena associate)
• Louis Jacobs (his firm Emprise Corp.* financed the transaction)
• Frank Prince (an associate of Jacob)
• William O’Donnell

O’Donnell took the helm of Bally in 1963 with primarily East Coast mobsters as its investor-owners.

Mob-Linked Employees

• Dino Cellini: He was a top lieutenant of gambling chieftain Meyer Lansky and sold/distributed slot machines for Bally between 1964 and 1973 in London then the Bahamas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He sold the machines on behalf of the group of Mobsters, including Lansky, who owned the Colony Club in London, of which Cellini was the manager and actor George Raft was the front man. Prior to that, Cellini had worked in the 1950s for Lansky at his Riviera casino in Havana. 

• Michael “Mickey” Wichinsky: He had connections with Catena and other unsavory men during his hugely successful stint as Bally’s slot machine distributor in Southern Nevada beginning in 1964. Wichinsky’s nephew, Robert Petrin, was married to Catena’s daughter, and Petrin held a stake in one of Catena and Green’s enterprises, Automatic Merchants Co., in New Jersey. When Nevada gambling authorities appeared for a random audit of his Bally enterprise in 1971, Wichinsky telephoned Petrin.

Wichinsky admitted having business or social contacts with and/or catering to various alleged Mobsters, such as Cellini, whom he helped land a job representing Bally in Rome. Wichinsky, however, denied ever knowing or being affiliated with Catena.

• Joseph D. Testa, Jr.: This Chicago Mobster and reported close friend of Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio, Outfit enforcer and hitman, claimed to be selling slot machines for Bally in Australia, but O’Donnell denied that was true when government officials there confronted him about it. Australian gaming authorities spotted Testa in Sydney several times, the first in 1969, sometimes in the company of local mobsters. As such, regulators concluded Testa was there on behalf of one or more U.S. syndicates to strong-arm into and monopolize their country’s slot machines industry.

Mobs’ Funding Vehicle

The Teamsters Union’s Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas Pension Fund, or Teamsters Pension Fund (TPF): Known as the Mob’s bank, the TPF was a major source of capital for Bally, providing it with a series of loans.

After Bally went public in 1968, the TPF itself and several of its trustees bought shares in the corporation. When the TPF loaned $12 million to Bally in the early 1970s, supposedly to finance building of the corporation’s first major Chicago plant, several fund trustees held Bally stock. They included International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons, Vice President William Presser and TPF Asset Manager Alvin Baron.

When other individuals pursued financing through the TPF for hotel-casinos, the trustees allegedly pressured them to buy the slot machines for their resorts from Bally. This was because “Bally’s 42,000 slot machines in Nevada casinos bring in over $250 million [$1.3 billion today] a year, helping the National Crime Syndicate make payments on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund provided for casino construction over the last 15 years,” wrote reporters Lowell Bergman and Dee Stevens (The Capital Times, May 24, 1974).

Downsides To Affiliations

Bally’s relationships with organized criminals repeatedly dogged the corporation, first becoming a problem in 1969 when it applied with the Nevada Gaming Commission to assume distribution of its slot machines in Nevada. 

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* Emprise would be indicted in 1972 with Detroit Mobsters Michael Polizzi and Anthony Zerilli on charges of trying to obtain a hidden ownership of the Frontier hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

** Dino Cellini and Meyer Lansky also would be indicted in 1972, in Florida for conspiring to receive almost $200,000 ($1.2 million today) that players lost at the Colony Club in London.

Sources