His family immigrated in 1911 and settled in New York. While Lansky was in school, he met a young Lucky Luciano, who shook down other kids for protection money. When Lansky refused to pay, Luciano fought him, but came away impressed with the younger boy's toughness, creating a bond that would make them friends for life.
Lansky met Bugsy Siegel in 1920. They also became friends for life and, together with Luciano, formed part of what became known as the Five Points Gang. Lansky was instrumental in Luciano's rise to power, when he helped in the killing in 1931 of Luciano's boss, Joe Masseria, and later warned Luciano of the plans by Salvatore Maranzano (the other major New York mafia boss of the time) to kill Luciano and Vito Genovese. Alerted to the danger, they killed Maranzano first. As a youngster, Lansky's life was saved many times by Siegel, a fact Lansky always appreciated. The two of them managed that mob adroitly, despite it being one of the most violent Prohibition mobs.
Lansky had established gambling operations in Florida, New Orleans and Cuba by 1936, the year Luciano was convicted and sent to prison; as Alfred McCoy records,
"During the 1930s, Meyer Lansky "discovered" the Caribbean for northeastern syndicate bosses and invested their illegal profits in an assortment of lucrative gambling ventures... He was also reportedly responsible for organized crime's decision to declare Miami a "free city" (i.e., not subject to the usual rules of territorial monopoly)." [1] Lansky also became a big investor in Siegel's Las Vegas project. After Al Capone's 1931 condemnation for tax evasion, he transferred illegal funds from his casinos to Europe, where he opened up a numbered bank account following the 1934 Swiss Banking Act. Later, according to Lucy Komisar, he would even buy an offshore bank in Switzerland, which he used for money laundering through a network of shell and holding companies [2].
Curiously, during World War II, Lansky would be instrumental in the Office of Naval Intelligence's efforts to recruit the criminal underworld into keeping an eye out for German infiltrators and submarine-borne saboteurs. Around this period, Lansky ordered the execution of his longtime associate Siegel for stealing from the syndicate.
After Luciano was paroled on the condition that he return to Sicily and never leave Italy, Luciano secretly moved to Cuba, from where he began to resume his control over the American mafia operations. He also ran a number of casinos with the sanction of the dictator Fulgencio Batista (who, unsurprisingly, received a percentage). With the rise of Castro in Cuba, the casinos were shut, and Lansky moved on to elsewhere in the Caribbean, particularly the Bahamas.
Siegel's projects in Las Vegas were failing miserably and all mafia bosses, Lansky included, were summoned to a secret meeting in Havana. While everyone else wanted Siegel killed, Lansky begged for a second chance for his friend. He was able to persuade the bosses to give Siegel a second chance, but Siegel's casino kept on losing money and a second meeting was called. This time the casino was able to turn in a small profit during the month of their second meeting, and that, together with Lansky's pleading and Luciano's hopes their old friend could still do good in Vegas, convinced them to give Siegel a third chance. That small profit turned out to be only a small hurrah, and, leading to a third meeting in Cuba. Despite Lansky's insistence they give Siegel another chance, he was killed in 1947.
Later on, during the 1960s, Lansky became involved in drug smuggling, prostitution, extortion, investing in hotels and golf courses; notably, Caesar's Palace was funded with funds he had appropriated from the Teamsters. It is said that he made approximately US$300 million from those investments. Luciano was unhappy with the fact Lansky was gaining more money than he was, but because Luciano had health problems, he wasn't able to do anything about it.
In the 1970s, Lansky faced tax evasion charges. Upon learning of his impending problems, he fled to Israel, where he lived for three years before being apprehended and returned to the United States. He served a short time (because of ill health) and was released shortly after.
Lansky died of lung cancer, reportedly leaving a fortune of over US$400 million behind, although this has since been disputed.
The character Hyman Roth in the film The Godfather Part II is based on Lansky, and the film Bugsy, a biography of Bugsy Siegel, included him as a major character, played by Ben Kingsley. In the 1991 film Mobsters, he is played by the actor Patrick Dempsey. A made-for-TV movie called Lansky was released starring Richard Dreyfuss as Lansky, Eric Roberts as Bugsy Siegel, and Anthony LaPaglia as Lucky Luciano.
Lansky was one of the premiere treasurers, advisors, Godfathers, and masterminds of the Mafia, but also one of the most understated, least recognized characters in the history of organized crime. That's how it's done, after all. Who's going to suspect a yahoodi from Poland named Majer Suchowlinski?.
Anyone who did suspect him met Bugsy Siegel, one of the most violent gangsters of the day. Lansky and Siegel were longtime friends, and constantly saved each other's lives. Siegel's psychotic nature meant that Lanksy rarely needed to kill. This did not preclude himself, nor his wife Jane, from driving while Siegel performed drive-bys..
Lansky's brilliance was finance; he was a money-making machine, architecting the money laundering and financial network essential to organized crime. In concert with the strong-armed Lucky Luciano, both halves of the finance-violence yin-yang of the Mafia were complete..
Desperate to take the miled-mannered Lansky down, the United States government brought him up on tax evasion in 1970. Lansky fled to Israel, but was forced to return after visa complications mysteriously developed. He avoided conviction by exercising his ties with the highest levels of power, and died in 1983 a rich old Jew in Florida. Go figure...
LAYOUT BY ANTONIO MONTANA
The Lansky Diaries