He Built a Criminal Empire… and Died Broke | Rogues Gallery JJ

Meyer Lansky was  the kind of American success story people love. A poor immigrant boy who through grit and determination made it to Fortune  magazine’s list of the 100 richest Americans. The Reader’s  Digest reported he had a fortune of over $300 million and they both  listed his occupation as gangster. Lansky was only 5  ft 4 in tall, but he cast a long ominous shadow across the American landscape.  Hollywood has portrayed him as a kingpin of organized crime, the brains behind

the mob, the Jewish Godfather.  A Senate committee called him one of the most notorious gangsters of the 20th century. He’s accused of putting business  first and ordering the murder of his own best friend. He led organized crime into the corruption of an entire country. He’s been called mogul of the mob and chairman  of the board. Did I enjoy it? I’m sure it was profitable, too. Lansky was the last of a generation of gangsters who captured the American imagination. Most of them met violent

deaths along the way. Meyer Lansky was the last  one left standing. But in the end, America’s love affair with its gangsters  made Lansky so notorious, he became a victim of his own success. Rogue’s Gallery  is narrated by William Devane. This episode, Meyer Lansky. >>  >> He is born in 1902 in Grodno, Poland, a center of Jewish  life for over 800 years. Grodno is also a place where Jews are persecuted as a matter of course and many leave to look for a better

life in America. It was a direct result of the pogroms in Eastern  Europe that drove his family to New York. He always rationalized his later career of violence in terms of this, that he’d had a raw deal in his childhood and he’d seen Jews fighting back. And that was something that he thought he wanted to do when he came to America. In 1911, 9-year-old Meyer arrives with his family at Ellis Island. His parents cannot remember his birthday,  so an immigration officer lists it as July

4th. Life is tough for Lansky’s family. They have very little and are living in a tenement in New York’s  worst slum, the legendary Lower East Side. This small area of Manhattan  has the greatest density of people per square block of any place in the world. This becomes  the center of Meyer Lansky’s boyhood, a place of poverty, disease, but most of all,  crime. What is to become the defining incident of his life  takes place one Sabbath evening. Observant Jews cannot light a fire on

the Sabbath,  so Meyer’s mother gives him the pot of cholent, the special Sabbath stew,  to take to the baker’s for warming. And he was given a nickel by his mother to give to the baker for the little space that they had in the oven. And as he walked through [snorts and music] the streets to the bakery, he saw a crap game going on on the street. >>  >> And he thought, well, I’ll use the nickel, I’ll play the game, I’ll put some money in my own pocket and still

pay the baker.  And of course, he lost. >> [snorts] >> And he had to go home with the cold pot of stew and face the shame of telling his family that he lost the money. And the family went without a hot meal that Sabbath. And that, he said, was the turning point for him. But the lesson he drew from this was not that he’d been unfair to his family. It was simply that he’d been stupid to risk his money on the wrong side of the gambling game. Meyer spends every day after school

watching  the street gamblers. He is smart enough to see the games are fixed and the players are all suckers. He vows he will never be taken again. He will now be the one  doing the taking. At age 16, Lansky quits  school and organizes a floating crap game. Running a game means also protecting it. He needs to form an alliance. Meyer approaches  a young Jewish street tough whose uncontrollable violence gets him the nickname Bugsy. Together they form the Bugs and Meyer

gang. Meyer is the brains  and Ben Bugsy Siegel is the brawn. The gang robs, extorts, and  of course, runs Meyer’s crap games. But the person who will have the greatest impact on Lansky is another young tough who leads a gang in the adjoining Italian neighborhood. The Italians on the whole were the better street fighters and they would take pleasure in beating up Jews and stealing their money. And they saw this little shrimp coming along the street and they thought he was the ideal

target for them. And Lansky wouldn’t roll over.  The leader of the Italian gang is a teenager named Salvatore Luciano. He stuck out his chin and told Luciano to get lost. And from this show of defiance, a friendship developed which really became the most significant alliance in crime  in New York in the 1920s and 30s between Lansky the Jew and Luciano the Italian. Luciano and Lansky in the right place  at the right time. They are about to become the beneficiaries of the best business

opportunity the American government has ever  given anyone. Prohibition. Prohibition was a wonderful opportunity for bright young men like Lansky, Luciano, Siegel, clever business people, none too scrupulous. A whole sector of the American economy was handed over um to the criminal classes. And this was really the beginning, the funding in America of the underground economy. Lansky had the cool head, the ability to work out the deals and keep the sums in check. Bugsy had the foolhardiness, the

risk, the danger you needed when you were running a truck of bootleg booze. After a job, Meyer quickly figures out who gets what percentage of the take and then always makes a fair and accurate share out. Bugsy tells him he is better at counting the money than  stealing it. The sums were accurate because he could do them properly in his head. And they were accurate more importantly because he never took too much for himself. So people liked working with Meyer Lansky. There was no bad feeling.

They came back. Lansky and Luciano soon come under the influence of Arnold the  Brain Rothstein, the most famous Jewish gangster of the time. Rothstein  sees the potential prohibition offers and has deftly organized the illegal importation of liquor. He invites Lansky  and Luciano to run part of his operation. Ralph Salerno has spent his  career observing organized crime. Rothstein employed had working for him, was partners with all of the top name gangsters of the next 50 years.

Lansky became distinctly aware of Rothstein’s political connections which made everything work smoothly for him. Rothstein controls police,  politicians, and even a few judges. Lansky sees it as much better to command situations  with money rather than with violence. But Rothstein’s role as mentor is short-lived. A gambler himself, the Brain  is murdered over a gambling dispute. Luciano and Lansky move quickly to take over the operations they have been running  for Rothstein. Now they

begin to consolidate their power. Lansky’s friendship  with Luciano enables them to divide up territories. For the first time in New York, gangs from  different ethnic groups are cooperating together. There is less of mobsters killing each  other and more of everyone making money. Luciano is doing so well that one of the old line Italian crime lord, Salvatore  Maranzano, tells him he is stepping out of bounds. But Luciano is not about to back off. Instead, he decides to strike first.

But Maranzano  keeps himself well protected from the younger Italian gangsters. It will be hard to get him. So that’s when Luciano turned to his Jewish friends. He turned to Lansky and Siegel and said,  I need some help from your friends. Maranzano had an office right behind Grand Central Station. He had a coterie of bodyguards around. And one day, four non-Italian gentlemen walked in, said they were from the IRS and they had to see Maranzano. >>  >> Wait just a minute, we’ll get Mr.

Maranzano to speak to you. And one fellow opened the door and the four alleged IRS investigators pulled out guns and knives, shot the bodyguards, stabbed and shot Maranzano and killed him.  Red Levine was one of the gunmen who killed Maranzano. Red Levine was one of the fellows in the Meyer Bug gang. >>  >> Lansky is not given to the kind of carousing his friends enjoy. At his mother’s urging, Meyer proposes to  a young woman he is dating from the neighborhood. Her name is Anna

Citron. Lansky entered into marriage Um in a carefree sort of way. He had lots of money in his pocket and his girlfriend Anna doesn’t seem to have thought too hard about why it was that her boyfriend had so much extra money to spend. When the Lansky’s get married in 1929, Bugsy is one of the witnesses.  And Salvatore Luciano is the only outsider invited to the wedding, an honor he fully appreciates. Lansky knows that  with the promised repeal of prohibition, his gang’s source of income will vanish.

He looks around for the next business  opportunity and what he sees turns out to be absolutely prophetic.  Lansky’s personal attorney recognizes Myers insight into the darker side of human nature. He had one expression that he always used. Gambling pulls at the core of a man. He meant that every man is susceptible to the gambling urge. There is some hidden power that just pulls you to the gambling  table. Like alcohol, Lansky views gambling more as a vice than a crime. After all,  he reasons, most

people like to gamble, to take a chance. Why shouldn’t he provide them  the opportunity? And with that, one of America’s first multi-billion dollar industries is about to be launched. >>  >> In 1933, prohibition finally comes to an end. Meyer is now free to devote himself full time to setting up his gambling interests. His success has always been based  on paying people off. This is the important lesson he learned from Rothstein. He knew how to bribe people. He knew how

to do it in a dignified way, which was not insulting to them. Uh he knew how much to give. He knew exactly the right people to give it to. He wasted very little. When prohibition ended, he looked for somewhere else he could pay off in areas where there were comparatively unsophisticated local governments, where sheriffs and police chiefs were willing to accept money and where, frankly, the local community was prepared to turn a blind eye. The growth of Miami as a resort leads  Meyer to see South Florida as a

natural location for his casinos. Just north of the crowded resort hotels of Miami Beach is the small town of Hallandale. But the local bookmakers are not about to welcome Lansky’s latest venture. Lansky came down and negotiated a deal. My partners and I, coming down from the northeast, will not make book. We will not compete with you. All we want is the right to run the illegal casinos, which you fellows are not interested in. And that was a good deal. Good thinking. Good planning. A happy deal where everyone was satisfied.

He made a deal with all the homeowners in Hallandale, whereby they would each get a stipend of $35 per week. I had asked him what the purpose was. And his answer was that if uh a householder came in and spent his weekly wages gambling, then the wife would raise hell. And uh he didn’t need that kind of trouble. Lansky’s casinos are soon enjoying enormous success. Not only are they first-class establishments, but Lansky’s gambling tables are known to be fair and honest. They were places that were

patronized by the finest people and had seating capacity, some of them as high as 800 people. They were known all over America for their food and entertainment. He insisted on absolute scrupulous honesty. All the gamblers all over the country would go to his gambling establishments knowing that they would get a fair shot. But no one ever saw him near a gambling table. He never gave advice. He never gambled, never played. Not being Italian, Lansky can never become a made member of the mob. But he

has the next best thing. He is  de facto consigliere to Luciano. And Luciano is quickly stepping up to the top rank of the New York mobs. Lucky likes living the high life  and with all the money coming in, he cuts a very visible figure in New York. In 1931, the Waldorf-Astoria was the biggest, newest, brand new hotel in New York. And the northern wing of that building were private apartments. It was not a hotel. It was the Waldorf Towers. Herbert Hoover, president of the United States, had an apartment there.

Luciano moved in and had an apartment. As soon as he moved in, Ben Siegel had an apartment. Meyer Lansky didn’t have to move in to the Waldorf Towers uh to prove that he was a macho man. He lived  quietly on the west side of Manhattan and uh was quite content with that. And here on the home  front is the only wrinkle in Meyer’s life. Lansky never speaks of his  outside activities with Anna. And this makes for a tense and distant relationship between husband and wife.

Added to this strain was the fact that the first child that Anna gave birth to, uh Bernard Lansky, whom they nicknamed Buddy, >>  >> um although born looking quite healthy, soon failed to show signs of development. Uh and it became clear after about a year of life >>  >> that little Buddy was suffering from some sort of paralysis. And the cruelty of it struck Anna, his mother, so much that she brooded on it and came to feel that it was some sort of divine retribution,

uh that God was punishing uh the Lansky’s for  the for the criminal ways of Meyer and that Buddy was an awful uh example  of this. But Meyer has little time for his wife’s sorrows. Crime controlled by the mobs is now big  business and Lansky encourages Luciano to make everyone start acting in a business-like way. Lansky believes  that criminal gangs need to cooperate with each other. And his vision has Luciano’s muscle behind it. Luciano  calls the heads of all

the families to a meeting at his apartment at the Waldorf. Lansky  lays out a plan where, for the first time, the mobs will agree to an organized division of rackets and territories. The reason why Lansky was >>  >> so successful was because at least he brought some decent business principles to what he did. Working quietly in Luciano’s shadow, Lansky slowly  brings America’s mob elements into alignment, into a working relationship with each other. Crime in America has finally

become organized and the father of organized crime is just hitting  his stride. Lansky is at the top of his game, functioning as a trusted underling  to the Italian bosses and running his own gambling operations in New York and Florida. Yet few are aware of his status within the mob, but trouble is just ahead. Thomas Dewey is a US attorney with  political ambitions who stands outside the ring of politicians who are on the mob take. Now, the day of fear of the gangster is coming to an end.

Dewey was an ambitious uh politician. Uh he seized on this idea of being the broom that would sweep New York clean. He saw the value of single high-profile cases. That’s why he went for Luciano. Luciano, the most visible  member of the mob, is charged with running multiple prostitution rings. In 1936, Luciano goes to trial, is convicted,  and sent to prison on a 30-to-50-year sentence. Luciano puts Frank Costello  in place as the caretaker Don. Costello and Lansky have known each other since their

early gang days. There was a sense in which Lansky got on better with Costello than he did with Luciano. Costello was much more a Lansky man, pretensions to civility, to even some sort of intellectual attainment, not as flashy and vulgar as Luciano. So, in the Costello organization, you had Anastasia on the one hand, who represented the muscle, and Lansky on the other. But Meyer believes he and Bugsy could be next on Dewey’s list. So, the two friends lower their New York profiles. It was his partner, Ben Siegel, who had

gone west to California, that uh Lansky encouraged. Take a look at Nevada. You can have legal gambling casinos. And Ben went there. And Meyer helped him get Frank Costello and other investors to put money into something new. Gambling has been legal in Nevada since 1931. Yet it’s still a remote, difficult-to-get-to place. Bugsy’s job is to make sure the mob has a foothold there for the future. Lansky further entrenches himself in Florida,  where he likes the warm tropical nights and the vibrant atmosphere.

And just 50 miles  across the water from the lights of Miami Beach is another interesting opportunity. Havana, Cuba  is a favorite winter resort for wealthy Americans and Lansky makes a few small casino investments there. Like Nevada, gambling  is legal in Cuba, but that doesn’t mean payoffs don’t have to be made. As usual, Meyer makes it his business to know  whom he needs to know. One of the friendships he makes is that of a rising young army officer named Fulgencio

Batista. With his gambling interests in Florida and  his responsibilities in New York, Meyer is getting stretched thin. He needs help and turns  to his brother Jake. When Meyer had all these operations, he was alone. And there was no one he could repose confidence in. So, he prevailed on his brother Jake to quit the fur business in New York and come down. And Jake was a big, strapping, good-natured fellow. But he didn’t know anything about the gambling business. So, Meyer just said, “Just stick a cigar

in your mouth and keep your mouth shut and look smart.” >> [laughter] >> And that’s what Jake did. Jake  moves his family to Hollywood, Florida and Meyer uses Jake’s house for business meetings.  They would close all the Venetian blinds, which would would make them seen from the street. And all of it this clatter of these Venetian blinds closing and then all these men sort of shuffling in and seating themselves around the table.  And Uncle Meyer usually sat at the head,

closest to the kitchen. Something much bigger than Lansky’s meetings  is brewing across the ocean in Europe. Adolf Hitler is threatening World War. The military is  greatly concerned about Nazi infiltration in the port of New York. They know the waterfront is run by the mob, particularly Luciano’s Sicilian  faction. So, Naval Intelligence approached Meyer Lansky, um told him the problem and Lansky willingly acted as the go-between between the American government, Naval

Intelligence specifically, and Lucky Luciano, who at that time was in jail in upstate New York, in the town of Comstock. When Lansky was approached by the government, he seemed to be rather pleased. He’d taken some pleasure in organizing Jewish and Italian gangs of roughnecks who would break up the various rallies organized by pro-Nazi and fascist organizations in the New York area. So, when the government approached him, he said, “Yes.” He went up to Comstock and spoke to Luciano.

On subsequent journeys, he took Frank Costello and other figures from the Italian underworld up to Comstock, where they  also spoke with Luciano. The meetings with Luciano may have a hidden agenda as well. But they couldn’t possibly have been talking about, “Yes, tell them to protect the port of New York.” That would take 5 seconds to say that. They talked for hours and hours. They were getting word to Luciano. He was making decisions, which they were carrying back. It’s true there is no incidents of

sabotage on the New York docks. There aren’t any incidents in any of the other ports, either. Yet there are an awful lot of trips to the prison. At war’s end, Luciano is pardoned as a payoff for his help, but on the condition he agrees to be deported back to Italy. Throughout the war, Meyer has been funneling money to Ben Siegel in Vegas. Bugsy is building a luxurious gambling resort, the Flamingo  Hotel, but he’s on a spending spree. There is concern about cost overruns  and

Bugsy isn’t paying attention to syndicate warnings. Lansky takes his second son Paul on a trip to Vegas  to rein his friend in. For a while, he succeeds, but Ben quickly returns to his free-spending  ways, antagonizing everyone even further. The feeling was that a great deal of the money didn’t go into the construction job. It went into Ben Siegel and his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, and her jewelry and her furs. Bugsy has gone too far. The mob leadership demands something be done.

I believe that Lansky had to very, very reluctantly agree. He and Ben had helped make the rules. They had to live up to them. He reluctantly agreed that Ben Siegel had to be killed. As always, Lansky  opts to go with the consensus. He has always been for the good of the organization and Meyer demonstrates this once  again, building the mob’s trust in him even more. Lansky always said that the murder of Bugsy Siegel uh was one of the saddest days in his life. This isn’t the only personal issue Meyer

has to deal with. The Lansky’s now have three children. A girl, Sandra, is  the last addition to the family. His marriage to Anna, the mother of his children, had gone downhill. She herself found the strain of the essential dishonesty of their life, the fact that she didn’t know what was going  on, um mentally debilitating. She became more and more unstable. Lansky spent less time with her and they divorced finally in 1947. And there’s a  new problem lurking on the horizon. A politically

ambitious senator, Estes Kefauver, is investigating the crime syndicate. One by one, he drags every well-known gangster out of the shadows, including  Lansky. In Florida, Kefauver expresses shock at all the gambling houses  he finds there. Of course, in each case, Meyer Lansky was the man who ran these operations. And so, for the first time in his life, Meyer Lansky became a public figure. A young man named Vincent Mercurio  befriends Lansky’s son Buddy during one of his hospital stays.

Mercurio quickly becomes  a trusted family friend and stays with Buddy when the Lansky’s are out of town. When Lansky  calls to speak with Buddy, he learns that Mercurio has inadvertently accepted a subpoena delivered to the apartment on Central Park West. He says, “Who opened the telegram?” He says, “Vince.” He says, “Well, you tell Vince to go down in place of me, cuz since he opened the telegram, he can go down.” I said, “You are kidding, aren’t you?”

So, when he saw me, he said, “Why don’t you go down for me?” I said, “What will I say?” “You say nothing.” And when Lansky himself appears before the New York grand jury, that’s exactly what he says, nothing. He knew that if he answered any question, he’d have to admit to income from these gambling houses and that would commit him to investigations from the IRS. But it really was the beginning of the end for him. It was the end of his gambling business in America.

By happy chance, just as Kefauver was rooting out organized gambling all over the country, Lansky’s old friend Batista  seizes power in Cuba. But Batista has a severe  public relations problem. Prominent Americans gambling at Havana casinos have been cheated in crooked games. Cuba’s lucrative vacation industry is in jeopardy. Batista knows Lansky’s reputation for  running an honest house and invites him to supervise all the casinos in Havana. So, as a result, the tourists were

protected cuz all the gambling places in Cuba, thanks to Meyer’s intervention, were honorable and honest. Lansky found himself on a Caribbean island just at the beginning of the whole Caribbean tourist boom, operating his business as a legal business. Gambling was attractive and open and there he was, the friend of the president of the country. He gave him a lot of money. He would He would give him a $150,000 at a at a at a pop. And he and Batista were very close. >>  >> Cuba in 1955 is an ideal situation for

Lansky. Legalized gambling, a totally corrupt government and outside the reach of the US Department of Justice. Meyer acts as the broker between the mob and the corrupt Cuban government. Havana becomes his personal fiefdom. The first and only time the mob allows him any real control over anything. But it was at this very moment of triumph that he made his greatest mistake, as it turned out. Because he decided to take all his money. He decided to build himself a hotel, the best hotel  in Havana.

And he brought the best architects and he built the Riviera, a wonderful hotel that is still there to be seen in Havana to this day. >>  >> The first hotel in Havana to have central air conditioning. Lansky has gone and done the one  thing he has always avoided. He gambles with his own money. All of his money. This was almost contradictory to his philosophy. What I mean by that is he used to say to me, “Vince, never gamble.” And he did gamble, as he his whole

future there on the Riviera. Cuba was a great playground for American tourists uh for a number of reasons. I mean, the climate, the prostitutes and so on and very close by. This casino life point up the horrible conditions of Cuban life and enormous poverty among the masses. Meyer has little reason to pay any attention to the rebels  in the mountains southeast of Havana. His perspective is that of the wealthy American tourists who visit his hotel and casinos. And even if worse comes  to worse

and his friend Batista will be replaced, Meyer Lansky doesn’t really  concern himself. It will just be a different regime he’d be paying off. Lansky trusts that the bribe will see him through whatever cards  are dealt him. The threat of violent revolution is looming in the mountains of central  Cuba, but in Havana tourists are still pouring in drawn by the pleasure palaces built along the beach. Lansky’s Riviera is the newest  and the best. Meyer is in great spirits. He is

operating in the open and taking pride in his accomplishments, but on the home front his son Paul doesn’t want anything to do with him. He had his father’s courage, his father’s brains, everything, but he decided to make  a life for himself separate apart and he did. Lansky is saddened that Paul has distanced himself, but he understands why. Meyer has also remarried. His new wife Teddy, whom he met in Florida, had been his manicurist. She was quite an attractive, rather flamboyant looking woman and I had the

sense that she wasn’t so welcome. Teddy is the opposite of Anna. She has no problem with how Meyer makes his money as long as there is plenty of it and she doesn’t care if Meyer’s children like her or not. Then in 1957 in Manhattan, Frank Costello’s right-hand man Albert Anastasia is murdered in a spectacular barber shop hit. While on a brief trip to New York, Lansky is picked up for questioning. The police noted Anastasia has been  talking with Lansky about investing in Cuba. The press quickly zeros in on him.

Do you know Albert Anastasia? Well, I don’t know what you call knowing someone. I mean you know what he looked like and you you knew him. >> That’s right. And what did you tell him about the Anastasia case? Did you tell him anything? I couldn’t tell him anything. Mhm. I don’t know nothing about him. Well, well, what what did you say when they asked you about it? It was just as foreign to me as it would be to an Eskimo in Alaska. Meyer quickly returns to Cuba  safely out of the reach of the US

criminal justice system. But for someone who had always been able to see  around corners, he somehow misses the significance of this fellow up in the hills, Fidel Castro. For years  Castro had been leading guerrilla raids against Batista’s army and finally on New Year’s Eve in 1958, he leads an attack on all of Cuba’s major cities. The Riviera has been open for exactly 1 year. But he always retained his confidence that whatever happened, he could buy his way out of trouble.

So Meyer is not alarmed when he wakes up one morning  to discover his friend Batista has fled the country. He feels safe with his knowledge of human nature. It doesn’t matter who is in power. Everyone is corruptible. He has never been wrong about that until now. His main thrust was pay, pay, pay. He figured money was the answer to everything. By paying you could quiet any disturbance, eradicate any trouble, get any nuisance out of the way. Just pay. Castro saw the problem precisely as

a symbol almost of American corruption, the corrupt influence of America in Cuba. Symbolically, it pointed up the worst aspects of American control over Cuba and that’s why for him it was very important immediately to throw the whole thing out. Lansky attempts  to hang on pouring what remaining capital he has into the Riviera to keep it open, but 1 year after he took over, Castro declares gambling illegal >>  >> and closes all the casinos. Lansky had to leave practically all his

assets >>  >> in Cuba. So when people wonder what happened to Meyer Lansky’s money, I say, “Well, you can go and see it if you like. It’s standing there in Havana in bricks and mortar  in this wonderful hotel, the Riviera into which he sunk all his dreams.” When he left Cuba, he left practically a pauper. Back in Florida, the bright lights of Miami seem to taunt  him. His only income now is a small percentage of the skim from the Vegas casinos. He

still has the job of dividing it  up among the families. But the men he came up with are no longer in positions of power. Lansky’s long-time ally Frank Costello is the target of a mob assassin’s bullet. Costello escapes, but decides to call it quits retiring from the leadership of New York mob. By the late 60s,  Lansky was something of a dinosaur as far as crime was concerned. All his contemporaries were gone. This made it all the more interesting for the media to focus on him

>>  >> and of course it suited the existing crime bosses very well for Meyer Lansky to take the heat. A newspaper man who wrote for the Miami Herald developed a thing about Meyer Lansky and one day Hank Messick reached up into the air and just pulled a number down and said Lansky could be worth as much as $400 million and in the next 10 years that’s repeated in other books and stories. It has been estimated that Lansky is worth $400 million based on nothing. And of course

the fact that nobody knew at all was quite how poor he was. So he had to live with this bitter irony. It doesn’t help that one night a wiretap picks up Lansky telling his wife Teddy that the mob is bigger than  US Steel. How was he supposed to live since he was being pursued day and night by federal agents, the FBI and the Treasury Department and so on day and night. They had >>  >> teams that were devoted only to Meyer Lansky. Hounded by the media, investigated endlessly and indicted  again and

again, he knows there is only one choice left. He begins to shape his last big plan to follow in the footsteps of many of  his former associates and go into exile. In 1970, returning from a vacation trip to Mexico, Lansky is arrested as he comes through US customs. They find a bottle of ulcer  medicine for which he has no prescription. Although a judge throws the case out, Lansky has had enough. He always had a special  feeling for the state of Israel and knows that as a Jew he can’t be turned away.

>>  >> He had good information that he was going to be indicted and sure enough three different indictments came down after he had left the country and gone to Israel. Mr. Lansky, why are the American authorities after you? Well, actually it started about 1965 when some newspaper man wrote an article that I have $300 million. Well, well, I wish I had a million dollars. This is just a gobbledygook. Say it long enough and you’ll get the people to believe it. So you feel that you’re a victim of

public prosecution? I sure do. The mafia dinosaur becomes the focus of attention from the Israeli press and he leaves Tel Aviv for the relative quiet of a beach community, but he is followed even there. The moment Lansky made the application, the American government sent over documents, invited the Israeli state attorney over to Washington, showed them all the material that the FBI had, much of it unsubstantiated, but still horrifying. Yosef Burg, the Minister of Justice, presents Lansky’s case to Israel’s then Prime Minister

Golda Meir. And she said, “Meyer Lansky, Meyer Lansky, who’s that?” She didn’t appear to know what what Burg was talking about. And so Burg ran through the the outlines of the story and happened to mention the word mafia. Whereupon Golda Meir raised her eyebrows and said, “Mafia? Mafia? No mafia in Israel.” And that Burg said was really the end of Lansky’s chances of becoming an Israeli citizen. The case is appealed to the Israeli  Supreme Court, but is denied.

>> Well, so long. So long. Lansky finds himself isolated and alone and with nowhere to go. He has to leave Israel,  but can’t return to the waiting indictments in the US. He is quickly becoming a  man without a country. He looks around to see if there is anywhere else he can take refuge. And he picked of all places on Paraguay in those days, the preserve of a dictator, fascist dictator Stroessner, a refuge for Nazis, German war criminals. In November  of 1972, Lansky

quietly slips out of Israel. Traveling with  an Israeli bodyguard, he flies to Geneva where he is to switch to a flight to South America, but the plane is delayed  and his presence detected. When he finally boards, Washington knows he is on the move. As they then flew  from Buenos Aires to Paraguay, it became clear that they were being watched. When they landed in Paraguay, uh there were American officials on the tarmac and local police who  wouldn’t let uh Lansky get off.

The flight continues with Lansky still on board, and Meyer realizes the plane’s ultimate destination is Miami. It was going to hop across South America to various  destinations. And they tried to get off at each destination, but everywhere they landed, the FBI was ahead of them. They’d alerted the local police and immigration officials. They were not allowed off. So, when it eventually touched down in Miami, the FBI was waiting, the press was waiting, and everything that Lansky um had run away from

was waiting for  him once again. Now the US government has its case against Lansky, and they have the man himself. After all his efforts to escape  the arm of American justice, Lansky finds himself right back where he started. Immediately arrested at the airport, he is charged and indicted with contempt of court and income tax evasion. Several days later, his wife Teddy arrives  from Israel. She too has a welcoming at the airport, but doesn’t share her husband’s quiet

acceptance of events. Oh, that’s Out on bond awaiting trial,  the feeding frenzy begins again. Lansky is always under surveillance and always surrounded by reporters. Are you pleased with the way your attorney handled your defense? I’m sorry, but no comment. And his life was made the greatest misery of all uh by the press um who discovered that he lived on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, that he had this little dog that he liked to walk. They started the publicity they could never stop.

And I was told by good authority that they’ll never stop. They have too big an investment in me now. It became the standard story for any journalist visiting Miami. He’d go to Collins Avenue and see the chairman of the board, the head of American organized crime, stepping out of his grand condominium walking his dog. Well, I actually went inside that condominium uh when I was researching my book about Lansky, and was amazed to discover it was the smallest in the whole building. Uh it had a nasty smell of the kitchens. Uh

it had no sea view whatsoever. It was all that Lansky could afford um when he came back from Israel, and it was there that he spent uh the last years of his life. Lansky is now an old man with an old man’s ailments.  He is suffering from a heart condition, but he plays the game out, dutifully appearing in court, but  never testifying. His appearance is that of a kindly old gentleman, not a mafia kingpin.  The only incriminating thing he does is have coffee at Wolfie’s Deli with some

of his retired mobster friends. >>  >> Although it takes 2 years for the government to throw everything at him, Lansky beats all the  charges. He’s convicted of contempt, but the appeals judge has a dim view of government tactics and throws the whole thing out. But the final blow comes from the mob itself. His wife Teddy’s son Richard gets into an argument with  some visiting mobsters from Philly and kills one of them in a bar fight. Word is out that his days are numbered.

I think he would have liked to have saved Teddy’s son. Uh but the Philadelphia gangster  wanted vengeance. Uh and Teddy’s son came out of a restaurant in the parking lot and bang bang bang, the state of Florida was saved a lot of money in a trial. He was killed. The reality  is that not only is Lansky out of organized crime, he doesn’t even wield any influence with it. And Teddy never  forgives Meyer’s inability to save her son. In December of 1982, Lansky enters a

hospital in Miami. Several weeks  later, he succumbs to his various illnesses. He is 80 years old. Although hundreds of millions passed  through his hands during his career, there is no evidence his assets at the time of his death amount to more than a few hundred thousand dollars. You can go and study Meyer Lansky’s will today if you like in the the courthouse in Dade County, but it shows he died without any money. He was an entrepreneurial pioneer who recognized the giant business

gambling was to become, but outlived the enormous sums of money he made for himself and the mob. There’s no doubt that he was a genius. He stayed out of jail. He pointed the way to this uh merger between something that was considered uh one of the most illicit practices and what has now become altogether legitimate because gambling now is universal in America and it’s even celebrated. It’s one of America’s biggest industries. And Meyer Lansky could be said maybe saw that. But there was a much bigger lesson, I

think, to be  learned from the life of of Meyer Lansky. And that is of an ultimate emptiness. Both his marriages were ultimately shams. He died on on bad terms with all  his children. Whatever career he tried to create in the underworld had collapsed. It’s the old lesson that crime does not pay. Something inside us likes the idea that uh you can break the rules  and you can get away with it. But when you look at what happened to Meyer Lansky, the cleverest of all the mobsters of the 20th century,

>>  >> and see how he ended his life, um you see that in the end there is a price to be paid for deceit. Um and that in the end >>  >> uh one way or the other, that price has got to be paid. His greatest achievement may be the fact that he died a peaceful death in a hospital bed. He wasn’t gunned down on the street, and he didn’t die in prison or in exile.  He spent his last years living quietly in the company of old friends. Meyer Lansky had survived on his wits right

through to the end. >>