Meyer Lansky
American gangster · United States · On the map · Lived 1902 to 1983 · aged 80
Meyer Lansky spent half a century under federal watch as the supposed financial architect behind mid-century organized crime - the man who made rival ethnic gangs work together, who bankrolled casinos from Florida to Havana.
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About this person
Lansky came up through New York's Jewish underworld in the 1910s and 1920s, then built his name as a gambling organizer rather than a narcotics man. He brokered cooperation between Jewish and Italian-American crime figures - Lucky Luciano chief among them - and helped run casino operations across Florida, Cuba, Las Vegas, and the Caribbean through the middle decades of the century. The FBI tracked him for nearly fifty years; he was convicted only of illegal gambling, never the major financial or violent crimes investigators suspected. Estimates of his wealth ran wild in law enforcement files and newsprint, but scholars now say the claims reflected organized-crime legend more than ledger. His estate, when it closed, was small.