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Lou Kravitz
Louis Kravitz (also known as Lou Kay or Shadows) was a New York labor racketeer during the early 1930s. On July 12, 1929, Kravitz, along with Louis Buchalter, Jacob Shapiro and two other gangsters, broke into the M. L. Rosenblatt clothing plant and wrecked $25,000 worth of machinery. ''The New York Times'' described them as "members of a gang which has been terrorizing nonunion clothing manufacturers". Kravitz was among the first 9 people to be arrested under New York state law, along with Louis Buchalter, Jacob Shapiro, Bugsy Siegel, Harry Teitelbaum, Harry Greenberg and 3 others, which made "it a crime for men of evil repute to gather together". The arrest was seen as providing a test case for the law. The 9 were arrested in a suite in the Hotel Franconia, where, police charged, they were plotting to terrorize the clothing industry. On December 24, 1931, Magistrate Maurice Gotlieb ruled that the police had failed to prove that the men were meeting with evil intent. Kravitz disap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Racket (crime)
Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercion, coercive, fraud, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. The term "racketeering" was coined by the Employers' Association of Greater Chicago, Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Teamsters Union.David Witwer, "'The Most Racketeer-Ridden Union in America': The Problem of Corruption in the Teamsters Union During the 1930s", in ''Corrupt Histories'', Emmanuel Kreike and William Chester Jordan, eds., University of Rochester Press, 2004. Specifically, a racket was defined by this coinage as being a service that calls forth its own demand, and would not have been needed otherwise. Narrowly, it means coercion, coercive or fraud, fraudulent business practices; broadly, it can mean any criminal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Buchalter
Louis Buchalter, known as Louis Lepke or Lepke Buchalter, (February 6, 1897March 4, 1944) was a Jewish-American organized crime figure and head of the Mafia hit squad Murder, Inc., during the 1930s. Buchalter was one of the premier labor union racketeers in New York City during that era. Charles Birger and Buchalter are the only National Crime Syndicate bosses to be executed after being convicted of murder. Buchalter was executed using the infamous " Old Sparky" electric chair after being sent "up the river" to Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Background Buchalter was born on February 6, 1897 into a large Ashkenazi Jewish family in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. His parents emigrated separately from the Russian Empire and married in 1893 in New York, where they had three sons together. His mother called Louis, their second son, "Lepkeleh" ("little Louis" in Yiddish), which later became "Lepke". His father, Barnett (Berl) Buchalter, had been a widower from P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacob Shapiro
Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro (May 5, 1899 – June 9, 1947) was a New York mobster who, with his partner Louis Buchalter, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, controlled industrial labor racketeering in New York for two decades and established the Murder, Inc. organization. Early years Buchalter served as the brains and Shapiro provided the muscle in an alliance that lasted for decades. Shapiro and Buchalter soon became acquainted with future mobsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, both of whom were protégés of mobster Arnold Rothstein. Labor slugger Encouraged by Rothstein, Shapiro and Buchalter entered the lucrative arena of New York labor racketeering working for Jacob Orgen. Orgen had previously wrested control of this racket from Nathan Kaplan in the decade-long Labor Slugger Wars. The gangsters had infiltrated trade union, labor unions in the busy Garment District, Manhattan, assaulting and murdering the union leadership to gain control. The gangsters then instituted a system of kickba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gangster
A gangster (informally gangsta) is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from ''Organized crime, mob'' and the suffix ''wikt:-ster, -ster''. Gangs provide a level of organization and resources that support much larger and more organized crime, complex criminal transactions than an individual criminal could achieve. Gangsters have been active for many years in countries around the world. Gangsters are the subject of many novels, films, television series, and video games. Usage In modern usage, the term "gang" is generally used for a criminal organization and the term "gangster" invariably describes a criminal. Much has been written on the subject of gangs, although there is no clear consensus about what constitutes a gang or what situations lead to gang formation and evolution. There is agreement that the members of a gang have a sense of common identity and belonging and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bugsy Siegel
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (; February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was an American gangster, mobster who was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was influential within the Jewish-American organized crime, Jewish Mob, along with his childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, and he also held significant influence within the American Mafia, Italian-American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate. Described as "handsome" and "charismatic", Siegel became one of the first front-page celebrity gangsters. Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder, Inc. and became a Rum-running, bootlegger during Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, American Prohibition. The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, Twenty-first Amendment was passed in 1933 repealing Prohibition, and he turned to gambling. In 1936, he left New York (state), New York and moved to California. His time as a mobster du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Teitelbaum
Harry Tietlebaum or ''Teitelbaum'' (born 1889) was an American organized crime figure in New York's underworld during Prohibition as he was associated of the Bug and Meyer Mob. He was later part of a major heroin smuggling operation with Meyer Lansky Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky; July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Lucky Luciano, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the dev ... and Harry "Nig" Rosen during the early 1930s. Further reading *Eisenberg, Dennis, Dan Uri & Eli Landau. ''Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob''. New York: Paddington Press, 1979. *Fried, Albert. ''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. *Messick, Hank. ''Lansky''. London: Robert Hale & Company, 1973. *Newark, Tim. ''Mafia Allies: The True Story of America's Secret Alliance with the Mob in World War II''. St. Paul, Minnesota: MB ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Greenberg
Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg (1909November 22, 1939) was an American gangster, known for being an associate and childhood friend of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and an employee of both Lucky Luciano, Charlie "Lucky" Luciano and Meyer Lansky. Life Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1909; to Jewish parents. On the streets of New York is where he met Siegel and 1930s Murder, Inc. leader Louis Buchalter. His first known arrest was in September 1927 for the drowning of Benjamin Goldstein; he was arrested with two other low-level criminals named Joseph Lefkowitz and Irving Rubinzahl. Greenberg was acquitted, and only Lefkowitz was convicted for the crime and sentenced to the electric chair, although he was later acquitted. On November 11, 1928, police raided a home and arrested Greenberg and Siegel, Harry Teitelbaum, Louis Kravitz, Philip Kovolick, Hyman Holtz, Joseph Stacher, and Jacob Shapiro. Most of these men were the assassins and backbone of Murder Inc. The men had met togeth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Test Case (law)
In case law, a test case is a lawsuit whose purpose is to establish an important legal principle or right and to set a precedent. Test cases are brought to court with the intention of challenging, interpreting, or receiving clarification on a present law, regulation, or constitutional principle. Government agencies sometimes bring test cases to confirm or expand their powers. The outcome of test cases has a wide public significance as it shapes future rulings. Examples Examples of influential test cases include: # '' Plessy v. Ferguson'' (1896) # '' Tennessee v. Scopes'' (1925) # '' United States v. One Book Called Ulysses'' (1933) # ''Brown v. Board of Education'' (1954) # '' Griswold v. Connecticut'' (1965) # '' Oneida Indian Nation of N.Y. State v. Oneida County'' (1974) # ''Adams v Cape Industries plc'' (1990) # '' Mabo v Queensland (No 2)'' (1992) # '' National Westminster Bank plc v Spectrum Plus Limited'' (2005) # '' District of Columbia v. Heller'' (2008) See also * Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narcotics
The term narcotic (, from ancient Greek ναρκῶ ''narkō'', "I make numb") originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with numbing or paralyzing properties. In the United States, it has since become associated with opiates and opioids, commonly morphine and heroin, as well as derivatives of many of the compounds found within raw opium latex. The primary three are morphine, codeine, and thebaine (while thebaine itself is only very mildly psychoactive, it is a crucial precursor in the vast majority of semi-synthetic opioids, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone). Legally speaking, the term "narcotic" may be imprecisely defined and typically has negative connotations. When used in a legal context in the U.S., a narcotic drug is totally prohibited, such as heroin, or one that is used in violation of legal regulation (in this word sense, equal to any controlled substance or illicit drug). In the medical community, the term is more precisely defined and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inchoate Offense
An inchoate offense, preliminary crime, inchoate crime or incomplete crime is a crime of preparing for or seeking to commit another crime. The most common example of an inchoate offense is "attempt". "Inchoate offense" has been defined as the following: "Conduct deemed criminal without actual harm being done, provided that the harm that would have occurred is one the law tries to prevent."See lists and chapters of texts at McCord and McCord, ''Infra,'' pp. 185-213, and Schmalleger, ''Infra'', pp. 105-161, 404. Intent Every inchoate crime or offense must have the ''mens rea'' of intent or of recklessness, typically intent. Absent a specific law, an inchoate offense requires that the defendant have the specific intent to commit the underlying crime. For example, for a defendant to be guilty of the inchoate crime of solicitation of murder, he or she must have intended for a person to die. Attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation all require ''mens rea''. On the other hand, commi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organized Crime
Organized crime is a category of transnational organized crime, transnational, national, or local group of centralized enterprises run to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally thought of as a form of illegal business, some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, terrorist groups, rebel groups, and Separatism, separatists, are politically motivated. Many criminal organizations rely on fear or terror to achieve their goals or aims as well as to maintain control within the organization and may adopt tactics commonly used by authoritarianism, authoritarian regimes to maintain power. Some forms of organized crime simply exist to cater towards demand of illegal goods in a state or to facilitate trade of goods and services that may have been banned by a state (such as illegal drugs or firearms). Sometimes, criminal organizations force people to do business with them, such as when a gang extorts protection racket, protec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
