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Polish Mob
Polish-American organized crime has existed in the United States throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Although not as well known as Cosa Nostra or Irish and Russian crime groups, the Polish Mob has a presence in many urban Polish American communities. Prohibition-era During Prohibition, many Polish-American criminal gangs took advantage of the opportunity to make money through the illegal sale of alcohol. In Chicago, Joseph Saltis and Jake Guzik allied themselves with Al Capone's Chicago Outfit. However, fighting Capone was the North Side Gang, which, while mostly Irish-American, had a large Polish presence as well, with Hymie Weiss (Wojciechowski) having Polish heritage. In New Jersey, the organization led by Mickey Cusick, was the prominent boss of bootlegging in Southern Jersey. The infamous gangster Meyer Lansky, one of the leaders of the National Crime Syndicate and associate of Lucky Luciano, was a Polish Jew. Joseph Filkowski led a mostly Polish bootleg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish American
Polish Americans () are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 8.81 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.67% of the U.S. population, according to the 2021 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The first eight Polish immigrants to British America came to the Jamestown colony in 1608, twelve years before the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts. Two Polish volunteers, Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, aided the Americans in the Revolutionary War. Casimir Pulaski created and led the Pulaski Legion of cavalry. Tadeusz Kosciuszko designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. Both are remembered as American heroes. Overall, around 2.2 million Poles and Polish subjects immigrated into the United States between 1820 and 1914, chiefly after national insurgencies and famine. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Racketeering
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] |
Hymie Weiss
Earl J. "Hymie" Weiss (born Henryk Wojciechowski; January 25, 1898 – October 11, 1926), was a Polish-American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone. He was known as "the only man Al Capone feared". Early years Henryk Wojciechowski was born in present-day Sieradz, Congress Poland, to Walenty S. Wojciechowski and Maria Bruszkiewicz. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1901 when Henryk was 3 years old and, upon their arrival in the new country, took the names of William and Mary Weiss. They settled in Buffalo, New York and later moved to an Irish district in the north of Chicago. He had four siblings who survived infancy: Bernard (Bruno), Frederick, Violet and Joseph. Two others died during infancy.Hymie Weiss profile MyAlCaponeMuseum.com. Accessed January 12, 202 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish-American
Irish Americans () are Irish ethnics who live within in the United States, whether immigrants from Ireland or Americans with full or partial Irish ancestry. Irish immigration to the United States From the 17th century to the mid-19th century Some of the first Irish people to travel to the New World did so as members of the Spanish garrison in Florida during the 1560s. Small numbers of Irish colonists were involved in efforts to establish colonies in the Amazon region, in Newfoundland, and in Virginia between 1604 and the 1630s. According to historian Donald Akenson, there were "few if any" Irish forcibly transported to the Americas during this period. Irish immigration to the Americas was the result of a series of complex causes. The Tudor conquest and subsequent colonization by English and Scots people during the 16th and 17th centuries had led to widespread social upheaval in Ireland. Many Irish people tried to seek a better life elsewhere. At the time Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Side Gang
The North Side Gang, also known as the North Side Mob, was a primarily Irish-American criminal organization within Chicago during the Prohibition era from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. It was the principal rival of the South Side Gang, also known as the Chicago Outfit, the crime syndicate of Italian-Americans Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. History of the North Side Gang Early history Like many other Chicago-based Prohibition gangs, the North Side Gang originated from the Market Street Gang, one of many street gangs in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. The Market Street Gang was made up of pickpockets, sneak thieves and labor sluggers working in the 42nd and 43rd Wards. The gang especially distinguished itself during the newspaper "Chicago circulation wars, Circulation Wars" of the early 1910s between the ''Chicago Herald and Examiner, Chicago Examiner'' and the ''Chicago Tribune''. It was during the Circulation Wars that future North Side leader Dean O'Banion, then a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel Capone ( ; ; January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American organized crime, gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he was imprisoned at the age of 33. Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian Americans, Italian immigrants. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, Capone moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard of Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that rum-running, illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jake Guzik
Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik (March 20, 1886 – February 21, 1956) was the financial and legal advisor, and later political " greaser," for the Chicago Outfit. Early life Guzik was born near Kraków, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary on March 20, 1886, to parents who were German Jews from Katowitz, in Prussian Silesia. Guzik emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century and later became involved in prostitution, and allegedly sexual slavery, in the South Side of Chicago's Levee red light district with his brother Harry, eventually driving North Side Gang-linked rival Jack Zuta out of business. He later became a powerful political boss and " fixer", who operated out of St. Hubert's Old English Grill and Chop House. There, Guzik received "bagmen," who delivered scheduled payoffs to various police precincts and city officials. Chicago Outfit In the early 1920s, Guzik, supposedly overhearing a plan to murder Al Capone, informed him and la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Saltis
Joseph Francis Saltis (8 September 1894 – 2 August 1947), known as "Polack Joe", was a Rusyn American Prohibition era organized crime boss who, with Frank McErlane, operated an illegal bootlegging crime family in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, until his territory was seized by Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit. Saltis then retired to Wisconsin. Early life Saltis was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire to Rusyns Jakob Saltis (from Spiš) and Maria Polaczek (from Šariš, Prešov) and immigrated to the United States in 1905, becoming a saloon owner in Joliet, Illinois. Chicago He moved to Chicago with the announcement of the Volstead Act in 1920. With the assistance of John "Dingbat" Oberta (sometimes spelled "O'Berta"), a candidate for the Illinois State Senate, Saltis began supplying illegal alcohol to Chicago's speakeasies in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. During this time, Saltis remained on good terms with Chicago crime boss and his South S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prohibition In The United States
The Prohibition era was the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and Prohibition was formally introduced nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933. Led by Pietism, Pietistic Protestantism in the United States, Protestants, prohibitionists first attempted to end the trade in alcoholic drinks during the 19th century. They aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and Saloon bar, saloon-based political corruption. Many communities introduced alcohol bans in the late 19th and early 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cosa Nostra
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra (, ; "our thing"), also referred to as simply Mafia, is a criminal society and criminal organization originating on the island of Sicily and dates back to the mid-19th century. Emerging as a form of local protection and control over land and agriculture, the Mafia gradually evolved into a powerful criminal network. By the mid-20th century, it had infiltrated politics, construction, and finance, later expanding into drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes. At its core, the Mafia engages in protection racketeering, arbitrating disputes between criminals, and organizing and overseeing illegal agreements and transactions. The basic group is known as a "family", "clan", or '' cosca''. Each family claims sovereignty over a territory, usually a town, village or neighborhood (''borgata'') of a larger city, in which it operates its rackets. Its members call themselves " men of honour", although the public often refers to them as ''mafiosi''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Mafia
The Russian mafia ( or ), also known as Bratva ( ; ) less as Obshchak (Общак) or Brigades (Бригады) , is a collective of various organized crime related elements originating or/and operating in Russia. In December 2009, Timur Lakhonin, the head of the National Central Bureau of Interpol within Russia, stated that "Certainly, there is crime involving our former compatriots abroad, but there is no data suggesting that an organized structure of criminal groups comprising former Russians exists abroad" on the topic of international Russian criminal gangs. In August 2010, Alain Bauer, a criminologist from France, said that the Russian mafia "is one of the best structured criminal organizations in Europe, with a quasi-military operation" in their international activities. The Russian mafia, according to Mark Galeotti, an expert in modern Russia, is a highly organized and global criminal network that emerged and expanded significantly after the collapse of the Sovi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
