New York Undercover Police Expose Illegal Mob Gambling Operation

Standard operating procedure for years for a mob family is to attempt to find corrupt cops, then pay them off to keep other officers away from the mob's illegal activity. That is the deal that members of the Lucchese crime family thought they had set up in New York.

On Thursday, a dozen people with alleged ties to the Lucchese crime family found out the officers they were paying off actually were undercover, working to expose their operation. Those twelve people, plus seven more were arrested on Thursday and charged with various crimes relating to racketeering and illegal gambling.

The officers were working undercover to find out everything they could about the crime organization. They were being paid by members of the crime family for protection. For several years, this worked great for the Luchese crime family, but all good things must come to an end.

"Attempts by members of organized crime to bribe law enforcement into protecting their illegal gambling parlors turned out to be a bad bet made by bad people," said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly in a statement on Thursday evening.

Organized crime in New York is nothing new. For decades law enforcement officials have been working to rid the city of its mob presence. The attempts had failed until the past decade when many of the top names in organized crime started to get busted for various offenses.

The gambling busts were not the only ones that took place on Thursday. Manhattan District attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced that twenty-nine others had been indicted for firearms trafficking, bribery, enterprise corruption, and other organized crime related charges.

October 2, 2009
Posted By Terry Goodwin
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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