On February 9, 1942 crowds gathered at New York City’s pier 88 to witness a spectacle. The largest ocean liner in the world was on fire. Fire fighting efforts successfully contained the fire after five and a half hours of effort, but the effort was in vain. Five hours after the flames were out the stricken vessel rolled onto its side and settled on the bottom of the Hudson.
https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2014/09/the-sinking-of-the-s-s-normandie-at-nycs-pier-88/
This event had a positive influence on the life of mobster, Lucky Luciano. He had been imprisoned in 1936.
After six years, Luciano’s dark tide began to turn in his favor. It began in February 1942 when the French ocean liner Normandie caught fire and sank in New York harbor while being retrofitted for naval use. Although the cause of the fire ultimately was a welder’s torch, investigators initially suspected enemy sabotage. The course of events that followed led to an unprecedented relationship between law and outlaw.
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How did it all start? Presumably, fear of Nazi sabotage on U.S. shores led to a clandestine collaboration, through intermediaries, between the Navy and New York’s organized crime network.
According to author Thomas Hunt, here is how it started:
“Understanding organized crime’s control of dock unions, ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) Captain Roscoe C. MacFall, Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden and Lieutenant James O’Malley Jr. sought underworld assistance. They approached Frank Hogan, Manhattan district attorney, and Murray I. Gurfein, assistant D.A. in charge of the Rackets Bureau, seeking an introduction to the Mafia.”
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Following the introduction of military and Mob, meetings were held at the Dannemora prison that included Luciano, Meyer Lansky and other visiting parties. Under the pretense of making these meetings more feasible, and by order of New York State Corrections Commissioner John A. Lyons, Luciano was moved to Great Meadow on May 12, 1942. There, Luciano continued to receive visitors such as Frank Costello, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and attorney Moses Polakoff.
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In May 1945, citing “invaluable service” provided by his client to the military, particularly in regard to the Allied invasion of Sicily, attorney Moses Polakoff filed an application on behalf of Luciano to the state parole board in Albany. The board’s favorable report made its way to the desk of former prosecutor and now Governor Dewey. On January 3, 1946, the governor signed off on the parole. Luciano had served nine and a half years of a steep 30- to 50-year sentence.
https://themobmuseum.org/blog/the-mystery-of-lucky-lucianos-invaluable-service-to-the-country/
I then read this blog:
https://visupview.blogspot.com/2017/10/goodfellas-hidden-history-of-resorts.html?m=1
He talked about New York mafia activities and the history of Resorts International and Donald Trump and the Taj Mahal casino.
The comments to the author of the blog are interesting. One mentions Semion Mogilevich, who now apparently lives in Moscow in his old age. Supposedly the ‘boss of bosses’. Recently Trump called Putin ‘the boss’
Donald Trump referred to Vladimir Putin as “THE BOSS” in a social media post while discussing nuclear weapons and tensions in the Middle East. This comment was part of a broader discussion about international conflicts and Trump’s views on Putin’s actions. Yahoo Wikipedia
The Red Mafia
Why Russian Crime Lord Semion Mogilevich Lives Up To His Title As ‘The World’s Most Powerful Mobster’
By Marco Margaritoff | Edited By Leah Silverman
Published July 31, 2020
Updated July 30, 2021
He’s been accused of everything from buying an entire airline just for trafficking heroin to selling nuclear weapons, yet somehow Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich lives free.
Semion Mogilevich had been a colossal — and elusive — figure in the international criminal underworld since the 1990s. As the ruthless leader of the so-called Red Mafia of Russia, he has been described as “the world’s most powerful gangster” — and for good reason.
Mogilevich has reportedly had his hands in extortion, large-scale drug trafficking, prostitution, and even nuclear weapons trading. He was at one point considered an existential threat to Israel and Eastern Europe.
Even though he is known as the “Brainy Don” for his bachelor’s degree in economics and financial acumen, Mogilevich did not shy away from violence. He is said to have employed trained Afghanistan war veterans as his enforcers — and they mutilated enemies and associates so severely that other Russian crime groups quietly dissipated.
Born on June 30 or July 6, 1946, in Kiev in the Ukrainian Soviet Union, Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich was raised in the Podol neighborhood by Jewish parents. The ambitious young criminal launched his career in the 1980s by scamming fellow Russian Jews who simply sought to emigrate to Israel or America.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/semion-mogilevich
Mogilevich is still one of 10 Most Wanted criminals:
Fraud by Wire; RICO Conspiracy; Mail Fraud; Money Laundering Conspiracy; Money Laundering; Aiding and Abetting; Securities Fraud; Filing False Registration With the SEC; False Filings With the SEC; Falsification of Books and Records
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cei/semion-mogilevich
And Craig Ungar writes about his links to Trump:
As I wrote in House of Trump, House of Putin, U.S. diplomat Scott Kilner described one Raiffeisen affiliate as “a front to provide legitimacy to the gas company [Mogilevich] controls, RosUkrEnergo.” And that meant that most of the financing of Trump Toronto likely came from the Mogilevich–Firtash pipeline
I have mentioned him before in previous blogs.
So his life spans 1946 to the present day. He was born when Ukraine was still part of the USSR.
President Trump is a similar age, born born June 14, 1946. Harry S. Truman was President.
Donald Trump’s father was a builder, even building a small apartment only 2 years after leaving school. Donald Trump followed in his father’s footsteps and his name became famous when he developed the Taj Mahal Casino, linked to Resorts International history at the time.
I am also a ‘baby boomer’ like Donald Trump and Migolovich. We were born after the turmoil of World War Two, and maybe World War Three is the bookend to our lives.
After the war:
Many Americans feared that the end of World War II and the subsequent drop in military spending might bring back the hard times of the Great Depression. But instead, pent-up consumer demand fueled exceptionally strong economic growth in the post-war period. The automobile industry successfully converted back to producing cars, and new industries such as aviation and electronics grew by leaps and bounds.
A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages for returning members of the military, added to the expansion. The nation’s gross national product rose from about $200,000 million in 1940 to $300,000 million in 1950 and to more than $500,000 million in 1960. At the same time, the jump in post-war births, known as the “baby boom,” increased the number of consumers. More and more Americans joined the middle class.
The Military Industrial Complex
The need to produce war supplies had given rise to a huge military-industrial complex (a term coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served as the U.S. president from 1953 through 1961). It did not disappear with the war’s end. As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and the United States found itself embroiled in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, the government maintained substantial fighting capacity and invested in sophisticated weapons such as the hydrogen bomb.
Economic aid flowed to war-ravaged European countries under the Marshall Plan, which also helped maintain markets for numerous U.S. goods. And the government itself recognized its central role in economic affairs. The Employment Act of 1946 stated as government policy “to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.”
The United States also recognized during the post-war period the need to restructure international monetary arrangements, spearheading the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — institutions designed to ensure an open, capitalist international economy.
Business, meanwhile, entered a period marked by consolidation. Firms merged to create huge, diversified conglomerates. International Telephone and Telegraph, for instance, bought Sheraton Hotels, Continental Banking, Hartford Fire Insurance, Avis Rent-a-Car, and other companies.
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-post-war-us-economy-1945-to-1960-1148153
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Here are a few items related to Resorts International, still a functioning company today after a chequered history.
………million-dollar campaign which led New Jersey voters to change their minds on the subject. In 1974 a referendum to legalize state-operated gambling casinos had been roundly rebuffed by the local citizenry. Two years later, however, a new referendum, providing for privately owned casinos ‘in Atlantic City only,’ was in the works. And the man who brought it to the attention of Resorts, strangely enough, was David Probinsky (formally of the Bahamas and one of Pindling’s disappointed supporters). Probinsky convinced Crosby that the new referendum would pass if Resorts got behind it. When Resorts did, acquiring huge (and moldering) Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel on the Boardwalk, as well as the fifty-six acre tract that had been cleared for ‘urban renewal.’ Resorts told its stockholders that ‘the tract would be developed under an urban renewal plan with hotel, housing and other facilities.’ It didn’t say what those other facilities would be, but it wasn’t hard to guess.”
(Spooks, Jim Hougan, pgs. 410-411)
Resorts Casino Hotel, Atlantic City’s first gambling establishment
The opening of Atlantic City for legalized gambling proved to be a boon for both Resorts International and one of the future owners. He was a rising New York real estate baron who went by the name of Donald J. Trump.
Once Trump dipped his toes into the troubled waters of the gambling industry he would rapidly emerge as one of the premier tycoons of the 1980s. It is not a stretch to say that Atlantic City made Trump a household name –quite literally via his first casino, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, which he built on behalf of Holiday Inn. Trump bought them out in 1984 and there was no looking back from there.
What is of great interest to us here is Trump’s third Atlantic City casino: the Taj Mahal. While now widely associated with Trump, thanks in no small part to it leading to his first bankruptcy, it was not in fact Trump who started the casino. That dubious distinction lies with Resorts International.
The company had begun construction on the Taj Mahal in 1983, but had run into persistent difficulties in finishing construction in the following years. Then, in April 1986, James Crosby died suddenly. This left Resorts in turmoil (allegedly) and Trump stepped in. Trump bought a controlling stake in the company in 1987 and was promptly named its chairman of the board.
Let that sink in for a moment: Donald J. Trump, the current President of the United States, was briefly the chairman of a corporation long suspected of being a CIA front, that had decades-spanning involvement with the Syndicate, numerous “rogue” financiers, various drug and arms traffickers and which owned a vast private intelligence
This is from Company Records:
Public Company
Incorporated: 1958 as Mary Carter Paint Company
Employees: 7,200
Sales: $436.9 million
SICs: 7011 Hotels & Motels; 6719 Holding Companies, Not Elsewhere Classified
And
The company that evolved into Resorts started in 1958 as the Mary Carter Paint Company, which was itself the successor of a company founded in 1908. Initially, Mary Carter Paint grew by acquiring other paint companies, such as the Victor Paint Company, purchased in 1962, and the Atlantic Paint Company, purchased in 1963.
That year, Mary Carter Paint made another acquisition that would have a more significant impact on its future: Bahamas Developers Ltd. To this new interest in properties the company soon added property on the resort of Paradise Island. In December 1967, Mary Carter Paint completed construction of the Paradise Island Hotel and Villas, which would be operated by the Loews Corporation until 1981, and also opened the Paradise Island Casino. Clearly, this property development sideline soon became the company’s main focus, and, accordingly, in May 1968, Mary Carter Paint sold its paint division to Delafield Industries for just over $10 million. As part of the purchase price, Delafield gained the right to the Mary Carter name. Thus, on June 24, 1968, what had been the Mary Carter Paint Company became Resorts International, Inc., a corporation engaged in developing property, as well as owning and operating casinos and resorts.
Another website about Roy Cohn and Donald Trump says this about Resorts International:
By 1986, Resorts founder Jim Crosby was dead, the company had racked up $700 million in debt and construction was just getting started on what, upon completion, would be the largest casino in the world, the Taj Mahal.
Resorts’ new lead executive Jack Davis was hunting for new ownership when Trump appeared on his radar screen.
Resorts International was initially the Mary Carter Paint Company. Over the course of its history, it had been funded by, and employed individuals linked to, the Meyer Lanksy syndicate, which had established Las Vegas’ first resort casino and controlled illegal gambling operations across the US.
Lansky, described as the “financial genius of organized crime,” had relocated his international operations to The Bahamas after the Cuban Revolution forced him out of Havana.
Resorts International established casinos in The Bahamas, at the time one of the earliest examples of an offshore banking secrecy jurisdiction.
The head of Resorts, James Crosby, was friends with Richard Nixon and his close associate and banker, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. The casino at Paradise Island had been suspected by Congressional Watergate investigators of being used to launder money that was then routed to Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).
Lansky associates, including Moe Dalitz, who had invested with Roy Cohn in Sunrise Hospital, sat on the board of The Bahama’s based Bank of World Commerce (BWC), which IRS officials believed was used to launder criminal proceeds from the United States offshore to Switzerland.[3]
An offshore bank called Castle Bank shared numerous connections to Resorts International. Castle was co-owned by Paul Helliwell, an OSS veteran who served as the paymaster for the CIA’s Cuba operations, and Burton Kanter, an attorney closely associated with the Outfit, the Chicago organized crime syndicate.
[NOTE: This article was edited on 2/12/2025. In the original, it was noted that Resorts International has been alleged to be a CIA front. Despite Resorts’ employment via its subsidiary Intertel of individuals with significant links to law enforcement and intelligence, there is no evidence that Resorts was a CIA front.
This does not mean that Resorts was not involved with elements of the intelligence netherworld, only that direct attribution to the CIA as an institution has never been substantiated.
The original article also indicated that Castle Bank was linked to the CIA. While one of its founders, Paul Helliwell, had previously worked for both OSS and CIA, Castle Bank appears to have functioned as a criminal enterprise. There is no evidence that it was formed by, or was acting under the auspices of, the CIA.
Furthermore, Castle co-founder Burton Kanter appears to have deliberately spread the rumor of the CIA’s involvement in Castle in order to cover up high-level corruption within the Justice Department and to provide a false explanation as to why the conspirators behind Castle weren’t fully investigated. There is no evidence that the CIA killed the investigation.]
As Jim Acosta offered Jeffrey Epstein a ‘sweetheart deal’ after conviction, he was asked why he did that. His reply had been ‘because he is working for intelligence’. Strange how the CIA keep cropping up when investigations reveal likely criminal activity. I wonder why that is…..
Trump and the Taj Mahal:
The assets assigned to the Litigation Trust were claims originally held by the debtor, Resorts International, Inc., against Donald J. Trump and affiliated entities, arising from Trump’s 1988 leveraged buyout of the Taj Mahal Resort. Upon formation of the Litigation Trust, the litigation claims were assigned to the Trustee. The Plan authorized the Trustee to prosecute the claims against the Trump entities. The Plan and Litigation Trust Agreement also required the debtor to provide an irrevocable letter of credit in the amount of $5,000,000 to the Litigation Trust to enable it to pursue the litigation claims.
On May 28, 1991, the Trustee entered into an agreement with Trump and his affiliates and the debtor settling the litigation claims on behalf of the Trust’s Unitholders in the amount of $12,000,000, subject to approval by the Unitholders. Approval was solicited and received by July 15, 1991. The Settlement Agreement proceeds became assets of the Litigation Trust.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-3rd-circuit/1378260.html
And so, back to the importance of the Mafia in the construction industry:
Casinos: A Mafia Playground
When gambling was legalized in Atlantic City in the 1970s, the Mafia didn’t see it as a business opportunity—they saw it as their business. Crime families flooded the industry, using casinos as both cash cows and money-laundering machines. Resorts International, one of the first major casino operators in Atlantic City, had rumored mob ties, with connections to known figures in the Genovese and Gambino families.
Nicky Scarfo, the ruthless boss of the Philadelphia Mafia, practically ruled Atlantic City in the ‘80s. He controlled labor unions, demanded kickbacks from construction firms, and ensured that no casino operated without his blessing. While crackdowns in the ‘90s cleaned up much of this direct control, whispers of organized crime’s lingering hand in Atlantic City’s economy remain even today.
Garbage, Cement, and the “Invisible Tax”
One of the most lucrative rackets for New Jersey’s Mafia families was waste management. If you wanted garbage picked up in North Jersey, chances were you were paying an extra “invisible tax” straight to the mob. The Lucchese family ran one of the most sophisticated operations, controlling garbage collection and landfills through an elaborate system of bribery and threats.
Similarly, the cement industry—integral to the explosion of New Jersey’s urban development—was essentially under Mafia rule for decades. Mob-backed companies won bids for major construction projects, often by intimidating competition or making deals under the table. The result? Everything from high-rises to shopping malls in New Jersey was, in some way, built on the foundation of Mafia influence.
Does the Mafia’s Influence Remain Today?
While law enforcement cracked down hard on organized crime in the late 20th century, completely erasing the Mafia’s impact is nearly impossible. New Jersey still bears the economic and structural remnants of an era when mobsters shaped its landscape.
1. Atlantic City’s Casino Industry – Though cleaned up compared to its past, Atlantic City still has deep ties to the era of mob influence. Some casino land was originally developed through deals brokered by Mafia-backed unions and contractors. Even today, organized crime occasionally resurfaces in money laundering investigations related to gambling.
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