|
Step 1: How to join
First you have to serve an "apprenticeship," during which you'll have to kiss the asses of every member of the crew you hope to join, and turn over most of your earnings to a boss who thinks you're lower than whale shit. If you're "lucky," the apprenticeship will last for a decade or less. By that time, you'll have convinced the boss that you're dumb and compliant enough to be "honored" by being made.
So, you'll probably be assigned to kill someone you don't know, for a reason that's not explained to you; and take all the risk on yourself with no reward. If you manage to whack the guy without being killed, injured or arrested, your "reward" will be the famous "induction ceremony"--the fingers pricked so that your blood runs together with the Don's (just hope he doesn't have AIDS or some other STD); the burning saint's card, the oath, the kisses on the cheek, etc. Now you've got it made, right?
Wrong! Your troubles have just begun:
You'll be assigned to a crew chief whose purpose in life is to squeeze you dry. You'll be given a "living"--a sports betting operation, some numbers, drugs or loan shark action. But since the Mob is a pyramid scheme, your crew chief will give you a "nut"--an amount that you must kick back to him each week, whether or not your rackets generate enough profit to cover it. He'll set the amount so high that you'll have no time or opportunity to do anything on your own except work for him. And if you fail to meet the weekly nut, he'll hit you with the same "vig" that he charges his loan shark victims--six percent per week.
Oh, and let's not forget your new "brothers" in the Mafia--the guys who kissed you on the cheek when you got made, and now refer to you as "a friend of ours." Every one of them has contacts in law enforcement that they feed info to in return for being left alone to pursue their own rackets. As soon as your ceremony was completed, they were on the phone to their favorite cops, informing them of the newest member of the Mob. Suddenly you're going to get more attention from law enforcement personnel than a visiting head of state. Your "brothers" will see you as insurance for them when they commit high profile crimes: they'll tip off their police pals that you did the dirty deeds. And, if you manage to survive all of that, the Don'll evntually get nailed on a RICO charge, and he'll rat out you and your other "brothers" in return for a free pass to the Witness Protection Program.
Coming soon: Step 2, How to deal drugs as a mobster
  
|
Don't know what your problem with the mafia is, but you should just forget about it.
|
Hahaha!
And the first reply was from a loanshark! The irony is hilarious!
Anyways, I hope you don't know any of this from experience, otherwise, well, you're retarded.
|
This is how it works in essentially all unregulated institutions, no matter if it's a legal or illegal operation.
|
10387 Posts
hey what happened to finishing that john romero piece?
|
On August 19 2012 13:39 ArvickHero wrote:
hey what happened to finishing that john romero piece?
I know what happened. Shady Sands used his reputation as a writer on Team Liquid to establish a major book deal with Knopf books. He used the advance from the books to build himself a hugely extravagant studio at the top of a high-rise apartment building, which ended up being a bad move because the blazing sun would turn the studio into an inferno. Meanwhile, he had advertisements put up everywhere saying "SHADY SANDS IS ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH. SUCK IT DOWN." Everyone thought he was on the cusp of becoming one of the greatest writers in the modern era. Until he came out with his book "Big Sword", which sucked ass and his deal fell through and he slipped into obscurity.
+ Show Spoiler +Just kidding. This was all in jest, keep doing what you do, great reads.
|
On August 19 2012 14:07 Newbistic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2012 13:39 ArvickHero wrote:
hey what happened to finishing that john romero piece? I know what happened. Shady Sands used his reputation as a writer on Team Liquid to establish a major book deal with Knopf books. He used the advance from the books to build himself a hugely extravagant studio at the top of a high-rise apartment building, which ended up being a bad move because the blazing sun would turn the studio into an inferno. Meanwhile, he had advertisements put up everywhere saying "SHADY SANDS IS ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH. SUCK IT DOWN." Everyone thought he was on the cusp of becoming one of the greatest writers in the modern era. Until he came out with his book "Big Sword", which sucked ass and his deal fell through and he slipped into obscurity. + Show Spoiler +Just kidding. This was all in jest, keep doing what you do, great reads.
<3
Pretty cool read. I doubt he has actually been in the mafia (:o?) but the idea of calling stuff nonfiction is a pretty good trick to make it more interesting and whatnot :D
|
On August 19 2012 14:56 Aerisky wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2012 14:07 Newbistic wrote:On August 19 2012 13:39 ArvickHero wrote:
hey what happened to finishing that john romero piece? I know what happened. Shady Sands used his reputation as a writer on Team Liquid to establish a major book deal with Knopf books. He used the advance from the books to build himself a hugely extravagant studio at the top of a high-rise apartment building, which ended up being a bad move because the blazing sun would turn the studio into an inferno. Meanwhile, he had advertisements put up everywhere saying "SHADY SANDS IS ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH. SUCK IT DOWN." Everyone thought he was on the cusp of becoming one of the greatest writers in the modern era. Until he came out with his book "Big Sword", which sucked ass and his deal fell through and he slipped into obscurity. + Show Spoiler +Just kidding. This was all in jest, keep doing what you do, great reads. <3 Pretty cool read. I doubt he has actually been in the mafia (:o?) but the idea of calling stuff nonfiction is a pretty good trick to make it more interesting and whatnot :D
We've all been fooled by it, sooo...
|
Part 2: How to deal drugs as a Mafioso:
A durable myth of the Mafia is that that they "ban" drug trafficking, and decree the "death penalty" for dealers. Wrong! The Mafia has been dealing drugs since Day One. Don Vito Cascio Ferro came to NYC in the early years of the last century in part to establish a drugs pipeline between Europe and the US. Charlie Luciano dealt drugs as a young man, and is reputed to have ratted out a partner in return for getting a pass from the cops. Joe Bonanno's "vacation" in Italy in 1957 was really a meeting with Luciano and some Sicilians to make Bonanno the top drugs guy in America. The aborted Apalachin NY meeting that year was, in part, an attempt by Vito Genovese to outflank Bonanno as the top drugs guy. He and Joe Valachi went to prison on drug charges. John Gotti was the top earner in Neil Dellacroce's empire becauase he and his crew dealt drugs...and on and on.
Drug-dealing puts Mafia bosses in a quandary: They know that heavy penalties are a threat to them. But they love the money that drugs bring in. They also know that a “ban” on drug trafficking in their families would be unenforceable—there is too much money and greed to stop it. They’d be in the position of the Federal Government during Prohibition: passing a law that nobody obeyed and everyone disrespected—and a Mafia boss can’t afford any disrespect. They wouldn’t be able to effectively police their families: how could they know everything that every street guy was doing every hour of every day? They might be in the position of having to kill the wrong guy, or worse (from their viewpoint), a good earner. Finally, a real “ban” would simply drive the trafficking totally underground—meaning that they wouldn’t get their cut.
So the Mafia Dons fall back on the common denominator of Mob life: hypocrisy. They declare a "ban" on anyone caught selling drugs, with a death penalty for violators--and promptly look the other way. They figure that the threat will discourage the weaker soldiers, who are more likely to get caught. The more capable, ambitious guys are be willing to take the risks—and are less likely to get caught. The money continues to flow upward, which is all the bosses care about.
Now let’s look at how this might work in real life:
Vinny is an up-and-coming made guy in a NY family that officially “bans” drug trafficking. He’s a good earner, so he’s been given a slice of territory in Spanish Harlem, where he has some gambling, sports betting and loan shark action. One day, Jose, a neighborhood guy who’s an occasional borrower, asks Vinny to lend him $8k for two weeks. Whoa, says Vinny, that’s a lot—what do I get as surety for my loan (other than your kneecaps)? Not to worry, says Jose: I know a guy who knows a guy who’s a crewman on a freighter coming to NY from Lebanon. He’s bringing in a kilo of heroin. By the time we finish cutting the stuff and selling it, we’ll make $80k. Vinny says yes. Two weeks later, Jose (looking real dapper in new threads and gold chains) pays him his $8k plus $960 vig (6%/week for two weeks). Technically, Vinny didn’t violate the Family’s ban on drug dealing—he didn’t sell drugs. But he financed a drug deal that put a key of H on the street.
Like every other Mob guy, Vinny’s greedy: why should he make only $960 on a deal that netted a nobody like Jose more than $70k? Jose comes to him a month later and says he wants to borrow $40k because the sailor’s coming in again, this time with five keys of H. Vinny says that, for such a big loan, he’ll have to meet the guy. He tells Jose to bring the sailor, and his five keys, to a Mobbed-up bar near the waterfront. As soon as they meet, Vinny pushes Jose aside and tells the guy that he’ll buy the five keys, directly. He tells him he wants a “volume discount”: Since he’s buying such a big quantity, he’ll pay $5k per key, not the $8k that Jose was going to pay. The sailor starts to protest but Vinny replies: “Hey, you’re still makin’ a pile of money on s**t that didn’t cost you more’n a coupla grand in Syria or wherever you got it. You don’t like it, you can leave—feet first.” The guy catches the drift, takes Vinny’s $25k and hands over the five kilos of heroin. Vinny smiles: “Hey, I’ll take all the s**t you wanna bring in, anytime you come to NY. Just let Jose know when you’re gonna be here.”
Jose’s been too scared to say anything, so Vinny throws him a bone. He puts his arm around him and says, “Hey, ya done good tonite, Jose. I’m gonna let you have that H. It’ll cost you $20k per key—that’s my fee for hosting the sitdown and for protection. Don’t worry about sellin’ it—if the s**t’s as good as you said, you can cut it down more.” Where’s Jose going to get $20k/kilo? He can borrow it from Vinny! Now Vinny’s got two sources of profit: he quadrupled what he paid for the heroin—and he’s getting vig from the guy he cheated. He could make even more if he sold it on the street, but Vinny’s too smart to take that risk, and too busy to spend his time mixing milk sugar with the drug and selling dime bags to a bunch of lowlifes. He’ll let Jose do it.
Now, Jose’s really got to hustle to make his payments to Vinny. So he recruits some members of a local street gang to sell the dime bags. But those guys are ruthless—they’re not going to settle for making a dollar on every dime bag. Their leader kills Jose, takes the remaining dime bags, cuts them further, and sells them. This is just what Vinny was expecting. He lets a couple of weeks go by, then grabs the gang leader off the street. Vinny tells the gang-banger forcefully that he assumed Jose’s debt when he appropriated Jose’s stash—and he’s now two weeks behind in the vig. He smacks him around to reinforce his point. Then he smiles: “You can make up the vig, and make yourself more money, if you buy the rest of the s**t and distribute it. I’ll even make sure nobody interferes with your operation in this neighborhood.” The gang-banger, grateful for his life, accepts.
Vinny’s now making even more money. He kicks a nice piece of it upstairs to his crew chief. In turn, the crew chief passes a cut to his capo, who shares his piece with the Don. Pretty soon, that whole East Harlem operation, and everyone in it, is looking very good to the Don. But the Don’s not dumb—he has a good idea where the money originates. He hears about a drug bust that netted some members of a Jamaican posse in Brooklyn. He mentions to his capos, “Hey, it’s a real good thing that we have a ban on selling drugs in our borgata, and a death penalty for violators. Otherwise we’d wind up like them no-good, undisciplined mulinians over there.” The capos pass the word on down. Vinny’s crew chief, who knows what’s going on, says to Vinny, “Uh, by the way, you ain’t sellin’ drugs, are you?” “Me?” replies Vinny, indignantly. “Sellin’ fuckin’ shit to a buncha lowlifes on the street? Not on your fuckin’ life!” Vinny told the literal truth: he’s not actually selling drugs on the street—he’s just wholesaling drugs to the guys who are selling them. As far as he’s concerned, he’s not violating the family’s ban on “selling drugs.” His crew chief is satisfied—and so’s everyone over him. They’re all getting their piece of Vinny’s action. As long as Vinny’s producing money, they’re content to look the other way. If he gets caught, he knows they’ll try to kill him before he can rat them out. Everyone knows the score.
Coming soon, Part 3: How to exploit suckers as a Mafioso
|
Whoa haha... That money flow.
Really interesting stuff, can't really find anything to criticize. :D I'm pretty easy anyway.
|
Part 3: How to exploit suckers as a Mafioso
It’s an axiom that, as long as we want to do drugs, gamble illegally, patronize prostitutes, buy cut-rate goods that fell off the back of trucks, etc., Organized Crime will be right there to satisfy our illicit needs. But that’s just a start: how about when our own greed steers us right into the Mob’s hands? Here’s a not-atypical example:
Like most people, you hate to pay income taxes. And, you’re in a position to avoid paying your “fair share": You’re a Sky Cap, waiter or waitresses, a taxi driver who gets most of your income in tips; or you own a retail business and take in a lot of cash; or you’re a shrink or a chiropractor with many uninsured patients who pay in currency, rather than by check or credit card. Since cash is largely untraceable, you can hide a good part of your income if you’re not too greedy (a big “if”). But that’s only half the battle. Your hidden income can’t work for you if you stuff it in a mattress or hide it in a shoebox. And you can’t open a bank or brokerage account because your deposits and earnings will be reported to the government. What to do?
Sooner or later, greedy-you will find the local Mobbed-up loan shark. He’s got a lot of money on the street earning 6% weekly vig. So, you approach him about adding the hundred grand you’ve hidden from the government over the past decade to his capital. The Mob guy’s interested: He’ll give you 1% on your money, every week. Greedy-you balks: How come you’re getting only 1% when he gets 6%? The Mob guy explains, patiently, that he’s taking all the risks, doing all the accounting, breaking all the kneecaps, for his 6%. “All you gotta do for your 1% is to show up on this street corner every Friday at 11 to collect it,” he says.
Sounds like a plan to you. But you’re still wary. So you give him half your wad--$50k—to see what happens. You show up at 11 the next Friday—and there he is, handing over your $500 vig that you didn’t lift a finger to earn. He does it again the next week, and the week after that. This is pretty good, you think: If you can get $500 a week for doing nothing, $1,000 a week would be twice as good. So you hand over your other $50k. Now the Mob guy’s got your entire $100k.
You show up the next Friday, licking your chops for your unearned $1k. But your Mob “pal” isn’t there. Nor is he there the next week—or the week after that. Your sphincter is imploding. You search for him high and low. Finally, you locate him in his social club.
“Where’s my fucking vig?” you shout. The Mob guy gives you the fish-eye. “What fucking vig?” he shouts back. “Lissen, pal, I don’t know you from a hole in the ground, or where you’re comin’ from…but you better get your ass outta here quick before you make me sore!” All the other espresso-sippers are starting to stir in their chairs. Discretion being the better part of valor, you split.
You’re in a bind. You can’t sue the guy because you never got a receipt for your $100k or a contract that specified interest payments. Complain to law enforcement?—all you’ll accomplish is to identify yourself for what you are: a felon who violated federal, state and local income tax statutes. And you can’t go after the Mob guy personally unless you get a gun, and a will.
You begin to realize that you’ve been screwed. And, if you’ve got any sense left to you, you’ll realize who screwed you: You, through your own greed.
Coming soon, Part 4: How to exploit the criminal justice system as a Mafioso
|
good read, you should try writing a novel
|
This information will be pretty useful if you (or similarly me) roll scum in NMMIII.
|
Northern Ireland22203 Posts
One of the most interesting reads I've come across on TL in a while, looking forward to the next parts.
|
Part 4: How to get away with shit as a Mafioso
Despite many high-profile Mafia prosecutions, Mob guys enjoy the best legal protection in America: money. Even in the US, which prides itself on being a nation of “laws, not men,” money—not right or wrong--assures “justice.” Contrast how a poor defendant is treated in our system, vs. a Mob guy or anyone with a lot of money:
Let’s say you’ve been arrested for killing someone: a drug deal gone bad, a gambling debt, a personal insult…whatever. The charge against you is Murder in the Second Degree. If you’re like 95% of felony defendants, you don’t have the money to make bail or to hire a criminal lawyer (few attorneys specialize in criminal law precisely because most criminal defendants can’t afford to pay them). The court will assign you a Public Defender (PD): probably a young, recent graduate of law school gaining experience and contacts before embarking on a career with a law firm or corporation, who’s paid by the court system to represent indigent defendants. Your PD will spend about 10 minutes reviewing the paperwork in your case. Then, in the only visit to your jail cell, your PD will try to convince you to waive your right to trial and plead guilty to a lesser offense in return for a shorter sentence. The only time the PD will advise you to plead not guilty is if there’s a hole in your case big enough to drive a truck through: you have three witnesses who’ll swear that you were a thousand miles away when the crime was committed; or the arresting officer subsequently was dismissed from the force for falsifying evidence in cases like yours, or something equally obvious. And there’s almost no way the PD will bring your case to trial, even if the PD thinks that you might be innocent, or that a jury could be convinced to bring in a “not guilty” verdict.
Why? It’s not because PD’s are bad people. To the contrary: they’re usually young enough not to have developed that hard shell of cynicism that attaches to so may experienced lawyers. It’s because the criminal justice system is stacked against poor defendants:
First, the PD probably is carrying a caseload of at least 150 defendants, many of them charged with serious felonies like yours. All of them deserve the same shot at “justice” as you do, and the PD just doesn’t have time to try all those cases. And even if she or he did, how much attention do you think you’d get from a public servant carrying such a huge caseload? Would you want to be represented by a lawyer with so many distractions?
Second, the figure of merit in the court system is: Clear the calendar! This applies to judges, prosecutors and PD’s. PD’s who bring a lot of cases to trial are clogging the system, and will earn the wrath of prosecutors and judges who’re in a position to do favors for PD’s and their clients.
Third, during the trial the judge is supposed to act as an “impartial arbitrator,” assuring fairness. But when a guilty verdict is brought in, the judge in effect becomes an arm of the prosecution—judges always ask prosecutors what “the People” require as punishment for convicted criminals. The prosecutors in your case know this. So they tell your PD: “Hey, look, we’ve got your guy cold on Murder Two. Penalty is 20 years to life. If your guy makes us go to trial, he will be convicted—no two ways about it. The judge’ll ask us what we want for a sentence. We’ll say life, you’ll plead for ‘leniency’—and the judge’ll give him fifty years. But if you convince your guy to waive his right to trial, we’ll let him plead to Manslaughter Two. The penalty is two-to-ten. We’ll ask for five, you’ll ask for probation, and the judge’ll give him three. Now, what’s it gonna be: fifty years or three years?”
Fourth: While a defendant is “presumed” to be innocent until proven guilty, the reverse is true in the minds of most jurors—especially if you, like many defendants, are nonwhite and have a prior record. People who’ve been arrested or convicted of crimes can be excluded from juries. So, the only brush with the law that most jurors have experienced was to receive a traffic ticket. Their mindset likely will be that you must have done something to make the police arrest you. So, even though the law requires that the prosecution prove you guilty beyond reasonable doubt, the reality is that you and your PD have a truly uphill struggle to convince the jury that you’re not guilty.
Finally, law is a competitive business. Lawyers will bend over backward for out-of-court settlements in civil matters, and plea-bargains in criminal cases. But once a case goes to trial, the issue isn’t innocence or guilt, or even right or wrong: it’s who wins and who loses. And lawyers hate to lose—it makes them look bad, especially when they move on to high-paying positions in law firms and corporations. Prosecutors (who also are mostly young, recent law school grads) that lose trials have an out when they interview for “real” jobs: “Aah, the bleeding-heart judge let that defendant off…aah, stupid cops screwed up the evidence.” PD’s have no such outs with interviewers. It’s far better for a PD to tell an interviewer: “During my two years as a PD, I represented nearly a thousand defendants, and I got reduced sentences for all of them” than to say, “I brought more than 200 cases to trial, and won acquittals in 25% of them.” A 25% acquittal rate would be astoundingly good, given the odds against the kinds of poor defendants PDs represent. But law firms and corporations seldom litigate cases; and when they do, they hire outside counsel. The interviewer hearing that likely would think: “What the hell’s wrong with this person, bringing all those s**theels to trial? Never heard of a plea bargain? With that kind of poor judgment, there’s no way I’m letting him/her near my clients!”
But if you have money—plenty of money—the odds shift dramatically in your favor, even if you’re a Mob guy. Now you can hire a “superlawyer” like Bruce Cutler, Gerald Shargel, Barry Slotnick, Ron Kuby or Albert Krieger. Attention isn’t an issue because, at $600 an hour and up, they’ll spend all the time in the world on your case. They have political and judicial clout up the wazoo, so they’ll invariably work out a bail figure that you can afford.
Prosecutors are afraid of their fearsome reputations, so if they offer you a plea-bargain, you can bet it’ll be on better terms than if you were poor. Judges, too, are afraid of your superlawyers. They know that, even if you’re found guilty, you’ll appeal. Then your lawyers will use your money to hire an army of legal scholars to pore over every world of the trial transcript, looking for “reversible errors”: mistakes the judge may have made during the trial that could result in an appeals court overturning your conviction. Judges hate to be reversed on appeal: it makes them look bad and lessens their chances for elevation to a higher court. So, during the trial, the judge will bend over backward to rule in your favor—and might even be eager to declare a mistrial or a summary dismissal to avoid problems with an appellate court down the line. And sometimes, the prosecutors will be relieved: it spares them the humiliation of being shown up by “real” lawyers.
And, finally, even if you’re found guilty and lose your appeals, your superlawyers will keep plugging for you—filing motions for new trials, working their political mojo on the Governor or the President for clemency or executive pardon—as long as your money holds out. You’ll get the best “justice” that money can buy.
Coming soon, Part 5: How to live the high life and not get caught
|
This maked me want to write a novel.
|
Fun read as always.
You could seriously compile what you've written so far and already have a small and decent short story collection. Literally. It would be a nice touch to have it end on "how to live the high life and not get caught" rofl.
|
|
|
Part 5: How to live the high life and not get caught
Income tax evasion has put more mobsters away for more years than RICO and drugs combined. It’s easy: the Feds don’t have to prove that you made your money through crime—all they have to do is to show that you’re living beyond your means. Even a weak tax evasion case has a good chance of bringing in a conviction. While some jurors might have some empathy for the defendant, they all think of themselves as “tax drones.” So, if the prosecutor points to the defendant and tells the jurors, “The reason you’re paying high taxes is because guys like him are cheating on theirs…” the jurors are ready to believe him.
Mafia guys are slam-dunk prospects for tax evasion. They’re all greedy, and they regard paying taxes on the same level as being cuckolded. Aniello (Mr. Neil) Dellacroce, the feared and respected Gambino caporegime, went away for five years because he lost $100k in a Puerto Rican casino at a time when he declared income of only $10k on his tax return. He was still in prison when Carlo Gambino was on his deathbed, which probably was why Gambino named Paul Castellano, rather than Mr. Neil, as his heir.
But, if a mob guy is smart and careful (big ifs), he can avoid getting nailed on tax evasion. Here’s now:
Let’s say you’re a captain in a NYC mob family. Your main source of income is an electrical wholesale firm that actually sells electrical supplies. But the supplies are most often stolen from others and sold to mob-connected contractors. It’s also a front for your loansharking, fencing and drug operations, which your subordinates operate for you at careful arms-length. You earn between $3 million and $5 million annually, all of it illegal. You’re smart enough to know that you need to live modestly and inconspicuously. You live in the same Brooklyn home you occupied when you started out. It’s now worth about $550k--modest by NYC standards. You could have paid it off years ago. But, to bolster the fiction that you’re just a workin’ stiff, you’ve taken out second mortgages to pay for your kids’ colleges. You drive a three-year-old Cad, your wife a four-year-old Lexus. You both wear off-the-rack clothes and costume jewelry.
Your accountant tells you that, to maintain that lifestyle and keep the Internal Revenue Service off your back, you need to show and pay taxes on $90k annual household income. So you arrange for the associate who’s the nominal “owner” of your electrical wholesale business to put you and the Mrs. on his payroll—you as a “salesman” at $50k/yr., she as a “bookkeeper” at $40k. You pay your taxes scrupulously.
Now, you aren’t busting your coglioni and putting your life at risk in the mob just to live like a wage-slave cafone. How do you enjoy your money without attracting the IRS?
It seems that the electrical firm (meaning you) owns a $10 million “retreat” in Glen Cove, Long Island—right on the Sound, complete with 60-foot yacht. The firm lists it as a “guest house and entertainment center” for wooing clients, and as a “rest and recreation” facility for employees. To maintain the façade, part of the home’s basement is equipped as a “showroom” with displays of electrical equipment that the firm sells. A smaller “showroom” space is laid out on the boat. You and your wife spend a lot of time there because you’re the firm’s “top salesman.” You meet with your associates at the Glen Cove house and list them as “clients” in your business logbook.
You and your wife also own Armani suits, Givinchy gowns, Bally and Jimmy Choo shoes, Cartier jewelry, Louis Vuitton luggage, etc. But there are no sales receipts in your name. They’re stored at your non-mobbed-up cousin’s home in a modest neighborhood in Queens. Anytime you and the Mrs. go out on the town (often), you and she visit the cousin’s place to get dressed and decked out. The cousin calls a limo for you, which pulls into his garage to avoid surveillance. You and your wife jump inside and hunker down behind the tinted windows. You pay for everything in cash. When you travel to Paris on vacation, you fly Tourist class and reserve a room in a modest pension. But a Family associate in Naples secretly booked you into the Ritz under phony names, using phony Italian passports, and has made reservations for you in all the Michelin 3-star restaurants, where you pay cash. For your jaunts around France, you rent a chauffeured limo, using the phony passport as I.D, when required. It’s all prepaid—in cash.
Now, the NYC police and the FBI know good and well that you’re a capo in a mob family, and have a pretty good idea of how you’re earning your money. But, like all government employees, they don’t want to work any harder than necessary to earn their paychecks. You’ve hidden your criminal activities and your spending well enough so that it won’t be easy for them to gather up enough evidence and witnesses to bring you to trial. With the new priority for tracking down terrorists, law enforcement has a good excuse not to spend a lot of time, money and personnel trying to convict you—especially since there are plenty enough dumb mobsters who are easy pickings compared with you.
So they take the lazy-cops’ out—turn the investigation over to the IRS to see if they can nail you for tax evasion. But IRS investigators don’t want to work any harder than their law enforcement brethren. The IRS clerk who gets your case is looking for a slam-dunk—and there isn’t one in your case because she finds that you’ve filed returns and paid taxes punctiliously every year. She kicks your file back to her supervisor, who hands it to an investigator. He’s got a huge caseload because the Administration has been in a budget-cutting mode and no taxpayers—and their Congressmen—are anxious to see funding restored to the IRS.
About two years after getting your file, the IRS investigator finally picks it up and drives out to look at your Brooklyn home. One glance tells him what your accountant told you: yours is a $90k income home—and you’ve been paying taxes on $90k every year. He heads for the Glen Cove “business retreat” listed as the electrical wholesale firm’s property, rings the doorbell, shows his badge, and asks the caretaker if he can look around the property. You’ve already instructed the caretaker to let him in. The investigator sees the showrooms in the basement and on the boat, and the business cards and sales literature you’ve carefully planted in other spaces. He suspects it’s a front, but he can’t prove it—easily. Of course the IRS could put serious resources into checking out your “employer” in surveilling the Glen Cove mansion, looking at your travels abroad, etc. But that costs time and money—and anyway, since law enforcement wasn’t willing to do it, why should they? So, their conclusion is, “insufficient evidence for prosecution.”
Sooner or later, your own greed is going to trip you up. But until then, you can afford to live like a movie star with muscle.
FIN - Thanks for reading!
|
Fun read as always, thanks for posting!
I also have it on good authority that usually it's better to a) make a new blog, or b) lump it together (though this much might be a bit overwhelming for the typical TL user). Most people don't subscribe to blogs and seeing something bumped usually won't convince people to read it unfortunately. Just a tip.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
