Meier Suchowlanski (4 July 1902 – 15 January 1983), better known by his American name of Meyer Lansky, was a Jewish criminal kingpin and one of the founders of the American Mafia alongside his friend and longtime business partner Lucky Luciano. Lansky was one of the most powerful mobsters in history, although he was only ever suspected of gambling; he died in Miami Beach at the age of 80 in 1983, dying peacefully.
Biography[]
Early career[]
A young Meyer Lansky in 1920
Meier Suchowlanski was born on 4 July 1902 in Grodno, Russian Empire (present-day Hrodna, Belarus) to a Polish Jewish family. In 1911, he came to the United States after leaving the Ukrainian port of Odessa, joining his father on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Lucky Luciano became friends and partners in crime at a young age, with Lansky meeting Luciano after Luciano repeatedly stole his lunch money and decided that he was tough enough to join his gang. Lansky and Luciano made a good team, and they decided to begin a heroin operation in 1921, buying heroin from some Chinese vendors in Chinatown. The two of them gave a cut of their money to their boss Arnold Rothstein, including 50% of the money gained from their gambling operations. Lansky and Luciano would later be forced to pay Joe Masseria a cut of their action after selling drugs on his territory, and they were forced to work for him as well.
Rise to power[]
Lansky in Cuba, 1931
Lansky decided to buy into Enoch Thompson's liquor importation operation in Tampa, Florida in 1923 so that he could prove his worth as a businessman, and he decided to smuggle some heroin from Tampa up to New York on the same trucks as Thompson's liquor shipments. When Thompson found out, he nearly had Lansky executed, but he let Lansky go when Lansky asked him what he would do if he was presented with a good opportunity. Lansky, Luciano, and their younger friend Siegel joined Masseria's gang after the murder of Rothstein in 1928, and they formed a rivalry with Thompson, even attempting to kill him in Havana, Cuba on one occasion. In 1931 Lansky arranged the murders of Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano to aid Luciano in his rise to power at the end of the Castellammarese War. Lansky and Siegel also formed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, a Jewish organized crime syndicate that was allied to certain elements of the American Mafia; it became known as "Murder, Inc." due to its murder-for-hire incidents.
Crime kingpin[]
An older Lansky
By 1936, Lansky had founded casinos in Florida, Louisiana, and Cuba, and Lansky laundered his money using a bank account in Switzerland. During the 1930s, Lansky and his mobsters also disrupted rallies of the Nazi German-American Bund in Manhattan's German Yorkville neighborhood, throwing some Nazis out of windows to show them that they would not just sit back and take their insults. During World War II, the US government hired criminals like Lansky to ensure that no Kriegsmarine submarines or German infiltrators attacked Brooklyn Harbor. After the war, Lansky was forced to abandon his friend Bugsy Siegel, as Bugsy's lousy management of the Flamingo Hotel led to many mobsters wanting him dead; he was murdered in 1947. Lansky oversaw the transition of Las Vegas from a New York-controlled city to a Chicago Outfit base, and he lost millions of dollars due to the Cuban Revolution of 1959, being chased out of the country. Lansky was left with just Las Vegas as his money maker, and he failed to enter Israel in 1970 to flee tax evasion charges. He was acquitted in 1974, and he died in Miami Beach in 1983 of lung cancer at the age of 80.