Free Surviving the Mob by Dennis Griffin Page B

with broken shoes.’”

    People like Andrew, who booked through Nick Corozzo’s horse rooms, worked on a percentage basis. They received 25% of the profits on winning weeks, while Corozzo paid all the losses and put the operators on a make-up until they got the losses back. But losing weeks were the exception and not the rule in the Gambino-controlled sports- and race-betting venues. Andrew never experienced one and his peers were in the black the vast majority of the time.

NUMBERS
    The illegal numbers game—also known as a “policy racket”—is a very simple proposition. The bettor picks three single-digit numbers. If they match the “daily number” announced the following day, he’s a winner.
    In the early days, numbers betting was run almost exclusively by black gangsters. Like any lottery, the low cost of entry made the game extremely popular in poor, mostly black, neighborhoods, which meant that almost everyone was a potential customer.
    Eventually, white organized criminals in New York took an interest in the business. The Genovese crime family got involved first and the other families followed.
    Under the Gambino rules, winners were paid 500-1. So a 50¢ bet returned $250. Since the true odds of hitting were closer to 1,000-1, the numbers gave the operators a healthy edge (they kept about half of whatever was bet).
    The daily number was (and still is) derived from the total handle at a specified local racetrack. “If a person bet with a Gambino store,” Andrew says, “there were two daily numbers in play: the New York number and the Brooklyn number. The New York number came from the results of the third, fifth, and seventh races at the designated track. The Brooklyn number resulted from the last three digits of the total mutuel handle at whichever track was being used.”

    There were other ways of doing it. Some unaffiliated numbers operators in Westchester County used the “1-in-the-middle” method when computing their payoffs. Under that system, if the winning set of numbers had a 1 in the middle, the winners were paid at a rate of only 300-1 rather than the normal 500.
    As in any free market, the public eventually decides what they’ll “pay” for anything, and the Gambinos reasoned that they made plenty by paying out extra. As a result, their game thrived and by the time Andrew became active, the numbers racket was a big part of the family’s gambling income. Nick Corozzo operated several games in his territory.
    The pay structure for the Gambino stores worked as follows. The store’s boss—called the “controller”—received 600-1 on winning bets. This assured that he’d make a profit even on customer wins. In addition, the crew boss paid the controller 35% of the business’ take. From that, the controller kept 10% and paid the runner—the guy who took the bets and collected and paid out the money—the balance, which equaled 25% of the total take. The boss kept all the rest, minus 3%-4% for the cost of paperwork.
    “One well-known numbers store in New York City did around three hundred thousand in business every week. He passed all his action off to the two biggest numbers runners in the city for ten percent, then collected thirty grand or so a week while the runners did all the work,” Andrew recalls.
    When New York City started its own lottery, it paid the merchants selling the tickets only 6%. That was 4% less than organized crime paid its store operators. And if the legal lottery was getting too much action on a particular number, it shut down that number. The illegal competition didn’t do that. Hence, the numbers rackets were able to continue operating even after the lottery was created.
    As Andrew likes to point out, state and local governments frequently open businesses with which organizedcrime has had financial success. Horse betting produced a lot of money and New York opened Off-Track-Betting parlors. Numbers games took in tons of money and state lotteries came into